When Claire Wood turned her hand to online theatre last year, something unexpected happened. The playwright had always intended to make her play Roulette interactive, and in its online form it asked the Zoom audience to vote on how the couples in a dating gameshow were matched.
That side of the performance, staged by her own Production Lines company, went as planned. What she didn’t foresee was the audience’s spontaneous employment of the chat function.
“They started commenting on the characters,” she says. “A dialogue struck up between different audience members. It was thrilling because I was sat on my own, watching my actors who were scattered all over the place, and getting a sense that people were there, listening and taking something from it. It made the whole thing feel zingy and live.” [READ MORE]