Streaming from stage to screen: its place in the cultural marketplace and the implication for UK arts policy

Abstract

Live streaming of stage performances by opera and theatre companies into cinemas, and increasingly into the home, continues to grow rapidly. What the cinema audience hears and sees differs qualitatively both from what is seen in the theatre and also from what is normally available in cinemas. The ‘real-time liveness’ offered by leading companies appears to be an important attraction, though may diminish as the novelty of streamed performances wears off. The cinema audience is both socio-demographically and in cultural experience more similar to the theatre audiences than to typical cinema audiences, giving rise to suggestions that streaming might cannibalise the live audiences of the transmitting theatres, but there is no evidence of this, nor, at least in the UK, to support speculation that streaming reduces audiences for regional arts companies. Streaming should therefore be welcomed as broadening the number of consumers who can benefit from arts subsidies.

Keywords:

• digital streaming
• opera
• theatre
• liveness
• arts policy

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Niall Doyle for helpful comments on an earlier version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although the full title of the company is the Royal National Theatre, the ‘Royal’ is seldom used.

2. For example, the 'BP Big Screens' series will bring two Royal Opera performances and one by the Royal Ballet to 23 UK parks and city squares in the summer of 2015.

3. The survey had a very low response rate so it is possible that those who took the trouble to obtain and complete the online questionnaires were not typical of the audience as a whole.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = E2kF-UiyflE (accessed February 25, 2015).

5. Over the years the televised performances diminished in number, and eventually the series dropped the word Live and became ‘The Metropolitan Opera Presents.’ It is now called ‘Great Performances from the Met.’