Welcome to the West Park Park bench Podcast, series two episode 21. The autumn crows. I've had a break for a couple of weeks because of Seasonal Affective Disorder. This time of year confuses me and considering I'm 50 this should not be a thing. I should, kind of understand the world in which I was born into I would have thought, but it isn't the case. Now, I think I'm starting to understand my confusion.
Now. This time of year has never bothered me for my entire life. It was only when I stopped working full time touring with theatre companies. And that first Autumn Winter, where I had no pantomime. I didn't recognise it then. But that's when it started when I didn't have a focus to keep my mind off the environment. It started to affect me and I thought it was because it was dark at night and the days got shorter and it got dark earlier in the afternoon. That doesn't really bother me. I quite like autumn. I definitely like cosy warm fires and I like turning the lights on. The lighting designer in me likes to have positioned lights to reveal space. So actually, a dark space is not the problem. And then it's probably this year more than anything that I realised that the clocks going back into the morning component that really confuses me mostly I don't like it being darker in the morning, but I always associated with the afternoon. And ironically the reason for this, I think, is because when I was working in theatre, my life my day didn't really start, I didn't have to be conscious until rehearsal started. If it was a rehearsal week, which would have been about 10 o'clock so you'd roll into the rehearsal studio, you'd get things set up, but you didn't really have to function until 10. So even when the days are getting shorter in the autumn, I was not having to get up whilst that hour that 6am to 8am period was in flux. And when you're in a show week, you might roll back from the theatre at two in the morning. Maybe get to bed at three you're not up until 11 unless you start to reclaim your day, so yeah.
So if you are struggling right now, I just say take it easy on yourself and just sit back and... and look at the moment that you're in right then and there. Note the time, note the date and the year and just reflect on where it was that you might have been at exactly that point in time or those kinds of times in the year, back through your life reflect on your life. I think we we have we capture our moments on phones now.
Pause for someone to walk past what I love about this podcast is that there's actually people around but I tend to not want to talk while people are walking past
...so now I've lost my train of thought well there you go. I'm not going to try and pick it up. I'm going to move on. Because the other thing that I wanted to share with you on this podcast back is excitement and terror. They might seem like odd play fellows. But excitement and terror. I've reached a point in my producing, coming out of COVID completing my developing creative practice year. And now I've I've got to do something part of it is reporting on what happened last year. And that's the reflection you know being able to reflect...
I can now remember what I was saying before I lost my train of thought, which was about memories. And this kind of wraps up here as well is that we take moments on our phone. And we don't always lock those moments into our long term memory. So it's important to sit and just populate that long term memory. Just give yourself give yourself a moment. Give it to yourself so that next time you sit down and think about where you are you remember the point you were last time you thought where am I? And those points can be really valuable because they quite often... they are quite often at a point where you are at that horror and excitement points. You've gone through a dark time you got lost in the dark and you're starting to come through and think about where you're going. Starting to think about the destination that you lost and why you lost sight of that destination. It may have been because destination wasn't defined at that point. And this is what I kind of feel I've had a year of learning and discovery and with it being immersive theatre that I'm interested in at the beginning, I didn't really know what immersive theatre was myself. I knew that I was quite cynical about immersive because for me immersive is the theatrical experience itself taking yourself from a point of reality into a contrived environment where your senses are focused onto a stage area, whether that's thrust...
My goodness, we've got dogs running around!
...whether it's a thrust stage or promenade stage or in the round or proscenium the convention that you are taking into kind of shifts your focus and the thing that I really like about live theatre is being able to focus the attention of the audience and make possible that sleight of hand where you can change things within the environment without them realising.
It's a busy thoroughfare today.
So what I wanted to share with you my terror and my excitement of having attended an immersive technology festival, Open Online Theatre is a organisation that is run by Joumana Mourad, who is IJAD dance. And ever since I met her right at the beginning of COVID It was the first Producers Pool event that I attended, and she was there and I spoke about my interest in technology and at that point I had not even applied for my developing creative practice. But she got in touch with me and said I'd really like to talk about your thoughts on technology. And so we've been talking ever since. And Open Online Theatre, takes dance and integrates and merges it with emerging technologies. And although dance is not my medium I like the immersive, the deep meta immersion of dance and... dance doesn't have to have a narrative it can have an emotion it can be a narrative of emotion. It can be a narrative of a story. And the story doesn't have to be beginning middle and end. Its a bit like classical music that I can enjoy it but I don't really understand it. And I think sometimes art is like that and it's fine.
So, I attended last week so we are currently in the last week of November, if you're listening to this in the future, and there were lunchtime discussion panels, and they were four one was about NF T's and the nature of art and whether it has a place. It was really interesting conversation. I'll try and see if I can find the show links to these. If they're on demand. I think they are though five pound each really worth the value. If they were still there. I would definitely recommend picking one or two of them or hopefully there'll be on demand. So there's an NF T there was technology in theatre, there was digital safety for artists that was really interesting. And then there was performance and how you can use technologies in performance and examples of that. And one of those examples was Brendan Bradley, who has created a virtual reality musical called non playing character NPC. And I have to say I'm a little bit sceptical about VR performances. And it's really tough because when you don't have a lot of funds, you have to be very, very selective about what you see. And you need to have some reassurance that what you're going to see is not only going to be worth watching, but you're actually going to be able to get into it as in literally enter the space and I find that that is very poorly executed. For some shows. It might be poorly executed because there is no entry journey. But because there isn't one there like if you go to a physical venue you have an address and you can put the postcode in and you can see where it is, and you can see whether it's going to be best to drive and park or go on public transport and walk. And that's actually you know, that's quite simple. And then it's just a matter of finding the front door. If you've got your tickets, finding the box office, and then when you're in the building, it's finding your seat and that tends to be people around to to help you once you are in the building. But I don't quite understand yet that ritual of virtual theatre.
So, this piece NPC non playing character, the musical was a physical performance with a live musician who played keyboard saxophone and electric guitar. And then there were four player tickets where people from the physical space had headsets and they stood in coloured pools of light on the stage.
Now if they had never been in VR before, I don't know what the onboarding process is. But to be in VR for an hour, standing on your feet... good on those four. I don't know. But I think one of them had to bail. But that was what we saw. And I was watching digitally. So I was watching through a live stream. It was excellent audio. You know, high quality cinema. HD wouldn't surprise me if it was 4k, but I don't have a 4k machine. So I don't know. But it was really, really good Live stream. And I was watching that. So physical audience. virtual audience actually in the experience and actually participating as characters. And me watching digitally I don't know how many people watching digitally there wasn't a little counter to say how many of us there were so it was kind of an isolated experience, but it was fine. I got a little bit of vibe from the venue so it kind of felt I was in a, you know, sort of removed opera box kind of environment. And the musical was superb. I was really impressed with the the hybrid passing between him engaging in world and the characters. And then actually lifting the veil lifting the headset and addressing the physical audience. Now the physical audience did have the opportunity to scan a QR code at the beginning. And I think it gave them like a widgets board that allowed them to... there was a point at which they needed some rocks and they could push the rock button and send rocks and I think I could probably have done that as well. But I wasn't quite prepared for it and I wanted to capture a few bits of video so that I could show some friends and potentially blog but the whole point of doing this audio blog is the fact that I find it very, very hard to do long form physical, textual blogs. So non playing character. If you get a chance to see it, I'm gonna put the links in I really recommend you seeing it, but what it what it did for me this this journey into excitement and horror is I need to do my show and that is a big undertaking. I have my investment pack prepared. I know that it's a piece that is going to take about 200,000 to capitalise. I'm happy talking about that figure right now. Yeah, that's how much a a tech show to do. A small scale tour is really going to cost me and that's putting all the actors on union contracts. And I've still got a lot of exploration to do so that horror and that excitement is because I'm now in the position of taking the concept into Completion. And that concept means going to tech companies and getting quotes for the virtual production equipment that I am going to need to hire and see what it costs and see how it breaks down on the tech spec. So I can see how those big screens that you have a virtual production, deconstruct, and once I know the components, I've then got to work out how many of those components I need for stage set, but then I also need to work out how large the venues are that I kind of want to go to to get an optimal for that. Ideally what I would like is to have a minimal set and a maximum set so that I can take have a range of venues to be able to grow and shrink the virtual production screens a little bit and I think I might be able to do that. The other thing I need to know is how big is the truck going to be that I need? Because a lot of small scale touring you've got the restriction of getting into carpark so the actual van that you tore, is going to be quite key. And then how many people need to come with this tour and how much that's going to cost. So I've gone a bit into all of that. So that's where my horror and excitement goes. And I'm also in the stage where I'm needing to take these figures that I have and take them to people who might either be interested in investing or know people who might invest in this sort of thing, and I'm only looking for the components in this are 1000 5010 1000 and I've been looking at the recoupment of this show in terms of 35 to 55% box office so I'm not even looking at figures that at their healthiest might be 70% box office. I'm really trying to keep my expectations down in terms of how I can make the money to break even to be able to pay back the investors. Some of that investment is going to come from people. Some of that funding is going to come from Grants support that we'll be investing in the audience the capacity, the story because on its own, it would be too big for the audience to be able to pay for it. And that's the difference really between independent an Arts Council and commercial, so subsidised with Arts Council, the chances of you making anything or even breaking even without some support of finance, something to companies do fund through local sponsorship and through ticket and I think if you've got local venue, find out how they finance how they capitalise their performances, how they recoup investment. These are terms and phrases that I really needed to learn when I started my dy CP and I started my creative producing diploma because it was this vocabulary that I knew that I did not have until I had this vocabulary which I couldn't learn because it didn't know what it was. I couldn't I couldn't progress. So this horror and this excitement is also coming because I couldn't have been at this point before. Now this is the only point this is the only time that I could be here. So I want to be in this moment. I want to look forward to my horizons. I want to know what's in my horizons. But it can sometimes feel a little bit scary because I see people making work all around me and it kind of feels that I'm 18 months maybe two years off my big curtain up. However, there are things in between that as a producer now I would really like to do and one of those is to bring exciting work, bring exciting work to places that wouldn't ordinarily get extremes of theatre, I guess not live theatre I always think extraordinary work that people wouldn't ordinarily say I suppose and who knows. I would really be interested to see if non playing character musical is going to be coming back to the UK. And whether it is trips to that show that I can facilitate or whether there is a digital audience hosting capacity that I can provide or more exciting still I would really love to programme a tour on the 100 mile radius concept to bring non playing character to the UK. I imagine it's already in the works, but I am going to talk to them. And if you get a chance, do check out all of the open online theatre stuff. I'm going to put links in I'm definitely going to put links to non playing character and the video that I do have will not be shared. I am going to tell Brandon that I have it and maybe I'll be able to share a few clips with you. But thank you so much for staying for this entirety. I have no idea how long this is. It's episode 21. I'm Karen Karen Lyon. I'm at PCM creative on Twitter. I am an independent creative producer finding my way in this exciting world of immersive and its landscape. So thank you for joining me and that that's it
