THEATRE
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Live camera feeds allow viewers to connect intimately with the characters
This approach makes the show a particularly thrilling and claustrophobic cross-examination and exposure of society’s preconceived ideas about the kinds of people who commit crimes. “Having a camera set up below the table allows a character to appear calm while revealing that their hand is tapping on their knee or that they’re fidgeting,” Armitage adds. Latency is often one of the biggest concerns for the broadcast industry, but with the heightened convergence of broadcast and live entertainment in recent times, Armitage highlights that his team also found itself grappling with the age-old issue of delay. “It’s something the audience spots so quickly,” adds Armitage, “because the actors can’t do any clever tricks to sync up their moving mouths with the screen. It meant we had to figure out how to keep our networks and cabling system as simple as possible.” The use of screens on stage has seen some criticism: “Claims that it’s not real theatre, it’s live or badly edited cinema. But then you get amazing shows like The Picture of Dorian Gray , for which the use of cameras and screens are so integral to that story about image and the concept of ourselves.” Armitage concludes that: “Theatre’s willingness to experiment has always been great. So, as these new kinds of technologies become more readily available, we should definitely keep looking at integrating them. I’m especially interested in seeing what the future will hold for things like holograms, for example. “There will be shows that get it right – and that will be amazing – and there will be ones that get it wrong. But it’s not the technology’s fault, it’s about the skills of the people utilising it and about how they make it feel integral to the story.”
confrontational, or macho. It was incredibly calm and measured, but under the surface there was so much tension. I was intrigued by the theatrical possibilities of that.” Ultimately, Armitage decided to steer towards a non-verbatim adaptation, stressing that “so much context would have been needed to make sense of what the detective and suspect were talking about, but I also have a feeling of ickiness when it comes to having someone play a real-life murderer.” Boldly breaking the mould by bringing the audience closer to the actor than ever before, An Interrogation offers an innovative exploration of technology versus reality. The production cleverly uses livestream cameras to manipulate the audience’s point of view. “One reason for this is very practical,” Armitage highlights. “90% of the show involves just two people sat at a table, which made me think we needed some more visual interest.”
It didn’t take long for Armitage to realise that not only did the introduction of livestreaming cameras offer a practical solution, but they were in fact symbiotic with the play’s nature. “Usually, when we think of a police interview, we think of an objective camera in the sky watching from above. I did some research and discovered that there have been studies into why they’re shot from that very objective angle. “It’s because, if you go into angles that are too close up, people’s viewing of the evidence could be swayed. Even a minute shift in body language could make a jury question whether or not someone is guilty. “Given that the show is fascinated by perspective, I thought we could have some fun by playing around with certain moments. This included pushing the video angles closer to the actors’ faces to encourage the audience to try and notice anything in their expressions that might seem suspicious.”
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