Digital Theatre Venues—Because Yes, They Are Venues and Are Not One Size Fits All

2020 Digital Theatre was dead on arrival. At least creatively. Here I mean the cheap Zoom facsimile of real theatre that high-end producers would have you believe was the best they could do. Notice how now into 2021 with the vaccine rolling out, there are fewer large players announcing digital theatre activations? It was all empty stalling, never an attempt to learn, adapt, or engage.

I argue Zoom readings, or better yet nothing at all, is the best they know how to do, still after a year, because gatekeeping theatrical entertainment as only “true” (read: “valuable”) if in-person ensures that American Broadway producers don’t have to educate themselves and learn the rules and playing field of 2021 society. Like, the one real people who aren’t 50+ with disposable income live in.

The truth is it’s been over a year of “Only Intermission,” and the average Joe glassy-eyed nods his head at your union, financier, or woe-is-the-pandemic excuses, sneaking glances over your shoulder to chuckle as the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards slime Robert Downey, Jr. (which will probably happen seven more times before Aaron Tveit even gets to wake up on a Tony Award Day at this rate). Other industries are still entertaining, not going radio silent.

“But Natalie, the financial model of Broadway makes it impossible to—” To what? Entertain people outside a $200 ticket in a live venue? Broadway shows hilariously think they are not entertainment properties, capable of being stretched across licensing deals and revenue streams. Nope, only one-trick ponies allowed here, only illusional legitness. And if you’re a show based on existing IP, God-forbid a (whispers) movie property? Cue Nickelodeon slime, you’re shameful, how dare you.

I found this dual-edged discombobulation sputtering beneath the breadth of social media discourse around the Ratatouille and Bridgerton “TikTok musicals,” both based on existing IP and on an app very few mainstream media took seriously. Broadway industry journalism covered both as cut from the same cloth by virtue of being from the same fresh platform; they’re either starry-eyed viral miracles or insipid IP-stealing one-offs. But this dichotomy is flawed just as the industry’s larger coverage of Digital Theatre and IP expansion is. The existence of art on the internet does not demand legitimization (Read more in Part One here), and the creation of communal musicals online is a completely different genre of work than in-person shows.

To cover (and create) Digital Theatre, Broadway producers, marketers, and journalists must first realize it’s a lot more complicated than movie vs. theatre, Netflix vs. LORT, Zoom vs. TikTok. Each platform holds artistic potential manifested in differing user behavior patterns and user experience, and this is exactly why none of them will ever go away (well…except Broadway during a pandemic I guess).

Websites as Venues

Producers, in their scramble to stay relevant, have had a year trying to equate apples to oranges. Because these high-end industry players never got in the sandbox before the pandemic, it was a simple mistake to begin their practice by thinking Digital Theatre means theatre on film. Like sure okay, welcome to 2008 Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway DVDs.

Sure the battle for ancillary rights is a worthy cause. And figuring out how to make Zoom interesting is probably still feasible. But let’s talk about the million other platforms available and already thriving in theatricality, that have been here for us while the Boomers cry (but their mic is off so it’s okay).

I really like the idea of websites as stages. I think it’s a mindset more need to adapt. According to my elementary school vitally teaching how to handwrite MLA bibliographies, websites are something like a book or a piece of content that can be consumed. But also websites are a changeable, interactive space and place in the same way you’d type in “coffee shop” in Google Maps and then walk into one. You type in dearevanhansen.com and you go there and you’re at the internet’s version of DEH, listing the physical locations in New York, US Tour, and London. It gets complicated because third-party apps are the way of the world now (with 90% of Americans’ mobile time spent in apps, and only 10% browsing the rest of the internet), and apps have harder metaphors to pin down.

So when you’re on an app, whether Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, you’re engaging with the narrative that’s already there—the cultural narrative that’s latent in all these places—and building on them to tell a data story through your likes, comments, posts, views, and algorithm. You search “Dear Evan Hansen” or find fans in the same interest as you and engage with the content that’s there (official or fan-made). DEH is probably something different to everyone, but a lot of people know what DEH is, they recognize the branding, maybe they’ve seen it or listened to it and have some association with it. So then you, as the user, are using the DEH conceptual palette to compose your contribution, whatever that is, all within the context of this online branded experience. This interactive side of the web does infinitely more spreading and selling of the show than the actual informational website.

Users build their personal narrative on top of the existing narrative in digital spaces because websites and apps are more like physical places, or places that have a shared cultural consciousness you can pinpoint. When we see Dear Evan Hansen across websites and apps, we see what’s there, but we also have this knowledge of our views from outside, how it exists in the real world in its physical venue. And vice versa DEH in person is also colored by my experience of its distinct online communities and vibes.

The absence of the physical venue as a possibility during the pandemic has left these digital spaces as vital to understanding how fans and shows interact to sustain a conscious identity.

Digital Behavior Patterns Vary Across Platforms!

What’s most concerning to me (okay at least in this moment, ask me again in two minutes) is Broadway’s lag in catching up to modern-day marketing understanding. Most shows now understand, at minimum, the value of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts that act as informational resources for fans. Interactive deviations like the responsive Spongebob musical accounts, or the ahead-of-its-time 2009 Next to Normal abridged script tweet show, are the exceptions. But these platforms are from 10-15 years ago, and I am seeing them written about in the same pen stroke as TikTok musicals from 2021! Someone get my slime.

Posts on the Big Three have a goal of informing, often now why they are being berated and abandoned for inauthenticity and over-commercialization. Newer apps from the last five years have a user experience goal of contributing to some greater effort or interests—and only rarely care if that interaction is with people known in real life.

At the risk of sounding the petulant teen huffy at well-intentioned parents, maybe we’ve been misunderstanding each other. The behavior patterns on social media are changing as we progress deeper down digital-native generations. Whereas mainstream social platforms of the last fifteen years have relied on “likes” and viewing others’ content “on the outside always looking in” (if I may), emergent platforms are now more reliant on users snowballing and interacting within specific communities in order to express, influence, or contribute to the existing narrative mentioned earlier. It’s not a passive Four Square check-in to a Broadway theater, it’s an active Roblox exploration of a recreated Hamilton theater.

It’s okay, click on the link, this is a safe space, I know you don’t know what Roblox is.

You can cling to your soggy Facebook feed (which is a mindless mirror of cross-pollinated Twitter and Instagram posts), but participatory fan culture has been entwined in the Internet almost since day one, and Broadway desperately needs a catch-up as newer platforms ditch passivity for interactivity.

Media scholar Henry Jenkins contrasts participatory culture with consumer culture, suggesting that fans “poach” from popular media, appropriating ideas from the text and rereading them in creative ways for their own uses. I was on Broadway FanFiction and Tumblr fan edits long before I could afford a trip to NYC to consume a real show.

Digital behavior patterns, aka the shift from informative to interactive online experiences, matter as we engage with art being created in digital spaces that will only continue to evolve themselves.

Conclusion

What this means as we continue to see digital theatre evolve is that while you may see TikTok or other variously-created online musicals plucked, debated, and “staged,” it will always be like trying to stuff your trash bag in an already full dumpster outside your apartment; it won’t fit, you try and push it down a few times, and then you say “eh, good enough” and shuffle away hoping no one saw you because it’s embarrassing for some reason.

Communal platforms like Tumblr, TikTok, Roblox, Twitch, Discord, Clubhouse, even Animal Crossing, and Sims, will inherently play host to types of theatre over the next few years that shouldn’t be removed from their communal contexts or risk losing fractions of their true identity that informed their narrative choices in the first place.

This may be controversial to say, but the TodayTix Ratatouille musical staging was a filmed adaptation of a TikTok musical. It itself WAS NOT the musical, the communal snowball on the app was.

Taking Ratatouille or other communal endeavors of the digital age and “staging” them aligns with the passive admiration of Olden Apps; I can like and comment how much I enjoy what I am watching because you are translating it to a film experience (like all your Zoom readings, are you catching the problem here?). But then you are missing the requisite contributive element of 2021 digital engagement that will take digital theatre experiences farther than any paid media spend alone could. There is nothing wrong inherently with this, but just as we recognize film or stage or book adaptations, we must begin recognizing digital venues as diverse and equally worthy of inquisitive and knowledgeable consideration and coverage.

The web is this really messy, chaotic place full of entertainment properties, fans, marketers, journalists, (okay maybe some bots too), all coexisting together. And just like any real place, it’s full of tension, joy, and all the other stuff that makes for interesting stories—which is why it’s a great place to make theatre in new ways.