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Darwin told us that danger hastens change gazelles get faster because the lion gets faster first.
The gazelle of remote performance just took a little leap.
It was also a shocking success: 5,557 people bought tickets.Howd they do it?
Heres a practical ten-step guide, complete with budgeting and blueprints.
Foley and Breslin started developingCircle Jerkin May 2019 through the OffOff Broadway theater Ars Novas Makers Lab.
Contracts for their July 2020 run arrived in March … two days before the shutdown.
STEP TWO: Get a deadline.For a while, they just absorbed the shock.
We didnt talk aboutCircle Jerkfor a while because none of us knew what to do.
In June, they restarted the cold engine.
STEP THREE: Nail down your inspirations.Michael Uries early in shutdown apartment revival ofBuyer & Cellargalvanized the group.
That discovery opened up the vocabulary of what the first two acts would be, says Breslin.
We got to the three-camera, sitcom-y kind of thing.
When it came to creating the aura of the Always Online, they looked to YouTube for models.
The big one, says Breslin, isContraPoints, the YouTuber.
She does these huge, queer, baroque long-form videos.
We can look to people women!
who have done it before.
This was not DIY they hired two video engineers.
It does take some sweet time and people who actually know how to do it, says Breslin.
They didnt, though, recoup their costs.
STEP SIX: Select a theater.The team went to Theater MitusMITU580space in Gowanus.
And Oh, yeah.
My husband runs that theater, says Gart.
(Hes the co-artistic director of Theater Mitu and the spaces manager.)
STEP SEVEN: Find your online venue.The platform is important.
The team toyed with using the gaming site Twitch, but they felt its ambience wasnt right.
They chose Vimeo, hosted on a Squarespace web page, for its high video quality and its embeddability.
Theaters and producers take note: Embedding video on your own website smooths and unifies the audience experience.
(Like a Suzuki class!
Standing in for the zing of improvisation, therefore, was precise pacing and panic.
There wereso manymarks to hit, and if you were one inch off, you were out of frame.
The one-and-done approach was 100 percent a dramaturgical value of ours, says Breslin.
If it gets screwed up, thats part of the energy.
Rememberthe lovable and janky roll call of the states?
Each night of the run, Gart and Sibert were hand-entering ticket requests till the last possible moment.
When we spoke, the team was still shell-shocked from what they (fondly?)
Theres a certain amount of control that you dont have, which is maybe just the internet.
And giving up control is its own reward.
Every day, waking up being like,Im gonna die today.
Im gonna die today.
Im going to be canceled, like, my careers never going to even take off.
