Pandemic Pivoting

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Fast Prototyping > Pandemic Pivoting

Although theatre makers rapidly pivoted to online platforms in the first lockdown, it took some time for both theatre makers and their audiences to catch up with how to best use digital solutions. Matthew Jameson told me in our interview: ‘It all felt very hectic. It all felt very reactive in a sense that you never knew quite what the Covid status was going to be, whether you were setting up for things as they were, whether you're getting ready to shut down, within a day’s notice’. In the UK, where Jameson is based, there were two major lockdowns and then a series of steps ; in some steps, small in-person gatherings were possible, while in others, they were tightly restricted to outdoor spaces. Being able to shift a production between media became a necessary skill.

Streamed Shakespeare, based in Sydney and founded by Holly Champion, experienced similar rapid changes in 2021 when rising Covid numbers led to sudden shutdown orders in New South Wales and Victoria. Champion told me in our interview that after the first major lockdown, Streamed Shakespeare experienced a lull: ‘there was a bit of a gap, because at that point people were really going to live theatre again, and they weren't so interested in Zoom and online theatre; and then there was another lockdown in Sydney. So, suddenly people were interested in doing Zoom theatre again. We did a couple more stage readings, or sort of filmic productions that was sort of smaller in scope’. During that second larger lockdown, Streamed Shakespeare switched their focus from frequent staged readings to larger, less frequent, but more dramaturgically and visually ambitious, productions; this eventually led them to Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, which were livestreamed shows relying on a considerable amount of virtual production to create the Star Wars-like world.

Having the flexibility to switch between potential formats was difficult, though. Carmel Clavin told me: ‘it was the Wild West. … We changed the format four times, just for the record, between a fully live experience to fully online on Crowdcast experience, it changed four different times, what we were going to do and how we're going to do it. It just was nuts’. Clavin did note that the size of an organisation mattered a lot, not just in the resources they had available (like existing high-quality films of pre-pandemic shows, which benefitted big companies like The National Theatre), but the ability to quickly pivot. Larger organisations would be slower to adopt a new technology, while smaller organisations or even individual producers could change their mind whenever they wanted. On Richmond Fringe’s becoming the first fully online fringe festival in 2020, Clavin said: ‘I think it's actually because it's small and scrappy and kind of punk rock in that way that I have the ability to just say, “alright, we're going to do that”. Instead of having to jump through every hoop, and apply for funding years in advance, and convince a board and find a resource. … you can just take bigger risks, and if they don't work out, that's fine. No one's going to die’.