Matt Humphrey and John Schwab of Curtain Call Discuss The Virtual Reading of "A Separate Peace"

Welcome, I'm Tim Kashani, and today we're going to be talking with Matt Humphrey and John Schwab from Curtain Call on a little project we worked on together called A Separate Peace. Welcome, John. Welcome, Matt.

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

It seems like decades ago that we were all physically together working in New York on our Broadway Tech Accelerator. And the world changed since those days. Can you start us off with how the idea came and what was the impetus to do it in the way that you did the project?

Yeah, sure. That was BC, before COVID wasn't it, that we were all together in New York? Um, well, you know us too, we don't like to sit still, and when we got back to the UK there was a couple of weeks of normality and then the lockdown started. And John and I were looking at what was happening around us within the industry and we realized that there was a lot of theatres and production houses that were putting out pre-recorded content, which was fantastic because it was servicing a need and it was, and it was great, great to see that continuity of theatre online. We put our heads together and thought there must be something different that we can do, but also something that leveraged what we'd already done, which was to build up a community of theatre freelancers and professionals that worked within the environment. So we decided that it could be quite a cool thing to put together a reading of a play, but that it involved all of the production elements that you would normally have with a physical theatre production. So we advertised the jobs for stage manager, production manager, the whole creative team on our existing platform on Curtain Call. And at that time, we kind of just had that. It was an idea. You know, we didn't really know what the play was. We didn't really know who the cast were going to be. But we wanted to gauge interest and see whether there were people that would be interested in collaborating on a digital production. And what that digital production looked like, we didn't really know at that point.

We had a choice to sit back and wait for the industry to kind of steer the ship, find out what they wanted to do or where to go, or we could actually participate in driving the ship. And we knew we had to do something very early on, knew we had to do something, and And that's kind of why starting a company, as you know, as an entrepreneur, Tim, you have an idea, you, you take the first step. That's the way you get it done. We had no idea where we'd end up, um, but I mean, we're, we're here because we started a company. We met you on the Broadway Tech Accelerator, and, and we're talking about a project we worked on across the Atlantic. So it's crazy how it goes, but it had— it's gone that way because we decided to do something and not sit back.

I think there was a few elements, just to follow on from that, that were really important to us from the beginning. And now when I look back on it, I'm so glad that we had at least those elements in place to structure what it was that we were going to do. We wanted to do a play by a playwright that was well known. And it was very important that we put together the full team. So this wasn't just going to be a script-in-hand reading. We wanted to make sure that we could add those production elements to it.

One aspect that you wanted to validate was would people be willing to purchase a ticket for an online event? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely. When we set out One of our main goals was to try and raise money not just for the freelancers that were involved in this project, because it's very important for us that we were able to pay the people involved in the project. The other aspect of it was that we wanted to raise money for charity. The best way that we could come up with for doing that was to sell tickets to this as an event. As soon as we did that, it was a game changer because it meant that we really had to up our game. We were thinking, okay, it's fair enough inviting people along to a free event, but when you're asking somebody to pay and to commit, it completely changed the dynamic of it. It changed the dynamic of the whole pre-show process, how we marketed the show, who we got involved in the show, and how we put it out there. But it also changed the dynamics of the actual show itself. It was very important for us that they weren't gonna be able to watch this after it had streamed. We wanted this to be a one-off experience, and the director, Sam Yates in particular, was very adamant that it should be a one-off experience. And so that again compounded the reason for the audience that they had to buy a ticket or they were going to miss it.

And in that ticketing process, you had a fun little ramp up where we would get a recap each day of the number of seats if it was a physical ticket.

Yeah, we thought it would be interesting to— I mean, we, We started out thinking if we can sell 50 tickets, it'd be great. If we can sell 100 tickets, and then we hit that mark. And then 200, we thought, wouldn't it be great if we could sell out Wyndham's, which was where Tom Stoppard's play was on at the moment in the West End. And we thought if we could sell that out, wouldn't that be great? And I remember celebrating that. I remember calling in the morning just like, yes, we sold out the Wyndham's. What next? And we just kept going through theaters and ended up completely selling out the Theatre Royal Haymarket, which was just a great way— what that did for the morale for everyone working on it as well is that they felt like we were selling out a theatrical house. So we just put these benchmarks that something to cheer about when people needed something to cheer about.

That was one aspect that you both did incredibly well, was to create this culture and community that felt like a true hybrid between what we love in the theater world and the constraints that we have being in a virtual world. Can you share that process with people that are thinking about doing the same thing on their end?

Sure. That's a good way of looking at it as well. I hadn't really thought of it in that way before, but I'll be honest, this was the first theater production that I was a producer of. So I didn't have a benchmark of a physical theatre production, but that didn't matter. And I remember the very first day that we got everybody together in our, in our read-through and kind of meet and greet, that we said to everybody, look, there's going to be a lot of questions through this that we're going to have to figure out the answers to, but we're going to be doing this together. And this is a very exciting venture that we're all on. So let's be patient with one another. Let's ask questions when we can, and let's try and answer them when we can. But as much as possible, let's also try and respect the spaces that each of us need to have. And for the director, it was important for him to first of all understand the technology. And I remember there was a session that he had with you, Tim, that we weren't a part of. It was just you and him talking through the logistics of what was possible, what wasn't possible. There were other conversations and meetings that happened that weren't open to everybody, and I think that was very important as well. The actors really needed to feel like they could trust the director and vice versa. They also needed to trust the technology. So there was a bunch of sessions that had to happen where it was just actor and John and our stage manager, Georgia, talking through the technical aspects of what it was that was happening. And maybe John can riff on a little bit more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that what we found out early on was having to marry this physical thing theater world and the digital. And all that started was the conversation about tech and tech and tech and what's the tech we're using. So each rehearsal ended up being a technical rehearsal. So before you got to the artistic side of things, we had to just form a new language of this is what a rehearsal is gonna be. It's gonna be 30 minutes or 45 minutes of sitting down and making sure everybody's got the same mics and lights and everybody's got the same buttons. Oh, your mic is turned around. You know, let's get you turned around the right way. And it was, it was fascinating because, um, most actors were never part of that process in the technical rehearsals of just that minutia of getting, oh, I have to turn the gain up a bit, what if I get close to— is this— does this work? It was a new vernacular for them, so it was fascinating.

So I agree on the technical aspect. I did have many a Zoom call to go over some rudimentary settings in the beginning, but what became exciting was to see Sam, your team, the company all starting to push the boundaries of what the technology does and use it artistically. In fact, that was one of the first conversations I had with Sam is rather than me telling you what Zoom can do, tell me what you want to achieve and let's see if we can have Zoom Zoom do that? And bringing on things like a projection designer and a sound designer and a lighting designer, we could not have completed what people saw without those different departments. And can you share what it was like for you to interact with those, with that team, and also as artists yourself, what that felt like, especially back then.

Yeah. Yeah, it is back then, isn't it? That was a while ago, and it's crazy. It's in calendar— in dog years, it feels like a lifetime. But it was— it felt like we were pioneering. It felt like we were doing something that had never been done before because we kind of were. You know, there had been people that were doing readings where you could see their bedrooms and people were like going, hmm, what's in the background there? We didn't want to have any of that. So we wanted this to look like a finished slick piece and a slick production. And so what that meant was that every member of the team was really pushing the envelope as to what they could do with the tech and within the confines of what we had created as the vision. And that was really thrilling because you'd have one rehearsal and you'd come kind of find out, oh, this doesn't quite work the way that I expected it to, but there's this really cool thing that I did by accident that actually could be really cool. So let's try and move that in and see whether we can explore that a little bit. And because it was such a creatively open space where people felt safe, I think that was an important aspect in the generation and the evolution of the project itself.

Yeah, I remember, Tim, if I can add to that, I remember Sam having his first conversation with you and he came out and said, I just had a great chat with Tim and we can do all this. And I thought, oh my God, we've opened up a can of worms. But it was brilliant can of worms. The worms have absolutely just fertilized this landscape that we're now involved in.

Yeah, it was fun. And part of it was the incredibly low-tech solutions that looked like high-tech. Yeah, the simple way of figuring out how to bring people on and off stage by folding up a piece of paper and sliding it over the camera. I had somebody call me afterwards, said, oh my God, that was brilliant! Did you write a routine? How did you do that? And I showed him a folded piece of paper and they just started laughing. And I said, well, that's what theater is in a nutshell, is It's solving one problem at a time, and you created that space. And this is something very important for other people thinking of doing that. You created that space with structure to allow that, but at the same time, as you said, you were selling tickets to an event, and we had the clock ticking. This entire process was a week.

Yeah.

And we— and the real theater world, that would have been an early pre-production week that would have gone on for 10, 12 weeks. And instead, from first conversation to closing night was a week.

Yeah, yeah, that— it was— we wrote this down as a timeline. It's crazy when you look back on it, and, um, I wouldn't recommend doing it in a week. There you go. I'd recommend taking a bit more time over it. But what you do learn when you have that boundary and that limit, as soon as we put the tickets on sale, we were like, okay, well, that's happening, so it's gonna have to happen at that time on that day. And that meant that everybody within the team did actually go that step further. And at the same time that we were figuring out how to do this huge production with all, you know, it's probably best not to think of that, but actually break it down into little pieces. And, you know, the stage manager was figuring out, what does my job mean now that it's within the digital space? The same with every single other person within the production. And as producers, we also had to figure out, how do we sell this and how do we build up interest in this as an event and as a moment almost that's gonna get the tickets sold in the first place. What we absolutely didn't expect was to actually have any reviews for it at all. This was not about the reviews. It was just about selling enough tickets to first of all pay the freelancers and raise enough money for charities. That was, that was it basically.

I think that Matt is absolutely right. I mean, I remember Kevin Wilson, who did our PR, had just come off of Six on Broadway, which closed its opening night, so he had a real impetus to do something. And I remember him, Matt, saying, oh, the Guardian are reviewing it, and we went What? And for those of you in the States, I'm sure you may have heard of The Guardian, but it is a massive paper, it's a massive theater supporting paper as well here. So when we heard that that was going to happen, it just raised everybody's game. So we had lovely 4 and 5-star reviews from The Guardian and lots of 4 and 5-star reviews. And we had across the board, people were overwhelmingly supportive and positive about it.

Let's talk about the cast. When you brought in the cast that you did, first of all, they couldn't have been nicer, which was amazing for all of us. But you're an actor yourself, John. How did you prepare them on your end for what this experience was going to be like? And what did you notice that the rest of the team, for example, Sam, was working on with them to get everybody to that place that they were for opening and closing night, which which was the perfect place, I can say from my side, watching them.

Yeah, to begin with, to answer your first question, how do we prepare the actors? Well, we really didn't have a plan. As we knew what we wanted to do, it was going to be a reading. And we went out and saying, this is going to be a reading. It'll be script in hand. It'll be fine. You guys will be— you know, you'll have a camera on you. We'll put it online. A few people will watch. So the way we prepared them was sucked them in, Tim, and we got them really comfortable. Comfortable before Sam came along and said no. In all honesty, it was— look, it's a great script, but we got the actors before the script. And we just said we want to do something online to show that we can tell a story. And to be honest, like, the casting came through just by reaching out. Matt, like, should be a casting director because he put together this phenomenal cast. But Matt can tell you how he got them, which is great.

Yeah, I mean, I've been lucky enough to have worked with all of the cast before, actually having photographed them all. And that's actually how we got the play as well, is that I've been commissioned by Sir Tom Stoppard to take his portrait before, so I asked him whether we could to use one of his plays. And he was over the moon that we'd picked a play that for him had kind of been forgotten about, in all honesty. And I think that was also actually a crucial piece to the success of the whole production. But to go back to the cast, and I think you're right, John, you know, that we were very open with them, Tim. You know, we said to them, look, there is an idea for how we're going to do this. We can't tell you exactly whether that's going to work out the way that we're planning it because we're planning it as we're doing it. Now that I know how it works, I'd be— feel much more comfortable about going to actors for a future production and saying, look, we've done this already so we know what's involved. There's going to be pretty much a week's worth of rehearsals. You're going to be required for a certain amount of time per day. But we were really keen from the very beginning not to put too much pressure on the cast because at the end of the day, because we were selling tickets, because we were trying to raise money for charity, we had to get some sparkly people in there to sell those tickets. And they were very generous with their time and very understanding. Throughout the whole process.

So yeah, just to add to that as well, Tim, to jump back on, once they met Sam, who then took them through the technical, um, elements, there was no stupid question. So everybody felt safe. You were talking about making a space. We built a totally safe space where there were no stupid questions. Everybody was on the same page, and that went straight from the director all the way down to stage management, or— and well, flipped that on its head because stage management were kings. Technical, we were at the bottom going, how do you do this? It was fantastic. It really created an absolute democratic society for the first time, I think, in my acting career, seeing everyone on that same level playing field. And like you say, you know, you were part of that post— the party that we went to, the virtual pub. We all put virtual backgrounds. Denise Gough said she wants that to happen for every one of her productions going forward because everyone said how they got onto the production, how they knew people, and it was this wonderful moment of unity and communing that, that was— I've never experienced in my career.

We have to talk a minute about Georgia because this would not have gone well at all without her. She was a rock star plus when it came to bringing everything that you want from a traditional stage manager and throwing that into this virtual experience.

You can put it better, Tim. I absolutely agree. I mean, Georgia Burt, who is a phenomenal stage manager anyway— she's worked on Broadway, in the West End, throughout the world. She applied for the job through Curtin Call, and we were blown away that she'd applied for it. And it was, it was so easy for us to, to say, yes, you're the one that we would like to work with. What we didn't know was how easily— I say easily, she probably wouldn't agree, um, but it felt like it was that she adapted to this new medium. She had the questions, she had it all lined up, she put processes in place, she ran the show, and she was so keen for it to work well, she even allowed herself to be seen on camera at the end of the show. No, joking aside, that was an honest error that that happened, but what was so nice about that actually was that the audience could see this was theatre. Things can go slightly wrong. This is real live theatre and it was so exciting. I remember after the first rehearsal she came off and she just said, she was effing and blinding, swearing all over the place. She was just like, "Oh my God, that was so exciting. I loved that. I felt like I was doing real theatre again." and we were like, this is real theatre.

On that, one last question for you. For other people that are looking to do these virtual productions, what advice would you give them?

So my advice, first of all, give yourself more than a week. But as with any new venture, think about the overall vision of what it is that you want to do. Everything stems from that vision. Why are you doing this? Who's it for? How are you gonna get them to watch this? What is it that you're saying? Who needs to be involved? And go from what you need, not from what you think you're gonna need. So build it up slowly. Don't start with all the technical bells and whistles. Just start basic and then build in other elements as you, as you go. A mentor of ours once said during this process, he said, "You need to think about the pre-show experience, the show itself, and the post-show experience." And when we've been working with other people after the remote read separate piece, we've said the same thing. And actually, if you break it all into those three sections, That's a very good way of just figuring out what it is that you're trying to say with the whole piece and then how you get people to watch it.

So I would say, do it. Be bold and take that step and actually go out there and be brave. But follow Matt's advice is what I would say, because he absolutely knows these steps. We've had great mentors along the way. We've had great technical help, artistic help. Do it, be bold, but know why and where and who and what.

Well, thank you, John. Thank you, Matt, so much for your time today and for your experience. And we wish you, of course, the best in all of these future endeavors at Curtain Call. And for those of you watching, we'll see you again soon on another episode.