The Sunday Guardian: Is Online Theatre The Biggest Upgrade Waiting In The Wings?

We're super excited to be featured in today's edition of The Sunday Guardian in a piece that explores how theatre companies are navigating the online space.

Read our production manager Gaurav Singh (@gauravnijjer) share his thoughts on directing and staging our latest Spanish play Luz Negra as a digital-first offering, garnering close to 700 unique viewers last month.

"Kaivalya Plays, an independent theatre collective in Delhi, was scheduled to stage Álvaro Menéndez Leal’s Luz Negra in April, when the world went into lockdown.  Instead of abandoning the production, the director, Gaurav Singh, took along his actors to Skype and streamed the play live using Open Broadcaster Software. The performance recorded 700 unique visitors—considerably more than what the Spanish-language play would have invited at a standard Delhi auditorium."

"So how are theatre companies handling technicalities? Sanjay Kumar collaborated with a skilled tech team in Mumbai for his play, while Anurupa Roy taught herself the basics of streaming software. Gaurav Singh walked a mile further for his audience and arranged English subtitles for Luz Negra, which were put on 600 Google Slides and synced with the dialogues in real time. Lights, sound, set design and action are all being adapted to fit a videoconferencing platform too. “The fade-in and fade-out for character transitions (for Luz Negra) could be controlled using the brightness of our monitors, and being able to switch our video background to place performers in a dilapidated 19th century town plaza made the performance more compelling to watch, even if it was online,” said Singh."

Our Theatre Management Fellowship, which was launched two months ago as a fully-remote training initiative and whose current cohort of 5 fellows are collaborating digitally from 5 different cities, also finds a mention here as we share about taking not just the practice but the entire operations of a theatre company online.

We're humbled to featured alongside other theatre-makers whose work we admire deeply. Thank you Poulomi Paul (@_poulomipaul) for this amazing Sunday reading :)

Read the full article here.