BWW Review: CONSTELLATIONS at Out Of Pocket Productions

I learned early on in the pandemic (Spring 2020, aka COVID 1.0) that filmed/livestreamed/Zoomed theatre doesn't really do anything for me. That's not a knock against any particular show or performer or theatre company, just a reality of the medium itself. When you take the quintessential elements of live theatre-the energy, urgency, proximity, and community of fellow audience members-and strip them away, something vital to the art form is lost. If I'm going to devote two-or-three hours to consuming a piece of storytelling, I asked myself, why would I opt for a piece of filmed theatre instead of one of the innumerable offerings on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, etc., all of which are teeming with movies and TV shows that were designed to be viewed on a screen? Thus I haven't accepted many invitations to do theatre criticism over the past year; the invitations have almost exclusively been for streaming productions, and it didn't seem fair to subject a production to my critique when I had a baseline objection to the format.