The Stage Awards winners 2021: Simon Baker, achievement in technical theatre
"These are extraordinary times and I felt that now more than ever theatre had to be brave and fearless, and think around the problems it was facing. YouTube is full of people in their bedrooms live-streaming themselves playing Minecraft or Fortnite, and they attract an audience of tens of thousands. If they can do it, then surely we can. So, that’s what I set out to do – get us back on air. So, here’s to 2021 and proving that theatre is alive and well and always up for reinventing itself."
It’s something of an understatement to say that during the Covid era the touring company Wise Children has transformed how its work is made and shown to audiences across the world. That it has found a new, digital way of working is the singular achievement of its technical director, now digital producer, Simon Baker.
Prior to becoming an Olivier and Tony award-winning sound and video designer, Baker had spent his youth on DJ decks and running a pirate radio station. That turned out to be ideal training for his initiative of launching Wise Radio, a 24/7 station playing music and original audio content about the company, all of which he recorded and edited.
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Two months later, inspired by Twitch gaming communities, he added Wise TV to the company’s imaginative portfolio. This shows archive material and a new series of interviews with artistic director Emma Rice, broadcast live by Baker, safely from her home.
It was that live broadcast, using relatively simple technology, that inspired him to scale up and stream the company’s beguiling and hugely successful musical Romantics Anonymous, which was first seen in 2017 at Shakespeare’s Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse and on the brink of a US tour when Covid struck.
In common with most companies, Wise Children was facing a loss of 80% of its budgeted income for the year. And with just six permanent staff, resources were tight – both financially and in terms of people power.
To keep costs affordable, Simon scoured the internet, not only for off-the-peg technology but also for the right streaming platform and paywall system, teaming up with Scandinavian start-up TicketCo, which is now working with more than 20 UK theatres. He then trained company members to keep the work in-house: Rice was the camera director, Baker became the vision mixer and the cameras were operated by the stage managers.
Performed at and broadcast live from Bristol Old Vic, the digital tour of Romantics Anonymous was streamed to 34 theatres worldwide over five days in September. Partner theatres – including Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Leicester’s Curve, Exeter Northcott, Oxford Playhouse, St Ann’s Warehouse in New York, Theatr Clwyd and York Theatre Royal – sold tickets for different nights, each night individually tailored to audience locations. Nigh on 12,000 tickets were sold worldwide with an estimated audience of more than 20,000.
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Thirty-eight freelancers were employed on the broadcasts and the company has since been inundated with industry requests to share what it learned. Baker is now consulting on further broadcast projects – as well as being a key player on the London Old Vic’s In Camera series – and Wise Children has expanded its endeavours into hiring equipment and services.
The project was so successful that the company promptly followed it up in December with a broadcast production of 2017 hit The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, co-produced with Kneehigh and Bristol Old Vic. Baker’s technical and artistic work during the pandemic was not only affordable, it has also become an essential element of Wise Children’s plans and has served as an inspiration and model for other companies.
Simon Baker’s speech accepting the award for achievement in technical theatre at The Stage Awards 2021
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