Up close and personal with The Tempest director, Conny Loder
How does this project differ from the summer open-air productions?
In our live open-air productions, we take down the so-called fourth wall: the actors play to all sides and enter from all sides (sometimes even through the seated audience); they engage with the audience and this interaction boosts the live performance – it gives something back to the actors. Anything can happen. These moments of intimacy, collectiveness, “live”-ness fall flat during a recorded performance without any audience present.
What were the main challenges in this production?
The actors all had to settle for their own private film sets: spaces needed to be adjusted, as well as lighting, the virtual backgrounds had to function with the costumes, sound difficulties needed to be sorted – all this on top of the actors actually not seeing each other and not seeing the actual perspective of the director. Because Zoom puts participants into a specific order on the screen by when they enter the meeting, we had to think about where we wanted each character to be positioned in relation to their scene partners. So instead of an actor coming from stage right, stage left, moving up or downstage, actor X signs in first, then actor Y, and so on. This require a new blocking format, which we referred to as “digital blocking.”
What was your favourite moment of this project?
That is yet to come: the premiere. It almost feels a bit like a premiere at the Theatron since we know that our audience will join in all at the same time to follow the show, only that this time we won’t be able to share this moment in the amphitheatre, but more with a global audience. Exciting!
And here it is — The Tempest. Enjoy!
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