Creation Theatre has taken online live performance to a whole new level with its latest family show Alice.

Leda Douglas in Creation Theatre's Alice

Described as a virtual theme park, this is part interactive theatre, part style your own adventure, part video game and it is enjoyed from the comfort of your own living room.

Based on Lewis Carroll's famous stories of Alice in Wonderland and adapted by Zoe Seaton and Charlotte Keatley this has all the well-known characters and familiar scenes of the books.

It is imaginatively brought to life in the style of an old fashioned fairground with a combination of high tech wizardry including AI and good old fashioned theatre craft and entertainment.

Choose your story

We join Alice (Leda Douglas) via a Zoom call to be transported into her fantasy world. Fairground music sets the scene for the roller-coaster adventure to come and for the first part of the show you get to choose where you want go and explore.

A click on an icon takes you off to meet characters including the Mad Hatter, twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Mad March Hare in their Zoom rooms with their own stories and entertainment.

Don't dither in your choices though as you may miss bits.

I've been waiting for Cultural Capital to publish her thoughts about how the National Theatre saved lockdown and what it means for future audience relations.

We've discussed it a couple of times in recent weeks, having both noticed a change in the relationship between theatres and their audiences.

Photo by Brandan Keller on Unsplash

Without a communal space to congregate in, theatres have had to reach out like never before to find an audience - and without live performance, they've had to be inventive in their offer.

As the piece says, the National Theatre's NT Live has been a boon but even more so has been the 'behind the scenes' Zoom chats with the cast and creatives. You'll have to read the piece to get Cultural Capital's full thoughts about how this might fuel changes.

We have also discussed how theatres have been far more responsive on social media, again reaching out to engage with their audience noticeably more than has been done in the past.

Have theatres realised that they need to build a relationship with their audiences in a far more engaged and meaningful way than they have in the past?

I never got to see Lungs when it was on stage and I nearly didn't get to see this live online version because of the Old Vic's odd approach to ticketing - charging normal theatre prices for people to sit in their own homes to watch.

But putting that to one side (I wrote about it here), on the final release of tickets, without expecting to find anything affordable, I managed to snag a £20 ticket.

The Old Vic has tried to inject as much of the live theatre atmosphere into the online experience as possible.

In the run-up to the live performance by Claire Foy and Matt Smith, you hear the hubbub of an audience and the bell that warns people the start is imminent and to take their seats.

It was a nice touch.

The performance itself looks like it's filmed on two cameras so you have the two actors appearing side by side on screen but in different shots.

You only get a sense that they are on the same stage in the occasional wide shot and when one of them walks across the other's shot to take up a new position.

There is a lot that is fabulous about Somebody Jones' verbatim play Black Women Dating White Men, one of which is that it works so well on Zoom.

Black Women Dating White Men by Somebody Jones

Five black women, sometimes with a glass a wine in hand or in a dressing gown, come together lockdown-style for regular chats via Zoom during which they discuss and share their experiences of being in an interracial relationship.

The nature of Zoom means the characters are at home, while you are watching at home which makes for an intimate experience, it feels like you are part of the chat.

They talk about how their friends and family reacted when they first met their white boyfriends, how they are treated when out and the ups and downs of their relationship.

It's a candid discussion, relaxed and matter of fact, sometimes humourous but no less powerful in what it exposes.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, hate crime targeted at East and South-East Asians has tripled and We R Not Virus is a series of monologues, films and poetry responding to that.

Kirsty Rider in We R Not Virus

Over the course of an hour, you see a selection of the 10 specially commissioned pieces by East and South-East Asian artists exploring racism and prejudice within Western cultures and outside it.

The complexity and rootedness of racism are evident, often spurred by a heavy dose of ignorance and cultural stereotypes.

One piece explores the double threat facing the Chinese community in the UK: the virus, coupled with the increasing risk of being the target of verbal abuse and violence purely because of ethnicity or looks.  

Head of theatre and artist development at Brixton House (formally Ovalhouse*) Owen Calvert-Lyons talks about life during the lockdown, the post-Covid future for fringe theatre and exciting streaming plans.

Owen Calvert-Lyons Head of Theatre and Artist Development at Ovalhouse/Brixton House. Photo: Ludovic Des Cognets.

How are you doing during lockdown?

Lockdown has been a very strange experience so far. Of course, it has lots of negatives, but I’ve been surprised by the number of positives too.

Working in theatre can be all-consuming and this has given me an opportunity to redress the work/life balance and spend more time doing things I love other than theatre.

What does the future look like for fringe theatres post-lockdown?

While things look pretty bleak right now, I think it’s important to remain positive. Theatre is not just about entertainment, it plays a really vital role in many people’s lives, so it will certainly survive this crisis.

I think the most important thing is not to feel that we have to return to the status quo.

There are many things which need to change about our industry and this hiatus should give us an opportunity to imagine what theatre could look like in the future.

One of the most pressing needs is to solve the inequalities in arts funding which leave so many freelance artists struggling to earn a living.

If we can use this moment to fix that, then theatre post-lockdown could be better than ever before.

Following on from two fun-filled, family-focused, live-streamed shows, Big Telly Theatre, in collaboration with Riverside Theatre, has chosen a seemingly prescient EM Forster story for its latest piece.

The story, The Machine Stops, was written in 1909 and sees people living underground in individual cells, communicating via telephone.

An early speech - the cast all perform via Zoom from home - beautifully sums up our current predicament, how being connected via phone and video doesn't quite satisfy in making you feel connected in the same way as being with each other.

Life underground is governed by rules set out by the machine. You have to get permission to go to the apparently uninhabitable surface and reproduction is carefully managed.

The latter point is particularly pertinent to our situation given UK Government recent guidance and rules on social distancing.

If you've seen any of Big Telly's previous shows the format will be familiar, green screens enable the actors to be transported to different locations using projections and props, costumes and makeup are all what the actors have to hand or have made themselves.

Given the theme of the piece the interactive elements, getting the audience involved in the story doesn't feel necessary or as relevant as it did for the more family-focused pieces. 

The dialogue - influenced by EM Forster's text - is weighty and sometimes the lighter more humorous moments serve to detract from the themes of the piece rather than add to it.

As a result, I'd have perhaps preferred more time given to exploring the experience of living isolated from others and the break down of blind obedience - this is where the play worked best for me. The parallels between what EM Forster wrote and expressed through his characters and our own experiences in lockdown are spookily similar. 

The Machine Stops is a different beast to the previous shows and shows Big Telly going in a slightly different direction and just about getting away with it.

It is 60 minutes long and there are two more shows today (7 June) at 3 pm and 7.30 pm - visit Big Telly's website for more details.

You might also like to read:

Matt Smith and Claire Foy to perform a socially-distanced version of Lungs and 5 other plays that could have the same treatment.

My 11 favourite actresses.

From the archive: Review of the first James Graham play I saw and still a favourite - The Man, Finborough Theatre.

A short story written by E. M. Forster in 1909 about people living in isolation will get the Big Telly Theatre live performance in lockdown treatment next month.

Eerily pertinent to now, the story is about people living underground on their own in cells and illustrates the Victorian era's culture, thinking and fears just as the western world was beginning its accelerated journey into modernity.

Big Telly describes the piece as an escapist adventure into a steampunk world of curious Victoriana - flowers with secret messages, dining in the dark, tea-duelling, crystal gazing, parlour games and more and that audiences should expect to be surprised, charmed and possibly slightly unnerved.

“A story written over 100 years ago about lockdown about the impact of isolation, what we stand to gain from technology and what we stand to lose from the absence of human contact.

The Old Vic has announced that Matt Smith and Claire Foy will be doing a socially distanced version of the play Lungs which will be filmed at the theatre and live-streamed.

Photo: Rev Stan

It will be ticketed and numbers limited to 1,000 per performance so there is an element of exclusivity to it.

Dates have yet to be announced but check out the Old Vic website for more details and how to sign up for email updates. I missed it the first time around so I'll certainly be trying to grab a ticket.  

Lungs will kick off what the Old Vic is calling In Camera, a series of rehearsed readings shot at the theatre against the empty auditorium and streamed online.

It is a fantastic way of bringing live performance to theatre lovers but also raising much-needed funds.

And while streaming archive productions has been brilliant - and will continue to be so, I'm sure this will just be the start of similar innovations to keep theatres going with fresh performances.

Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, reports of anti-Asian hate crime have tripled, in response, a collective of UK creatives of East and South East Asian heritage have put together an online event We R Not Virus.

Live-streamed on two days - 13 & 14 June - via Zoom the free event will feature 10 newly commissioned monologues delivered using a variety of art forms including film, poetry, dance and song.

The themes explore race, identity, representation, perspective and economics through the lens of East and South East Asian artists and their communities.

Directed by award-winning Young Vic New Genesis fellow and associate director Jennifer Tang (Young Vic, RSC, The Royal Exchange, Hampstead Theatre) and Anthony Lau (National Theatre, Royal Court, Nuffield Southampton, Ink - West End, Almeida), each day will conclude with a panel discussion.

The line-up of writers includes award-winning writer, actor and film-maker Daniel York Loh (The Good Immigrant, Royal Court, National Theatre, RSC), poet Will Harris (ES magazine’s 'new guard’ of London poets, poetry fellowship - Arts Foundation 2019) and Amber Hsu currently working with the RSC (BBC, Royal Court, Orange Tree, National Theatre Studio).

We R Not Virus is on 13 June at 7pm and 14 June at 3pm and the running time is 65 minutes (5 monologues each day) plus the panel discussion.

For more details and to book a place head to: www.omnibus-clapham.org

If you are looking for more theatre and performance to watch during lockdown check out my list of what is on.