Creating Intrigue in Remote Play Performances

A couple of weeks ago I published a blog post with ten tips for doing remote theatre . Technical points like these are really important of course, especially if you’re new to this art form and want to participate in this year’s International Remote Theatre Competition

But they only tell half the story of what makes a Remote performance engaging to watch.

Creating Intrigue

When people watch a Remote Play they want it to be food for thought, to be moved by it, to be so struck by some of the images it creates that they take those images away with them when the play is over.

One way to achieve this is to provide a kind of challenge for the audience. Watch the beginning of the original version of “I can smell her’ below to see what I mean. Note how we’re thrown into the action from the outset; we’re not entirely sure what’s going on, who the main character is, or why she’s saying these things. We’re immediately having to ‘play catch up’, to interpret and re-interpret what we see, to try to make sense of it all. Note too that for most people, this is a very stimulating and engaging process.

It needs to be balanced of course. If we don’t have enough intrigue, the audience may feel patronised and we’ll quickly lose them. Too much and they’ll begin to feel frustrated.

Similarly with ‘I Can’ (below) intrigue is created by us as the audience not knowing who is ‘them’ and why the main character is so pleased that he can see them. I don’t know about you but for me the fact that lots of different ideas went through my head made this play vey powerful for me the first time I saw it.

For more advice like this don’t forget to buy our new digital version of Doing Remote Theatre for just £9.95