🪩Platforms

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Platforms

In their article on digital, online theatre, highlight the need to consider which platform suits the format of your show, i.e., the (cyber)space in which you will make your work available to your audience. Platforms have different affordances, both as fun tools and as strict limitations. This online space becomes a gathering place with : ‘Networked performances and art create a sense of Place and a potential for change’. This is true of online venues just as it is for in-person venues, which can change your audience’s experience of your show from the moment they enter the front door through to the end of the performance. However, are, potentially, far more accessible to more people: ‘What would an art world that decentralized the role of venues look like? …What would theatre look like if it moved to where people already are?’ Leaning on ease of use and popularity, though, : ‘Most online theatre audiences use well-known platforms to access performances on-demand’.

in their digital theatre article that the average theatre student in 2024 is far more likely to access shows from Broadway or the West End online, most often through YouTube clips: ‘The barriers of physical distance and cost keep most college theatre majors from Broadway houses, but not from voraciously watching, sharing, and discussing bootleg recordings of shows through digital forums’. Theatre fandom moved online years ago – offering theatre through online platforms engages with a system already in place.

Video streaming platforms are the most obvious staging choices, translating the in-person proscenium arch into the televisual proscenium arch, but perhaps a different digital platform like VRChat (virtual reality) or Spotify (audio streaming) would serve your dramaturgy, your aesthetic, and your narrative better. Carmel Clavin suggests: ‘that's another big piece of the digital format that it kind of tricks you into thinking that, like lots of people have access to you now. But do they? And what is that? What is the quality of that interaction from a qualitative point, but also from a quantitative point?’. Are you getting more views of your work, and if so, are they the right audience for your show?