Live Streaming of Cinderella to hospices and your living room: Director's Blog 33

Morning All.

Today I want to feature the live web streaming of Cinderella, specifically to two Hospices in Hackney and Newham on December 13th. Also excitingly anyone can log on to the Broadway TV room and watch a performance on Dec 13th, 24th and January 2nd. Have a look at the details below.

I had a good meeting yesterday with Chris Mellor, the Interim Creative Producer at the Broadway Theatre. For some months we have been talking about the potential for streaming the Panto this Christmas. Chris is a passionate advocate of this technology as a means of reaching a much wider audience, both in the comfort of their own homes, but equally as powerfully in hospitals and hospices across the UK. 

Its a bold and innovative initiative, and of course the National Theatre has led the way in  this area for theatre specifically through its National Theatre Live Broadcasts http://microsites.nationaltheatre.org.uk  This sees the best of British Theatre broadcast live to venues across the world! How totally amazing is this!  The idea that people can gather in cinemas,leisure centres and school halls around the world and share in an experience of British Theatre blows my mind away.

And now we are doing the same with Cinderella at the Broadway Barking! In fact one of our shows has already been streamed and the next is due for December 13th when people can tune in from the comfort of their own living rooms and watch our pantomime! And Chris has just had it confirmed this week that we will go out live to two of London's best known hospices St Joseph's Hospice http://www.stjh.org.uk/ and Richard House Hospice http://richardhouse.org.uk/. 

They are getting the word out to the national network of hospices and hospice patient families via the umbrella organisations Together for Short Lives and the UK-wide charity, Help the Hospices. We will be giving them all free access and so Cinderella at the Broadway will be a national event!

Way back in August Chris and I talked about how we could possibly be the first Panto to be streamed in the UK and possibly the world. Indeed in developing this plan, Chris has brought in the technology to make it work and has tested it out on the whole season so far.

To be honest as yet the tuning in has not been as great as we know it will be. But like anything new it takes a while for people to catch on. The NT have been live streaming since 2009 and it took a while for people around the world to get the hang of it and to develop an appetite for it.  

 Chris has organised a number of live web chats over the past few months, which has been a general and very useful exchange of information and ideas between artists, organisers and audiences. I took part in one of those early ones through the Guardian. Its a big learning curve for us all, but it promises to be a step change in the way we access audiences. 

Holding the live theatre experience is really important, and understanding that others do to, it takes a leap in faith to see that the Streamed Performance is in no way a challenge to the live experience. At the Broadway we can only seat 341 people at a show, and probably only those who have to travel less than 20 miles for the experience. 

So just imagine this, if our panto is streamed to homes and venues around the world what an enormously big and global audience we can reach. Wow - that's a bit of a paradigm shift isn't it. 

There are always no-sayers and skeptics when it comes to change, and that's really important because it makes space to criticise our own work and ideas before they go out in the world. I can't pretend not to have had a certain doubt myself whether the genre of pantomime could reach out globally. It is such a British institution, but of course, precisely because of this I suspect it makes it even more interesting. But that's just my opinion and at the moment we have yet to see whether we are going in the right direction. My hunch, and Chris's grasping of this particular nettle bodes well I think.

Our fellow panto streamers are Qdos Entertainment and they are streaming to Great Ormond Street Hospital on December 13th  - the same as one of ours! I am not sure if you can sign up to pay to view it, but I will check it out with Chris. 

Of course you have to be really confident that the quality of what you are broadcasting is good, or otherwise the whole thing could back fire. But our Cinderella is proud enough to take her place in the forefront of streamed pantomimes for 2012. Bring it on girl!  

At the moment it looks like its just us and Qdos - so that feels good. Not least because Qdos is a huge panto machine, delivering shows to theatres across the UK, and we are - well we are a community focused local theatre in East London. 

I hope that the fact that Arc and the Broadway are firmly embedded in such a community will allow for a distinctiveness that may not be afforded by streaming of a generic panto.  Consciously or unconsciously our Cinderella with speak with the voice of our people and our place! 

I plan to catch one of the streamed performances of Cinderella on my laptop, albeit from the comfort of a sofa in the foyer as it is going on in the auditorium! There are still 3 live streamed performances of Cinderella to come each at just £2.99,  and tickets are now available on the Broadway Barking website. Have a look at the Broadway TV room and sign up now to see one of these broadcast shows!  Olly's aunt in Australia and my cousin in Upstate New York all plan to tune it. That's so exciting.

http://www.thebroadwaybarking.com/tv

The next performances of Cinderella to be streamed are: 

13/12/12	10.30am	Cinderella	Panto
24/12/12	4pm	Cinderella	Panto
02/01/12	6pm	Cinderella	Panto

Do have a watch and come back to us with your feedback!