U.K.: Theater Goes Digital This Season

According to a report in Variety, a new U.K. company, Digital Theatre, will be responsible for transferring productions from from prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, Almeida, Royal Court Theater, English Touring Theater and the Young Vic  to internet downloads. 

Digital Theatre will film the productions live for two-three performances on 5 and 11 remote-controlled, hi-definition cameras embedded in the scenery to best capture the stage performance. Unlike the National Theatre's popular NTLive program that screens their Theater Productions in cinemas worldwide, this new program lead by Digital Theater is centered on direct access via Internet use only. The intent is to archive U.K.'s important productions, according to Digital Theater's co-founders, Robert Delmere and Tom Show.

These tapings will then be loaded online and made available for £8.99 (just over $14.50) via a unique program called Theater Player that is compatible with all major browsers and operating systems. The downloads will be purchasable from either Digital Theater's website or on the websites of the respective theaters.

The first productions to be filmed and uploaded as such are the English Touring Theater's Far From the Madding Crowd, and the Young Vic's Kafka's Monkey, a one-woman adaptation of Kafka.

Says Delmere and Show in Variety: "Our aim is to make Digital Theater the focal point for theater-based entertainment online." 

Additionally taped productions produced by the Almeida, Royal Court and Royal Shakespeare Company will be filmed and available for download in to 2010.

The theaters themselves seemed thrilled with this new qay of expanding their audience.  says Dominic Cooke, Artistic Director of the Royal Court in Variety, "We're always looking for ways to bring our work to the largest possible number of people. And the potential of digital technology to connect with a worldwide audience is genuinely exciting."

For more information visit www.digitalthreatre.com.