Company Theatre mini-docs new approach to online audience engagement
The Company Theatre, last year’s Indie Dora Winner for Outstanding Production is back with a new show The Test and a new social media strategy to promote it.
As the production rehearses, The Company is releasing short documentary films by Michael Schultz about the creative process behind putting the show together. You can view Part 1 of 4 above and click here to view Part 2. The first mini-doc already has over 1000 views, it will be interesting to see if this translates in to actual in-person views.
What do you think? Is this an effective audience engagement strategy? Does getting a an insider’s peek at putting the show together make it more likely you will see it? For theatre creators – would having a camera in the room impact your creative process? Would you like to see more or less of this?
I think this is a pretty interesting strategy. Normally I am against ‘social media as window into process’ stuff. Too often creative process doesn’t translate and it ends up self-centred, and interesting only to those involved with the show.
These movies seem to buck the trend because of their high quality, the addition of a narrative, and the fact that I already know some of the ‘characters’ from television. Goes to show there are no hard and fast rules about this sort of thing.
I wonder what the addition of a camera into the rehearsal hall does to the rehearsal process? When I was running the Africa Trilogy Blog, people were pretty down with it as long as I didn’t take pictures or video during rehearsal. I assume this was to encourage actors to take risks and be vulnerable and not worry that the messyness of their process would be all over the internet…