Captioning the Stream: Accessibility and Inclusion in Zoom Theatre

Intermission: Rainbow-hued block letters flashed across the screen to the thumping beat of electronic music. “We’re grateful to have viewers from all over Turtle Island. This feels appropriate, considering these new works were made by artists across Canada.” Listing the many Indigenous territories inhabited by the settler artists collaborating on the series, the land acknowledgement opening the second double-bill of The Stream You Step In asked us to reflect on the technology facilitating our digital gathering.

Tony Awards campaigns go digital during the Broadway shutdown

Broadway News: Ahead of Tony Awards voting, which began Monday and ends March 15, nominated productions have sent out Audible recordings of the shows, multitudes of emails and Tonys-specific websites and, in one case, a streamed version of the play in its entirety. These materials are being sent as producers try to remind voters of their shows, while being unable to employ the traditional modes of campaigning, such as in-person events and invitations to see shows for a second time.

The Innovation of Theatre During a Pandemic

SoundGirls.org: 2020 was the year that Broadway, and so many other theaters, closed their doors. Consoles remained covered. Houses stayed empty. The lonely ghost light stood center stage. However, the year also came with great innovation, which is something that cannot be ignored by those who remain working in this industry. Though our theatre doors may be shut, many have turned to other ways to safely continue community involvement.

The Technological Theatre Experimenters

HowlRound Theatre Commons: At this very moment, the theatre industry is being thrust into a site-specific venue called the internet. Like any other site-specific process, the unconventional performance environment should inspire us to define what makes theatre theatre and celebrate how our form can adapt to any space it inhabits. This present moment places us in an exciting crossroad between former traditions and the emergence of technical and multi-platformed storytelling.

Todd Rundgren's Virtual Tour: Testing New 'Road' Models in Quarantine

Variety: “Buffalo, you’ve been so kind to us,” Todd Rundgren said toward the end of his tour-opening show Sunday night. He was actually performing in Chicago, as most fans watching the pay-per-view livestream knew, but this was not a senior/Spinal Tap “Hello Cleveland!” moment. The current Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominee’s entire 25-date “tour” will be broadcast from the same Illinois stage, but geo-targeted to different regional markets, complete with visual cues saluting the would-be host towns and, yes, multiple winking shout-outs to the virtually targeted city du jour.

All the World’s a Screen? They’re Used to It

The New York Times: About a year ago, when such things were possible, a friend and I bought cheap, same-day tickets to a preview of “West Side Story,” directed by the Belgian auteur Ivo van Hove. Our assigned seats were in the second row of the orchestra, on the extreme left, below the lip of the stage. Which means that we saw most of the performance via the 30-foot-tall LED display at the back.

Is It Theater? Chekhov's 'The Seagull' Adaptation For The Sims 4 To Stream On Twitch

NPR: Playwright Celine Song is transforming Anton Chekhov's The Seagull into something avant-garde — by adapting a version that will be presented in The Sims 4 video game and streamed on Twitch.

NewFest Film Festival: Ryan Spahn on Shooting his Play on Zoom

Variety: As an openly gay actor, Ryan Spahn was determined to tell his story. “Nora Highland” was originally developed to be an Off-Broadway play, but when the pandemic forced a shutdown, Spahn had to rethink. The story explores the casting process surrounding an iconic gay character in a new Broadway revival.

The Annoyance's "Splatter Theater:" Sharing a Chicago Halloween Tradition with an Online Audience

The Theatre Times: While theaters around the United States typically produce The Rocky Horror Picture Show around Halloween, the city of Chicago, Illinois has a different tradition. Starting in 1987, The Annoyance Theater has produced Splatter Theater. Parodying 80s slasher movies like Halloween and Friday the 13th, the show depicts a group of stock characters who throw a party, and gradually get dispatched one by one by a masked killer.

To be, or not to be? Old Globe and its artistic director, Barry Edelstein, virtually pivot during pandemic

The San Diego Union-Tribune: All the world may indeed be a stage, as Shakespeare famously wrote in 1599, the same year he helped launch the original Globe Theatre in London. For The Old Globe, the Shakespeare-inspired theater that opened in Balboa Park in 1935, the stage has changed dramatically since the coronavirus pandemic spread around the world this winter.

“Wild” [Streaming] at Quantum Theatre

The Pittsburgh Tatler: This past summer, my colleague Kyle Haden and I led a small “think tank” at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama aimed at exploring the landscape of live performance in the age of Covid-19. The research questions we posed to the student participants in the course were relatively straightforward: what’s “out there” in the world of remote and digital live performance, what’s working well, why does it work well when it does, and what tools and techniques need to be mastered in order to make compelling and captivating live performance for remote or socially distanced performers and audiences?

Cirque Launches All-New CirqueConnect Digital Experience

www.cirquefascination.com: Cirque du Soleil is proud to unveil its exciting fall programming along with a brand-new lookfor its CirqueConnect content hub. Featuring an enhanced library of titles, the newly revamped CirqueConnect platform will provide fans with inspiring freshly-produced never-before-seen series and exclusive content.

Mumbai’s The Company Theatre Finds Innovative Ways to Navigate Theatre Digitally

The Theatre Times: A woman haunted by insomnia, a djinn, and a hallucinatory mind during the COVID-19 lockdown; a failed social media influencer’s journey down the rabbit hole of infinite scrolling; a 2020 version of The Mahabharata’s “warrior princess-turned-mute doll,” Chitrangada. Ranging from Marathi to Hindi and English, these are just some of the many stories being told at The Company Theatre’s TheatreFILMTheatre — A Festival of Shorts.

Quantum Breaks New Ground In an Old Way with ‘Wild’

Entertainment Central Pittsburgh: Livestreamed theater moves beyond the Zoom format with Quantum Theatre’s production of Wild (free online October 20 to 25). Quantum is using realistic methods to stage and stream a political psycho-thriller inspired by real events. Wild, by English writer Mike Bartlett, is a fictional takeoff on the Edward Snowden case.

From ghostly to gothic to goofy, theater artists celebrate the season

Performing Arts Feature | Chicago Reader: Exal Iraheta grew up listening to tales from Central American mythology. “The stories, kind of like Grimms’ fairy tales did in Europe, didn’t shy away from real danger,” the playwright, screenwriter, and School of the Art Institute alum recalled. “For me, I’ve always thought of horror and scary stories as a way of releasing something, or experiencing life from a different perspective.”

Originally sidelined by COVID-19, Prime Stage's Debut of Kathryn Erskine's 'Mockingbird' gets Virtual premiere

Pittsburgh Current: Books have been a refuge for many since the COVID-19 pandemic gripped America, shutting down many public venues for consuming art, from movie theaters to concert halls. To bring these stories we’ve sought to life, local theater company Prime Stage Theatre is working to bring books to the stage, through the screen.

SAG-AFTRA Board Reaffirms Jurisdiction Over Taping Of Live Theater For TV, Film

Deadline: The usually fractious SAG-AFTRA national board of directors unanimously has approved a resolution reaffirming the union’s jurisdiction over the taping of live theater productions, accusing Actors’ Equity Association of taking part in a “surreptitious campaign to encroach upon SAG-AFTRA jurisdiction.” The board, meeting Thursday night in special session, also directed SAG-AFTRA counsel to conduct an investigation into Equity’s “activities seeking to poach SAG-AFTRA’s jurisdiction.”

Pittsburgh's Long-Running Satirical Revue And Fundraiser Goes Online

90.5 WESA: With 19 years under its belt, “Off The Record” is surely Pittsburgh’s longest-running satirical musical revue. But while the coronavirus pandemic won’t stop it, neither will the 20th annual production be quite the same.

Live Streaming Comparison Guide

Sound & Video Contractor: Many organizations are now using live streaming to market, sell, support, evangelize, and in some cases, deliver their products or services. In this buyer’s guide, I’ll review the features offered by live streaming service providers in different categories, and factors to consider when choosing a service.

Using ZOOM to Create Theatre by Suzanne Willett

WIT journal: When the news hit in the spring that theatres in New York were going to be shut down, I–like many of my fellow theatre-makers–was devastated. Our movement company, 10C, had been developing our third science-based piece throughout the fall and winter of 2019 and the quarantine felt like we drove 50 mph into a wall. Shortly after the shutdown, I began taking mental health walks in the city. As I continued venturing out, I could not help but notice new sounds: the silence, the birds, and ambulance sirens. I noticed that the sirens provided a morose counterpoint to these natural sounds.