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.
We had also set up a very simple game… we had put some numbers onto defaced company posters – a simple series – 107, 2925, 3880 and 4790 – the first number indicated the sequence (1,2,3,4), and the remainder spelled out a phone number: 07925 880790 – this led you to an answerphone message recorded by the Resistance. The first person to crack the code was Richard Pellow from Port Talbot, and on the eve of the production, he was phoned by Jordan Bernarde, who played the lead Resistance character in the show, and instructed to infiltrate The Last Supper – the massively oversubscribed Saturday night highlight, which was to take place at the Seaside Social and Labour Club in Port Talbot, which was to feature the Manic Street Preachers being arrested by ICU goons. He was, to say the least, a bit excited by this prospect.
On Friday 22nd April in Port Talbot, we assembled a team to cover the show, with a basic understanding of how and where the show would unfold, a lot of goodwill from the wider production company and a space to create a production office for editing and uploading content as it came in. The plan was to get people onto the streets with video and stills cameras, capture the action, edit it as fast as possible, upload it to YouTube, place it on the site and tweet it out. We were armed with only the cameras that we had to hand – Flip cams, iPhones a couple of DV/HD camcorders and an SLR. We had two video editors – Marc and Joe (who appeared on the scene with one day to go), and one in reserve (nice one Shaun). And so from the moment the first scene – the arrival of ICU Industries on Aberavon beach – ended, we were working as hard as possible to edit and upload photos, create web friendly videos (2 – 5 mins in length) that we could get online and out into Twitter networks via the #ntw13 hashtag as soon as practically possible – on average, we had a photoset and a couple of videos online and being viewed within 2 hours of the action taking place.
It was an exhausting weekend, but a wonderful one. The production itself was phenomenal – people came from all over the world to experience it, but the kudos has to go to the people of Port Talbot, who not only turned up in their thousands, but provided the backbone of the professional cast and production crew and thousands of community performers, from Male Voice and youth Choirs, youth Gymnastics teams, rock and brass bands, artists, BMX crews and many, many others who made the streets explode with art and creativity. It was a transformative experience for the community, and it’s effects will unfold into the future over many years.
Many people, as Lyn Gardner above have talked about this show as being first ever genuinely multi-platform piece of large-scale theatre – as well as the graffiti on the streets and our website, livestreaming video during the production (as well as the usual lighting, sound, costume and prop design), local art and performance, there are two BBC documentaries being made (they should be shown during late May 2011), a feature film being Directed by Dave McKean, and a short, three part novel, The Gospel of Us, by the show’s writer, Welsh poet and novelist Owen Shears. The cumulative experience of engaging with all these platforms created a truly immersive experience for those who were in Port Talbot on this amazing weekend, and a window into the story of the town for everyone who couldn’t be there.
As Michael said at the community wrap party, we made a bit of history. It was a phenomenal experience inspired by his vision, with the people of Port Talbot showing all their incredible energy and creativity in telling their own story, to themselves and to the world. It was a transformative experience, touching the lives of all those involved, including myself and the team of people who helped to make the website happen, to whom I am absolutely grateful: Fraser, James, Marc, Lee, Kym, Antony, Joe, Shaun, Cazz and Jenni.
And what happened to Richard Pellow? While attending the Last Supper, he was handed a small package, on which The Teacher had written “Get this to my daughter”. He handed it over to his ‘resistance contact at port-talbot.com‘ (me!) and it contained a memory stick, within which was a series of video clips which the Teacher had made during his 40 days disappearance. We put together the clips and created the video “The Teacher’s Story”. My original brief to Michael Sheen was that he should use it to build the Teacher character and use him to express some of his own real feelings about the town from which he comes. He did an incredible job, and the result is an extraordinary insight into his acting talent – he shot it himself, on his own, improvising everything… creating, I hope, a unique insight into the process of exploring a character by a master of the art, and a wonderful gift to the people of Port Talbot.
Reflections
In many ways, the online dimension to the project was very experimental – we were brought in just two months before the show began (two weeks before it began with the disappearance of a local teacher) and we had few resources – what we did achieve, we did through the tireless efforts, commitment and passion of the team we pulled together and the co-operation and goodwill of the production team. It is a testament to the experimental spirit of National Theatre Wales’ John McGgrath, Lucy Davies and Matthew Lawton that we were given the opportunity to make this happen.
The site attracted over 35,000 visits by over 20,000 individuals from 102 countries, delivering 77,421 pages in total, and it continues to receive visits as people look to look at the story from the beginning. The site and it’s posts received 2440 Facebook likes, 742 Tweets and 335 comments, while the show itself was the subject of thousands of tweets (I’ve not got the full numbers yet, but will update when I get them). Looking through the comments on the site gives an indication of the value of the online coverage for those who were both in Port Talbot and those who couldn’t make it:
Thank you guys for sharing all this videos, photos and comments at this site about The Passion. With out your efforts it would be impossible for me and other people abroad to get moved by this gorgeous project. Thank you for sharing your PASSION with us. Hugs and kisses from Mexico City.
The build up, news reports of the missing man, the graffiti, the posters and the intrigue of the codes on them. Who masterminded the hype ? Hats off to you !! Then the play, not my type of thing I thought. Boy was my head turned around ! And then I found this website, and it is Fantastic too !! (The photographs are truly outstanding – trust me I found ‘Wally’ a few times in the shopping center ones, but I was there for quite a while). The Passion of Port Talbot is something that I will never forget.
Obviously, there are many lessons to be learnt and to reflect on after this project, and I will try to set out some of what I think are the most important things for us to consider in working with online platforms and live performance….
- Where does online work ‘sit’ in the organisation of theatre productions? Often, it is seen as being on the marketing side of the ‘production/marketing’ divide, and undoubtably it performs an important marketing function. But it is also, importantly, a storytelling platform – certainly not with the same properties and potential as a live performance, but if it is to perform this storytelling function well, it needs to be close to the people driving the main storytelling effort – the writers, directors and cast (we could really have done with some of their input for the videos we were creating in the buildup of the show, for example). To fully realise the potential of this kind of work, it has to be seen for what it is… fully part of the storytelling, and as such it needs time and space for digital producers to work with the writers, directors, cast, design, costume and any other part of the production crew that are required to plan and create the elements of the story that we are telling online.
- What is the role of an online platform in creating the world of the story? The best Transmedia productions give the impression that ‘this is not a story’, invite people into it not by inviting them into a storytelling space, but encountering them in their living room, on the web, and in doing so, connect to people’s real life social media profiles and networks. We often have to draw people into the show with less impressive resources to lead people into the story than a full scale live performance (whereas you KNOW you’re watching a story in theatre, online, the lines are more blurred). I can’t tell you the number of comments to our missing man story that just “yeah… it’s Michael Sheen… I saw him down Aberavon shopping centre this afternoon”, and the like! I suspect that we are discovering a different type of relationship between ‘the story world’ and ‘the real world’ than is achievable with other storytelling platforms such as TV, Film and Performance Theatre… and as a result, a different type of relationship between the audience and the story. We need to start exploring this.
- The resources required for this kind of work are considerable. We were very lucky with this show, in that we had the voluntary services of some great people from Port Talbot, and that was exactly as it should have been. At it’s heart, The Passion was a show rooted in the participation of the community in Port Talbot , and it felt very right that the online project should reflect this. Without these voluntary resources, we would have needed to assemble a considerable operation – A Digital Producer, a Director (part of the main production team?), cameras (both video and stills), a writer, and good, fast video editors, not to mention someone to organise the team, drive and source food! This is not a piece of work to be taken lightly, and as I said, we bootstrapped this work, and the team performed little miracles all weekend (which seemed fitting!).
An amazing experience, and for all it’s rough edges, I really hope that it brought the incredible events of Easter Weekend in Port Talbot into the homes of people both in Port Talbot and around the world. It’s something that I will always be proud of, just as The Passion of Port Talbot will, I’m sure, be something that everyone who played their part in creating will always be proud of.
