I sat down with playwright Mike Czuba for the first time in 2019 and our creative connectivity was immediately apparent. He was the first person I’d spoken to up to that point that shared my want to make filmed theatre something actually watchable. Pre-pandemic, the process of “filming” theatre usually consisted of a crew member setting up a tripod at the back of the house or in the tech booth to record the show for archival purposes. While valuable documents of record, and often critical in grant applications, the perspective could often be likened to security footage — entirely unwatchable as a performance.
Zoomed out, already
Fast forward to 2020 and everyone is sitting at home, actors and theatre-makers included, and a wave of Zoom-meeting performances started to arrive. This was clearly the natural progression for a community that, at times, is heavily reliant on the technology and access that its members are already in possession of… Everyone who was still working was already on video call meetings, so why couldn’t it work for performance? The truth is, it actually kind of does. Did. For a short while… it’s just not the ‘connected’ experience that theatre is supposed to offer. The actors face forward delivering lines to one another in hopes that no one has a slow connection, while also reliant on the fact that the audience members understand how to view all the calls in grid mode rather than full screen… so many variables at play that a performances success hinged on. Massive admiration for the artists that moved into Zoom performing, but I have really struggled to find the engagement.
Similarly, a filmed, edited, and broadcast version of theatrical work isn’t quite theatre at its heart either. Its a huge undertaking and a beautiful presentation, but lacks the live part of live theatre. I needed the live element to return in order to execute my vision. I needed to find a way to produce a play that existed in real space, adhered to physical distancing requirements and was also interesting to watch.
FROM DOCUMENTING TO PRESENTING
“I’ve got this play, its a three-hander, its age and gender neutral, and they each stay inside of a tape square on the floor.” That was the gist of Mike’s pitch for Like Tom Cruise Loves Running. Suddenly I’m staring at a text that was not only already existent, but had a director attached whom had already identified an online programming grant available from The Rosza Foundation, and was ready to run head first toward it.
Our production trio of Czuba, myself, and technical director slash digital guru Wil Knoll suddenly found ourselves in possession of grant money and a blessing to find something new with it. And thats exactly what we fn did.
Working on the CAMERA WORK
The shift from stills to video was, as one should expect, more difficult than I had expected. Once we were cast and in studio, the first major adjustment that was needed was for me to calm the highly active energy that I had behind the camera. I’m used to never sitting still, to running around in the wings, to zooming as fast and shakily as I please!… And so the first several passes at improvised filming were almost completely unwatchable. I was trying to find the image on the fly rather than to craft it.
So let’s try stationary… but distanced. Standing in the centre of our 3 appropriately-spaced actors, I tried swinging the camera 360 degrees around and around to catch the shifting dialogue around me. Think That 70s Show, but without the convenience of each actor speaking in turn. So many whip-pans that you couldn’t really tell what was going on, and if I missed the dialogue while moving, once settled again, the frame was just another face that was waiting to react or speak their lines - also not super interesting…
I dialled my whole approach back as hard as I could and found a far calmer ‘floating camera’ aesthetic using a handheld gimbal that worked very well. I walked ever-so-slow pans from behind one character straight forward toward another as their monologue began. A stretched a single 360-degree pass around the ‘stage’ into a 4-minute choreographed movement that matched with dialogue and intensity changes seamlessly. We added mirrors behind each actor to create depth and I found new compositions that weren’t solely-reliant on my position relative to their assigned areas.
In the end, we ended up creating a 33-minute one-shot theatre film that was performed live and in-person by our cohort of 6 for four straight nights. It’s easily one of my proudest achievements in theatre.
So please take a minute to enjoy the full show in its very-watchable, archival glory here :)