Theatre Calgary's Creative Team Talks Creating Virtual ROMEO AND JULIET

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, Theatre Calgary, in association with The Shakespeare Company and Hit + Myth, recently presented Shakespeare by the Bow, online, with a virtual production of Romeo and Juliet.

"I was determined not to cancel the show. A summer Shakespeare production has become a tradition in Calgary and I knew we had to find a way not to break it," Theatre Calgary's artistic director Stafford Arima told the Calgary Herald. "My only instructions ... were to be creative, not to limit himself and to keep the show under an hour."

All cast members besides the two leads lived in separate places, causing Haysam Kadri, artistic director of The Shakespeare Company, to "find ways to make it seem the characters were in the same environments."

"I suddenly realized weather forecasts were very important because though it could be sunny in Calgary, it was raining in Edmonton and the lighting in one actor's room was not necessarily the same for the actor they were speaking to," he said.

The stream garnered viewers from Denmark, Pakistan, England, Dubai, Canada, and the United States.

Kadri says he hopes "this is just a temporary way of doing theatre," which Arima agrees with, saying, "there is nothing that can replace the experience of live theatre, but in our new current world this experience has been put on hold and this could be our reality for a couple of years. We have to keep finding ways of creating theatre because our Romeo & Juliet proved there is a huge appetite for theatre. We cannot lose this vital art form."

Read more on the Calgary Herald.