Workshopping Plays Online in a Pandemic
Liam Salmon,
WWPT Playwright in Residence
For just over a year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Heather Inglis and Workshop West, Playwrights’ Theatre in workshopping and developing a new work of mine. Given our current reality, this means we’ve done a lot of work online; a lot of workshops over ‘Zoom’ or meetings over Google Hangouts or equivalent. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what Zoom was over a year ago. Now it’s become a sort of standard for official meetings. All this has left me wondering: What happened to you Skype? How did you drop the ball so hard…?
But for real, the state of live theatre during these COVID times has been a whole thing. The whole concept of ‘live’ or ‘in-person’ has been just south of impossible for more than a year. And it means the whole process of ‘developing’ or ‘workshopping’ a new work feels radically different. For starters there are some benefits: I’m at home, and oftentimes I may be wearing a nice shirt but I’m always in sweatpants. But it brings a lot of challenges as well.
Writing a script for live theatre is half or less than half the battle. I always approach a play as an offer, as something that is meant to be an outline or ghost of a thing that is supposed to exist in three dimensions. A pivotal part of this writing process is then hearing those words in a three-dimensional space. What works on the page does not always work in the space, and vice versa.
For example, when working with actors, I often like to joke: don’t worry about the words, don’t worry about line flubs. My philosophy has always been: if an actor keeps saying the line a certain way, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it means the words have been over-written and don’t reflect natural speech. Nine times out of ten, I will change the words to reflect what a speaker naturally gravitates to.
It’s a process.
So how does that process exist if we can’t meet in person? It’s a question that we, and many others are answering in quite a number of different ways. For us – it means zoom. It means knowing there’s a certain audio feature on zoom that allows for overlapping dialogue without it being totally unintelligible. It’s using the resources we have so that a theatrical process can still exist and not be totally shut down during this long theatrical interim.
I have said many times to many friends, colleagues, that now is the perfect time to be investing resources in developing new work. I am speaking from largely a text-based process, so what I mean in this regard is that now’s a great time to develop a play. But I’ve also been surprised with some of the explorations I’ve seen some of my colleagues do involving virtual reality, live and recorded video, and other technological mediums.
In a lot of ways – it’s great to experiment with process. I think it’s so healthy for people to try new things, challenge a process, learn a new skill, see what discoveries are made through filming a work and what take-aways can be applied to other artistic mediums. It all feeds a person, an organization’s, creativity. That’s something that I think has been really exciting to see in the year plus that we’ve lived in this alternate reality.
I think the most successful work I’ve seen have been the companies who have courageously delved face first in these mediums. Because I think it’s important to realize here that what we’re doing right now is not theatre in the way that we’ve understood or practiced it. We are guests in longer established mediums that result in work that are more akin to film, live video, vlogs, or even become videogames or ‘game-like’ in an interesting way.
Honestly, I’m very, very, interested to see what live theatre looks like after this. My wish is that we continue forward with the inspirations and skills we’ve learned during this. Even before the pandemic, I’ve maintained that one of the healthiest things an artist can do is consume media outside their artistic discipline. Now I think that has proven to be even more true.
But where does all this leave us?
Where am I?
What is the path forward for us / for me?
I feel like a lot of artists are asking themselves these questions right now.
Personally, I don’t think I’ve questioned my journey through theatre more than during these times. Doubts in my mind like: is this sustainable, is this worth it, or is this journey as an artist even possible. To be fair – these are doubts I’ve had even before COVID, but have become more intense in the past couple of months.
And, I mean honestly, the answer to those questions is a big ‘I don’t know.’ Navigating through theatre, trying to get a foothold, trying to find a path feels like a gigantic, impossible, process. Thankless even. A career in the arts isn’t straightforward or linear, and “rewards” are subjective. I could talk more about a “competition” mindset and how late-stage capitalism encourages the worst in us to “get ahead”, but perhaps that’s for a different article.
Where does that leave us? What can we do to help artists during this time?
Well – speaking personally – development opportunities like the one Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre is offering me feel like lifelines. Now is the opportune moment for developing work, however limited zoom workshops may be – they’re still incredibly valuable. Keeping a work alive in development is very important, especially for new theatrical work. And in a time where many artists are adding up the numbers and asking similar questions that I am, it’s important to support those who we can and help through this process.
We are all looking over the horizon anticipating the time we can all meet, workshop, cry, laugh in person. Part of that means supporting our communities and supporting our artists.
Liam Salmon
WWPT Playwright in Residence 2021