Hybrid Improvisational Theatre: A Thematic Review of the Production Processes

Abstract: Hybrid events, offering both in-person and online access, have become increasingly common, since the COVID-19 pandemic, as a way to make work and entertainment more accessible. Furthermore, growing uptake of modern consumer XR products has led to the development of a number of successful hybrid theatre productions. Such productions generally aim to offer an equally entertaining experience for both the in-person viewers and virtual, globe-spanning, audiences that attend performances online, through a range of different methods. However, while such theatre productions are being produced there has been limited academic work investigating its impact on the development of theatre production from the practitioner's perspective. This paper aims to rectify this by developing an in-depth understanding of the creative and technical challenges posed by hybrid theatre by examining the creation of one such production through interviews with the practitioners and audiences. For this purpose, researchers from the University of York collaborated with the theatre company FANDCO to develop a hybrid improvisational theatre production. To achieve this Unreal Engine, Motion Capture and projector screens were utilized to enable the actors to have a simultaneous in-person and virtual presence. The audience were similarly split, with the flexibility to view the performance either in-person at the theatre or online via a live video stream and a moderated interactive chat. After each showing the practitioners and in-person audience were invited to be interviewed and complete a questionnaire asking them to critically evaluate the overall experience. The online audience were sent a link to the questionnaire and provided the opportunity to be interviewed at a later date. To analyse the data a thematic analysis approach was adopted. The results in this paper highlight a clear understanding between the audience and the practitioners on how the process could be built upon to create captivating hybrid experiences. However, there is an interesting disparity between the two viewpoints on the difficulty of implementing change, setting an elevated expectation on what is viewed as possible compared to what can be achieved with the constraints of budget, time and resources. Overall it is clear that the process of creating hybrid performances could be improved to benefit both the audience and the practitioners but adopting such changes is limited by the resources available to the production team. We conclude that the use of hybrid technology positively affects the theatre space and provides opportunities for novel, exciting avenues for immersive and interactive productions. Furthermore, a rich understanding of the needs of practitioners and audiences can positively affect the theatrical production development process. The findings in this paper provide key insights into the challenges for creators and audience in the development of improvisational hybrid theatre productions and XR-based theatre more generally.

Keywords: Hybrid, Improvisational Theatre, Thematic Analysis, Production Development, Virtual Audiences, Digital Twin, Multi-location interactions, Interactive

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005494

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