TPi: At the turn of the year, The Vertical Theatre Group – a newly established collective of producers, creatives and technical specialists led by Stufish – revealed ambitious plans for a ‘future-proof’ live performance venue, aptly named The Vertical Theatre. Put forth as an ‘innovative and tourable’ solution, the freestanding venue is designed to guarantee the future of live entertainment, providing a much-needed boost to the sector and its workers. Founders, Stufish’s Ric Lipson and freelance Production Director, Jake Berry are optimistic enough about the venue, which allows for social distancing, to jump on a Zoom chat with TPi to discuss their collective vision.
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My first thought when reading this article is about the sports complexes that were built in Beijing for the Olympics that are now glorified bird houses. This seems like a lot of people eager to throw money at a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I know that pandemics like these might become more common as we tear down more and more wildlife habitats and that there is no guarantee the next one won’t come until a hundred years from now. However, I don’t think “future-proofing” for socially distanced theater is the best use of resources. There’s no way of predicting what the next pandemic will look like, it may be water-born or air-born, and there will probably be stay-at-home orders, in which case social distancing won’t do anything. Also, just to fully tear this idea down, nothing here is original. All they did was combine balcony boxes and baseball stadium. Like almost every sports stadium has decentralized entrances.
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