Archive Highlight - "Zoom In" (Patreon)

I’m on Vacation this month,* so this will be a quicker edition, but while organizing files on my desktop (yes, delays at JFK were THAT bad), I came across a screenshot that reminded me of a few conversations I’ve had lately about remote performance. This picture comes from the midst of final rehearsals for The Fleecing; previously-in-person annual show about a cult dedicated to preserving the value of money. I played a few bit parts, including a special hidden “side-room” where I hosted a one-on-one experience within the larger world of the piece. Looking back at this Screenshot, I feel it captures a few things about what performance over zoom felt like.

*by “this month,” I mean the last two weeks of August, and by “Vacation,” I mostly mean “am working from a series of places that aren’t my house, while occasionally pausing to eat a pasty”

collaborator names / faces obscured for privacy

CHAOS

I took this photo because I was struck by what an absolute mess my desktop was while performing - though that wasn’t necessarily unwelcome. Learning to do Zoom shows felt a little bit like gradually adding elements to a juggling act - and just like juggling, when you put all the pieces together, there’s a satisfying kind of “flow state” of finding your rhythm. Additionally, many of the things in the air were the kinds of things that normally can’t co-exist with live performance, or were interesting tasks to integrate—operating technology, communicating with audiences, even using live web searches.

Fuller, Richer, Tech-er

Even a luddite like my has gradually been able to build my skills, and so for The Fleecing I was able to run real-time video filters and effects while playing audio cues and sharing my screen as I surfed the internet in real time, googling participants—and it only took me running about 6 programs at once. It is quite possible that a single program exists to do all of those things (in fact, it may well be OBS, and I’m just too illiterate to know it), but I actually really enjoy creating the illusion of a singular technology by strapping together many other ones just out of “sight.” I often speak of The Telelibrary as an auditory puppet show - I view giving someone a clear and responsive interface for a device or website that doesn’t actually exist to be a kind of digital puppetry — and very exciting.

Conversations on Conversations

Between Zoom chat, texts, and slack messages, the many layers of communication happening in Zoom shows can quickly become a little dizzying. Still, one of the things I've found surprisingly enjoyable in Zoom theater has been the ability to communicate with other cast-mates and audience members both collectively and individually, and to use this to create individualized, asynchronous experiences. Most often in shows I saw this used to send "unlock-able" or "discoverable" codes, links, or answers. However, I'd love to see more layering that provides audience members different amounts of context or subtext, different narratives, or even different scripts to follow in real time.

“Script” in “Hand”

In the majority of the shows I performed in using remote video, I was not fully memorizing entire scripts. Instead, I was reading from screens or pages propped up next to my screen. Most of the times these were less traditional scripts than collections of notes and modular chunks of monologues, "spines" or flowcharts for engagements, or outlines for improvisation. Aside from the way it helped reduce production times, I found this approach to be a great complement to the way interactive works generally "flow."

However, some finesse is definitely needed: in most zoom shows I saw, the darting of actor's eyes to their scripts was distinctly noticeable.

What you don’t see -

- of course, is the audience, which is the part of Zoom theatre I have found to be the most exhausting. Specifically, when you are performing without being able to meaningfully see or experience the reactions of the vast majority of people watching, it not only cuts you off from “instant feedback;” it also disconnects you from the energy available in an audience’s response. As a performer, I am heightened and moved by the way an audience responds: emotionally, they do half the work. Over the past several years of pandemic performances, whenever I was on zoom, or in a format where there were many audience members all inmate, I felt the weight of doing “all the work” of feeling the story. In my little one-on-one breakout room I managed to have enough contact to alleviate this, but as soon as a third person popped in the room, one person was always “disappearing,” which as a performer meant I was far more likely to end up “performing at” than performing with.” Ultimately, I found that these performance days left me drained in a way which nothing in my career has ever done; it didn't put me off "Zoom Theatre" forever, but it definitely made it clear to me that I would need to see it reinvented/innovated before I'd want to return as a performer.

It also made me very excited for my return to working in person, which (if you're on the East Coast), you can join by attending Fair Trade and Undersigned.