To Start the Story

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Preshow Set-Up > To Start the Story

As noted in the introduction to this Spotlight, some companies use preshow time to begin the narrative of the performance, before the official play begins. This literally sets the stage. follows the evolution of early modern theatre’s introductions, which ranged from monologues like Romeo & Juliet to ‘dumbshows’ in which clowns or other performers mimed some of the events in and around the performance. Current theatre production processes, including second wave digital theatre, occasionally adopt similar methods of communicating with the audience.

Figure 27: A screenshot from Hijinx Theatre's Meta vs. Life, during the very beginning of the show, in which performers playing Charon and Derek (top video; avatars in centre) are explaining to me (bottom left video; avatar in centre), within the world of the play, how everything works. There is also a moderator (no video, avatar in centre) present, I presume acting as stage manager and house manager simultaneously).

For example, in Australian Theatre Live’s film of Pinchgut Opera’s Platee, their cameras captured the director’s tableau using the performers onstage, setting the performers up as though they had passed out at the end of a wild party. Incoming audience members now clearly understand what kind of characters they will watch, what those characters are experiencing in the first scene, and what kind of salacious and extreme events might transpire later in the show. This is an important setup not only for the in-person audience, but for the film’s audience, as it begins the narrative before the first song.

Streamed Shakespeare’s Henry IV parts 1 & 2 in 2021 combined the Elizabethan theatre’s prologue with a Star Wars-inspired font to explain the semi-historical events leading up to Shakespeare’s first scene. Since the company decided to set their YouTube livestreamed Henry IV in a galaxy far, far away, this not only helped the audience know what was going to occur, in plain modern language, but visually set up the show by referencing a specific movie type and genre.

Figure 28: Screengrab of the introduction to Streamed Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, which uses a Star Wars-inspired font and written introduction to summarise Shakespeare's introductory monologue in the show. The summary clarifies the backstory for the play, and the font sets the expectation for a scifi setting.

Finally, preshow ambiance is important for digital/in-person hybrid works now that theatres are reopened to audiences. Carmel Clavin’s Journey to the Kingdom of Hypnos at Adelaide Fringe 2024, for example, was performed in ILA (formerly Light ADL), an immersive media studio with a second-floor space containing a large LED wall that surrounds the audience on three sides, and a large LED fourth wall at the back. During her show, Clavin projected soothing, foggy scenery created using virtual tools, with overlays of photographs offered by prior audience members; on the larger single back wall, Clavin projected an image of a cave where she also took early show marketing photos.

By surrounding the audience with this imagery, Clavin determined not only the emotional tone of the show but influenced the audience’s mental imagery for the immersive audio performance. Once the show began, her in-person character, Mnemosyne, circled the audience and explained some of the backgrounds, then explained how to put on the headphones and engage with the technology of the performance.