SINGAPORE: When the Stage is Digital: A Reflection on the creative challenges and achievements of producing digital theatre - Derrick Chew

Producing Artistic Director of Sight Lines Entertainment, Derrick Chew, speaks about the creative challenges and achievements behind two of the company’s recent projects: The Future Stage, and Murder at Mandai Camp. What can be considered game changing in our new pandemic world of experiencing theatre, Sight Lines Entertainment aims to bring audiences’ into the narratives they are creating in a visceral way. By not removing the intrinsic theatrical attributes of live theatre, the company rather heightens them through the digital medium.As an insider to the creation process, Chew will share how the pandemic’s shift towards digital theatre has enabled the company to approach performance work from a newly invigorated sense of significance. What potential does this work have to influence the trajectory of Singaporean theatre making? How does this surge in world-wide access to local theatre provoke our understanding of “live performance”? To simply digitalize a performance ignores the plethora of opportunities for audience engagement; Sight Lines Entertainment leans into satiating what a digital audience craves, and creates some thrilling digital theatre while asking the question, “what do these digital audiences want during a global pandemic and how can we provide it tenfold?”