Hybrid Worship: Presenting A Quality Experience In Person – And – Virtually

ProSoundWeb: The future seems bright. Churches have been brought into the 21st century (albeit some kicking and screaming.) I’ve been hoping for this to happen over the past several years, and all it took was a global shift in how we view technology – what a relief! Now that religious institutions and houses of worship are finally seeing the necessity of hybrid events and services, how can we help? Well, from an audio point of view, there’s plenty we can tackle.

Live Nation is wiring more than 60 venues for livestreaming

www.fastcompany.com: Live Nation has had enough of the pandemic roller coster. After more than a year of empty arenas, the entertainment giant is taking matters into own hands and wiring over 60 venues for livestreaming, the company announced today.

Tips for Making Better Zoom Theatre: Part 1, The Big Picture |

www.intermissionmagazine.ca: Having just marked the first year of lockdown, there is another dubious celebration ahead for theatre-makers and theatre-lovers: the one-year anniversary of seeing (or doing) our first online play. I’m not here to tell you that online performances are the future of theatre. I’m not here to say that cramped black-box spaces, or lavish thousand-seat auditoriums are dead. I can’t wait to get back into those spaces—sitting cheek-by-jowl with a bunch of strangers.

Microsoft Mesh feels like the virtual future of Microsoft Teams meetings

The Verge: Last week, Microsoft’s Alex Kipman, the inventor of Kinect and HoloLens, appeared in my living room to hand me jellyfish and sharks. That might sound like I had a weird dream, but it was a meeting made possible through Microsoft’s new Mesh platform. I donned a HoloLens 2 headset, joined a virtual meeting room, and Kipman immediately appeared next to my coffee table, ready to demonstrate Microsoft’s vision for the future of VR and AR — or as Microsoft calls it, mixed reality. It all felt like a Microsoft Teams meeting set in the future.

Tony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.

The New York Times: The last Broadway season ended, unexpectedly, nearly a year ago. The next one will begin who-knows-when. But deep in this winter of our theaterlessness, a dormant tradition is starting to stir: the Tony Awards.

Escape Rooms in an At-Home Era? Here’s the Key

The New York Times: Hours after sunset, our team had finally decrypted the poems and exposed the nine oracles. With the traitor in our midst unmasked and the guardian revealed, the portal to the library began to open. Then my computer crashed, and I missed the climactic moments of the Secret Library, an online escape-room-style experience poised at the intersection of gaming and immersive theater.

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.

Hack to get rid of Zoom fatigue

www.fastcompany.com: Everyone keeps telling me to go outside! Take a walk! Get some fresh air! But here’s the thing: I like being inside. I like sitting. I’m perfectly happy opening a window for my daily dose of fresh air. Leaving the house (!) for a walk is not the kind of break I want. If I’m going to take a midday break, it’ll be to watch reruns of The Office or do a crossword puzzle.

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.

PLASA Online to Begin Monday for Five Days of Business, Technical, and Product Sessions

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Next week from October 12 - 16, PLASA, the lead association for the entertainment technology industry, is hosting PLASA Online, a five-day program of curated business, technical, and product sessions. Each session is designed to provide education, guidance, and inspiration during this challenging time.

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.

PLASA Hosting Upcoming Online Program Covering Business, Industry & New Technology

ProSoundWeb: PLASA Online 2020, skated for Monday, October 12 through Friday, October 16, will present of program of free content design to provide industry professionals with knowledge to help navigate the Covid-crisis and prepare for what’s next in live events and entertainment.

The next act: how the pandemic is shaping online theatre's future

Theatre | The Guardian: In the past six months, theatre has offered us comfort, provocation and entertainment. Not always live theatre, of course, but a virtual subgenre emerging out of pandemic darkness in the form of online dramas. These productions have ranged from splashy, multi-camera films of existing shows to quick-response plays made on a shoestring and beamed into our living rooms as dramatised video calls, aural dramas, interactive Zoom plays and monologues about lockdown life. Where is the place of such drama now that live theatre is whirring back into motion?

'Playbill' Does A Quick Online Pivot As Theaters Remain Closed Due To COVID-19

NPR: Playbill, the program magazine given out at theaters, has been around for 136 years. It's not just a program, it's a cherished souvenir. "It has become kind of the best memento of your night out at the theater," says Alex Birsh, the company's vice president.

How Theater Programs Are Adjusting to Online Learning

Teen Vogue: As schools reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, students are facing challenges they've never imagined. Teen Vogue's Fear and Learning in America series is exploring what back to school means for students this year, and what they think about learning during the coronavirus crisis.

Hannah Baity, 18, and her ensemble were nearly performance ready for their next play in a year-long theater program when things took a turn at the end of March.

Seattle theaters get inventive, finding ways to perform even during pandemic closures

The Seattle Times: Audio dramas. Online choose-your-own-adventure experiments. Live performance over the telephone. And, of course, Zoom.

In late summer, Seattle theaters began to roll out their answers to an unnervingly big question that’s threatened to swallow them since March: How are we going to do what we do in the middle of coronavirus?

If you ever wanted to take up painting as a hobby you need to check out these classes

Boing Boing: If you can say anything for the current state of our world, it certainly isn’t boring. However, the constant churn of high-stakes activity happening around us every day is enough to make even a Buddhist monk feel a twinge of anxiety now and again.

Microsoft Teams’ Together mode could help cure Zoom fatigue

www.fastcompany.com: Microsoft believes it has an answer to Zoom fatigue, and it comes in the form of superimposing people onto a virtual auditorium in Microsoft Teams.

The new feature, called Together mode, acts as an alternative view for video calls, which you access through a menu button in the chat window.

How to engage a virtual audience

www.fastcompany.com: SXSW was among the first major events to be canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the list is now long and distinguished. For the next several months, and potentially much longer, the vast majority of business conferences, pitches, and presentations will be virtual.