Cue-ing

Wayfinding: Spotlights > Tech Behind the Scenes > Cue-ing

I discussed the chat function in livestreaming platforms including Zoom, Twitch, and YouTube live in a few other areas (Spotlight: Platforms; Spotlight: Audience Onboarding; Televisual Theatre), but Holly Champion described Streamed Shakespeare’s integration of the chat function as a method for cueing actors and having backstage conversations; this likely worked because the performers gathered over Zoom, then the Zoom video feed was livestreamed onto YouTube, so the audience did not see their Zoom discussions:

… we used it primarily as a way of having silent conversations backstage, so the stage manager would cue the actors through that chat. The actors would send each other private messages saying, ‘Hey, you know you're greenscreen is glitching. You've got the wrong greenscreen background in that last scene’ if the stage manager hadn't picked them up on it; or the director would give direction privately or publicly within that chat.

Figure 34: Screenshot of a Zoom rehearsal in which the stage manager cues actors using the chat function, seen as a popup in this recording.

Debaig, Bradley, and Morran of OnBoardXR used Discord channels in their server in a similar fashion. The group has a dedicated server named ‘Communication’ featuring two text-based channels (#run-of-show and #commentary) and three voice channels (GreenRoom, Backstage, and OnStage). The #run-of-show channel helped performers and crew monitor what cues were happening and coming up, while the #commentary channel allowed anyone involved in the show to notify the group if something was amiss, such as an avatar clipping through the floor of the virtual world. The voice channels were monitored, in the instance of OBXR6, by Debaig, who was the main production/stage manager: performers entered the GreenRoom channel and listened for their notification to enter the backstage area, priming them for when they would ‘go on’ the virtual stage; the BackStage area was for the next group of performers waiting for their Hubs world to load so they could perform; and the OnStage voice channel was the live audio feed from the performers’ microphones, so Debaig and other crew could monitor the onstage happenings while working on cues. In traditional theatre productions, many of these spaces would be physical places that performers and crew would sit, or go to find each other, and would have a speaker feed of the stage so the performers could listen to what was going on and not miss their cue. They might also have a speaker feed for the stage manager to contact performers sitting in the greenroom and let them know they would be on soon.