Zoom

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Platforms > Zoom

Zoom became the 2020 pandemic solution to anything remote, from school to work to theatre. In fact, Zoom theatre became synonymous with any live, online performance. Peter J. Kuo told me: ‘I think what happened was … once everyone got into Zoom, that's the formula they got stuck in. . . . I think a lot of people's imagination about breaking that Zoom screen open was stuck’. Matthew Jameson expressed a similar experience, stating that The Space did not have the time before returning to in-person work to truly experiment with Zoom’s affordances. At the same time, theatre makers remained intrigued enough with Zoom’s liveness and community-building opportunities that several theatre makers integrating the platform for backend streaming into another platform (like YouTube), Nathan Leigh said: ‘the reason that everybody uses it is because everybody has it, and it works on basically every device. … the resistance factor and the fact that it wasn't set up for live performance, we just all came up with a bunch of clever hacks to make it usable for that’. Zoom has additionally been integrated as a rehearsal platform : ‘As the quarantine continued, Zoom innovations became more and more complex. The digital platform was reluctantly activated, then innovated, institutionalized, and mobilized for ongoing performing arts activities’. This is discussed more in Spotlight-Tech Behind the Scenes.

‘rife with different possibilities of vulnerability and trust than that of the cinematic screen or of the IRL encounter – outside physical or proximal intimacy, but, still, implying and imploring and cultivating a particular and peculiar intimacy of the filmic encounter all the same through the Zoom headshot within the mise en scene of our previously personal, domestic spaces’. Especially early on, most people knew how to click on a Zoom link and enter a meeting, but few understood how to change or blur their backgrounds, so it became possible to see another person’s domestic life as never before. This also meant set designers became more inventive for shows, curating each character’s background with what actors had available or shipping items. For In Love and Warcraft, Kuo’s team sent multiples of the same item to performers who shared scenes, and the performers would then place the items on their walls or desks, creating a visual experience of shared space without performers sharing space – a demonstration of this is available in ACT San Francisco’s YouTube page.

Zoom was also dramaturgically applied in a metatheatrical way, per Michael Deacon: ‘what I found really exciting was the pieces that were sort of set on Zoom that weren't trying to make you not believe you were on Zoom but were incorporating that into the narrative and into the format and the world of what was happening, and actually, but not necessarily, referencing the pandemic, because then it puts you in a certain time and place’. Deacon used Zoom as both stage and world-building for Friar Lawrence’s Confessional.

After the novelty of curated home backgrounds wore off, theatre makers integrated virtual production tools, combining Zoom with Chromakey, QLab, and OBS among others (See also: Televisual Theatre; Tools: Software). Creation Theatre, Streamed Shakespeare, and other theatre makers integrated virtual production techniques into their shows, from using specifically designed background images and looping video to stitching performers together into scenes. that Zoom is still a valuable platform not just as a backstage place, but as a stage itself, even post-pandemic: ‘But there’s another value brought to you by Zoom which may be even more important, if a little less obvious as it operates a deeper somewhat murky level. That is simply the value of a cheap, widely accessible laboratory in which to try stuff out with virtually no financial risk’.

Holly Champion’s primary struggle with Zoom was that it was not just flat like film or television, appearing through a screen – it was, in fact, an even flatter medium as the performers she worked with had limited performance space in their homes, often hiding in corners or closets so as not to disrupt neighbours or others in their house: ‘There's definitely a challenge in finding ways around that flatness, that constancy of context’. around the lack of creative practices to change this context for the audience: ‘Most users also position their computer cameras to frame themselves in head and shoulders close-ups, resulting in Zoom ‘theatre’ productions resembling television far more than live stage shows’. As discussed in Televisual Theatre, Champion very specifically did not choose this format whenever possible, opting for Gallery View and more dynamic actor stances; however, as she noted, the ‘flatness’ was a significant limitation in this experiment. For Champion and Streamed Shakespeare, the ‘constancy of context’ was addressed through Chromakey and virtual production methods; for Kuo, it was using physical items to stitch scenes together.

Many artists also expressed frustration with different internet speeds, lossy compression, video quality, and freezing or stuttering audio and video while watching shows. : ‘As performances transitioned to Zoom and other platforms, geographical and structural barriers were removed’; however, other barriers were introduced, including internet latency, lighting and mic rigs, and even time zone problems. Carmel Clavin noted a successful experience with Zoom while performing The Marvelous Mechanical Musical Maiden as part of Gothenburg Fringe 2020, which was held in-person in Sweden though Clavin was remote in the US: ‘It was just Zoom because no one else was watching. It was like a closed loop’. Because it was just her video into a performance space in Gothenburg, there were fewer potential technical issues.