Jo Caird: To Stream, or Not to Stream

The
Royal Opera House began screening performances in Covent Garden
Piazza in 1987 (I know, surprisingly early, eh?) and launched the BP
Big Screens live relay programme in 2000, but it wasn’t until a
couple of years ago that the rest of the industry began to catch up
and started launching their own live streaming schemes.

In
2008, the same year that the ROH launched its series of live
nationwide cinema screenings of ballet and opera, digital pioneer,
York-based Pilot Theatre, began live streaming its work online via
its interactive channel Pilot-Theatre.TV. The following year, NT Live
saw Phaedre with Helen Mirren broadcast to 73 UK
and 200 international cinemas. Michael Billington’s review
of the screening concluded with the words, “my
hunch is that this is only the beginning of a revolution in making
theatre available in ways of which we had never dreamed”.

When
I interviewed Pilot’s artistic director Marcus Romer in 2009 for an article
on what the theatre industry might stand to gain from using Twitter
(which makes for interesting reading looking back if I do say so
myself), the world of digital engagement and live streaming was still
very new. Back then he commented that “we don’t know exactly what
it’s going to be but we’re interested in how this is going for
the future”. Romer was confident, however, that live streaming
offered fantastic opportunities for extending theatre’s reach.

Two
years down the line and, while live streaming isn’t exactly standard
practice in UK theatre, it’s certainly becoming more common. Last
week Chris Mellor, creative producer at Camden Theatres, a local
council supported umbrella organisation for the borough’s theatre
spaces, wrote a piece for the Guardian Culture Professionals Network on the potential of
live streaming as an untapped source of revenue in small-scale
theatre.

Mellor’s
argument that theatre producers should direct resources towards
digital audience engagement is no longer a controversial one. These
days, if you’re running a theatre or a company without a website,
Facebook page and Twitter account, you’re missing a major trick. More
problematic, I think, is Mellor’s suggestion that this investment in
social media will have a direct pay off in terms of revenue earned.

The
producer has published an essay on the subject that makes for interesting reading, offering some
practical advice for producers and theatres wishing to further
develop their social media engagement. In particular, his run-down of
the costs and issues to consider for setting up live streaming may be
useful for theatre-makers looking to explore widening audience
engagement in this way. But the idea that as it becomes more
difficult to get bums on seats in small venues, money can be earned
by live streaming shows to paying customers online, as well as
charging for recorded versions of the show after the fact, seems to
me hopelessly flawed and a dangerous model for the small-scale
theatre industry.

Things
get tricky when you start asking live streaming to provide a return
on investment, this model effectively shutting down the potential of
the technology to broaden the reach of a piece of work, access
previously hard-to-reach audiences and give existing audiences a
value-added experience. Charging
for online content sets up expectations as to the value of a
product.

Organisations such as NT Live and Digital Theatre (which
works with theatre companies to produce recorded and edited versions
of live performances for download) invest a great deal in creating
two-dimensional versions of live theatre that will stand up to
critical scrutiny in their own right. The craft and expense that has
gone into making them justifies charging people to see them.
Small-scale theatres and producers are unlikely to have the resources
available to create an online product that people will feel is good
value for money in its own right. My concern is that producers
tempted by Mellor’s idea of live streaming as potential revenue
stream stand to risk losing sight of what’s most important and
pouring money into live streaming at the expense of the work itself
and the experience of the audience sat in the theatre.

I
could be totally wrong about all this. Maybe in a year’s time we’ll
all be acknowledging live streaming as the saviour of small-scale
theatre. It’s impossible to predict the future, particularly when it
comes to fast-moving technology. But my instinct is that looking to
live streaming to sooth theatre’s financial woes is unwise and a
distraction from the many positive opportunities that it
has to offer the industry.