Interview: Claire Wood, Creator and Writer of the Interactive Zoom Play "Prism"

How does someone regroup when the pandemic shuts down major film and theatre productions? Keep on going! Several evenings from now, Claire Wood’s interactive play, Prism, will be performed live via Zoom for ticket holders located anywhere around the world. “You’ll hear the evidence, and then you decide,” as we are told, determining a child’s future.

Prism is your third play performed over Zoom. What happened with the first time around that you have since improved on? Asking because performing on Zoom was never “normal” until now. No one knew how to work with it. Most people still don’t. 

The first play we performed on Zoom was pretty much a story that happened to be told on Zoom. I wrote the script around a series of conversations that took place on Zoom for one reason or another – best friends living in separate cities, a mum who was also at nurse calling her kids when they got home from school via Zoom and so forth. But we didn’t make use of any of the other possibilities afforded by a play served up on a screen. With roulette, the script was written around inviting audience interaction and we used Zoom polls to determine the action. The surprise, when we came to perform roulette, was the extent to which the audience interacted with the actors beyond the polls, writing comments, commiserations and messages of support into the chat section throughout. With prism, we’ve taken all of that knowledge and packaged it up into something new. 

Is the story in this play based on a real event in someone’s life? 

No. Though that said, Children’s Panels are a brilliant feature of life in Scotland. And parents do fight over who gets to keep the children).  

How many outcomes can occur from the audience interaction? Do people clap? How do people vote anyway when viewing at home?

I’ve written each of three scenes, three times. And then three different endings. The audience will get to see two versions of each of the three scenes – and whichever ending they then choose. Ultimately, they’ll choose one outcome – but we’re expecting that outcome to be determined by the versions chosen in the earlier scenes. It’s a real challenge for the actors as they’ll only discover which scene they need to perform, as the audience select it. Votes will happen sometimes through the chat section and, in the case of the final choice, through a poll. People are very welcome to clap – virtually or in real life. We’ll take either! 

How might you end up learning from this pandemic experience to adapt any of these plays for television, or future plays to film? 

If the actors were up for it, it would be wonderful to perform prism in real life. In roulette, we got a really strong sense of the audience being ‘with us’, even though none of us were in the same room, through the interaction throughout the show. But few things beat that collective intake of breath when an entire audience is focused on a scene on the stage.

So everyone is well aware of costs, how do people donate to the arts by attending the play? Is it through tickets or donations?

We’re charging for tickets this time around, rather than inviting donations to charity. The regular ticket is £8 but we have pay what you can afford versions too (£5 and £3). All the ticket income will go to the actors. We know that loads of people in the arts haven’t been able to work for nearly two years now so do message us if the ticket price is a barrier and we can wriggle you in through the (virtual) back door. We’re really grateful to have this chance to make theatre – and speaking personally, online theatre (whether intentionally or coincidentally online) has been a lifeline for me throughout the past twenty-two months. So it would be a pleasure to share the same opportunity with others.

Our website is here: www.productionlines.co.uk

And tickets can be found here: https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/events/production-lines/prism/