Stratford Festival

New App Offers Peek inside Festival

Shortly after launching its ticket sales app, the Stratford Festival has unveiled yet another app: Stratford behind the Scenes.

Stratford behind the Scenes presents an insider's view of Theater as it's never been seen before. It takes users from concept through creation to performance, offering exclusive video and photos of performers, coaches, directors, and artisans captured in dressing rooms, rehearsal halls, and workshops, which are generally closed to public view.

“Thousands of visitors flock to our backstage tours each year,” Executive Director Anita Gaffney said in a press release. “With this app, we're able to offer a new version of that experience to an even wider audience, adding voices and experiences that go further than physical tours allow and pulling back the curtain on areas that have been largely off-limits in the past.”

The app includes the following features:

• Interviews on such topics as the role of the director, the fate of the understudy, the challenges of set building, and the intricacies of wig making;
• Hundreds of breathtaking photos of every aspect of the theatrical process, some revealing what the actors do backstage between scenes;
• Time-lapse video of the daily “changeover,” in which stagehands strike the set of one production and reconstruct another in a span of less than two hours;
• 360-degree views of props and costumes from the Festival's archival collection;
• A series of costume sketches accompanied by audio descriptions by the designer;
• Transformation slideshows of actors preparing for their roles;
• 3-D tours of set designs;
• 360-degree views of the theatres and dressing rooms.

“The Festival is earning a reputation for leadership in the digital realm,” Ms. Gaffney said. “The digital media channel allows us to share a slice of our work with people from around the world and helps us to connect with young audiences. This new app employs techniques that draw the user into the theater experience, animating it in a new and innovative way. It serves as inspiration for follow-up projects including study guides for students and teachers and digital versions of our promotional materials in the future. The possibilities are exciting to contemplate.”

Inspired by the 60th season book of the same name, the Stratford behind the Scenes app was created by Stratford Festival Digital Media—Lisa Middleton, Marc Raffa, Jason Clarke, and David Cook—with app design and development by Storycode Inc. Along with its wealth of interactive features, the app includes the entire content of the original book with text by Don Gillmor and photography by Erin Samuell. Edited by David Prosser, with creative direction by Andy Foster, design by Krista Dodson, and editorial support from Robert Blacker, the book contains additional text by Francesca Marini (who conducted many of the interviews on which it was based) and Andrea Jackson, and additional photography by Richard Bain, Burdett Photography, Jane Edmonds, Kerry Hayes, David Hou, Terry Manzo, and Scott Wishart.

The app was produced with the support of the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. The Festival also acknowledges the consulting support of the MDEI program at University of Waterloo, Stratford Campus, Ontario.

The iPad app is now available for $9.99 through the App Store. A PlayBook version will be released soon.

December 27, 2012

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