What is Remote Theatre?
Remote theatre is a new and innovative genre of theatrical expression whereby plays and other drama activities are performed in real time using simple video conferencing tools. It's a kind of half-way house between theatre and film, taking the best of both these art forms.
Remote theatre differs from conventional theatre in that the audience and the actors do not share the same physical space, and because every performance is mediated through the screen of a laptop or mobile phone. This allows for some very cool features which simply aren't possible in face-to-face theatre.
It differs from film in that the action takes place live, so every performance is unique and fresh, and is created in real time for the audience that is there at that moment. This means that things may go terribly wrong, but they may also go wonderfully right, and it this tension that breathes life into the genre.
Remote theatre may be performance oriented; that is principally focused on the production of a short play to be performed live and remotely for the benefit of either a virtual audience (through live streaming on Facebook or Youtube etc) or for the benefit of an audience which is gathered together in the same space such as at a school or conference (as with traditional theatre).
It may also be education oriented; that is mainly framed as a tool for learning whereby the participants in a remote play or remote drama activities can benefit in terms of language development, confidence, digital literacy and intercultural awareness.
These two facets of remote theatre are not mutually exclusive of course, and on this site we'll focus on them both (working in tandem or independently). We'll explore what it takes to make the best possible performance of a remote play, but we'll also look at how doing remote drama activities can feed into and enhance this process, and how these activities can be a huge benefit to learning in their own right.
The features of remote theatre
Perhaps the best way to really explore what remote theatre is would be to look at an example of a remote play. 'Welcome to Earth', a play focussed on environmental issues, was written and originally performed by a group of teenagers and their teacher who live in Askar refugee camp, Nablus, Occupied Palestine. Here it's performed by an international group of adults who were participating in a remote theatre workshop led by Nick Bilbrough at the Salzburg global seminar on refugee education in Austria in December 2019. Watch the recording and have a think about what the features of this new genre of theatre may be. What do you notice in terms of the stage, exits and entrances, the audience's view, and a connection to the audience? From tomorrow we're going to be blogging about a different feature of remote theatre each day but before that please feel free to write anything that you notice in the comments below this article.
If you'd like to create your own version of this play with your students then the script is available to download below. We'd love to see your versions and, with your permission of course, may be able to include a link to it, in 'The Remote Theatre Handbook' - a free to download resource that we're creating out of this project.