Output details

Extending the theatre experience: The potential for wearable and on-stage cameras

At the time of the first NT Live experiments we had secured Technology Strategy Board Funding for a collaborative research project to explore the provision of theatre experiences on small (PC) and large (Cinema) screens. The project was a collaboration between Bristol Old Vic, Watershed and Hewlett-Packard. It was carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of performers, technologists, producers and psychologists as a result of our research on instrumented spaces, experience of place and telepresence.

The journal article describes an analysis of audience experience for different capture and viewing conditions. The results offer lessons for the future of NT Live as more and more ‘encore’ (not-live) performances are made available. The results have also informed our future work on audience telepresence for which we secured our current European FW7 grant in 2011:Vconect. http://www.vconect-project.eu

Our aim was to understand how digital technology and instrumented spaces (in this case wearable and prop-mounted cameras) could extend the theatre experience to on-line viewing. Through point of view and unobtrusive on-stage filming we hoped to keep the physicality of theatre and enable experiences that feel in the moment, in the screen format. The resulting films were viewed in cinemas, and in homes and compared with the live performance through quantitative and qualitative data analysis. An original performance was devised and performed to theatre audiences. From these, two 30 min film versions were created for remote viewing. As Co-I responsible for the research outcomes I devised the experimental framework and analysed the data with my colleague Erik Geelhoed.

A short documentary can be found at http://vimeo.com/6929040.

The 30 min films of the performance are available on request.