Here are some photos I took from the project
{ 1 comments }
I’m just coming down from an exhausting weekend in Port Talbot producing the online element of The Passion of Port Talbot, an extraordinary production by Michael Sheen, National Theatre Wales, WildWorks and the people of Port Talbot in Wales – a three day retelling of the Passion story from the gospels, but set in modern day Port Talbot, and telling the story of the town and it’s people. There are plenty of places to read about the production itself, which Guardian Theatre Critic Lyn Gardner described as follows:
It raised not just the ghosts and future hopes of the town, but the spectre of how and where theatre happens – and how it might connect with a hyper-connected 21st-century audience, particularly those who seldom go anywhere near a theatre building…
there were many entry points, too: online, through posters and leaflets, via YouTube, through tweets and live streaming, as a novelisation, even through rumour, conjecture and whispers. What was interesting was the way that all these platforms came together. Although you could follow The Passion using just one way in, using several of them at once resulted in a richly layered and rewarding experience…
I was in charge of the online dimension of the project, and a small ARG element, aiming to enrich the experience of the production, build the world of the story in advance of the project and provide a way to experience some of what was happening in Port Talbot to those who were unable to be in the town over the weekend.
We had very little time to think it through… as with many online projects, it was commissioned very late in the day – two months before the actual show, which left very little time for planning and working with the writers and directors to think through how the story would be told on the web platform. The idea was to start the story online and then create, edit and publish video, photo and text from the show during the weekend. We barely had any budget, and we were to work with a group of volunteers from Port Talbot to make it happen. We were bootstrapping from the start.
Matthew Lawton, the communications Director from National Theatre Wales, was working with local graffiti artists, video and design teams to create real world resources such as fake news stories, graffiti, branding for “the company”, photos and videos of the missing man being spotted around the town and other assets which we were able to use in the run up to the main weekend, when the production would hit the streets. By the time the weekend arrived, we had received 10,000 visits to the site. [click to continue…]
{ 5 comments }
