multiple audiences

"Familiar Features" is our first experiment with addressing both the online and on-site audience (we have presented other work both online and offline, but this is the first time that we've specifically set out to make a show that is just as good for either audience).

Questions:
- can we make a work that satisfies both audiences?
- what aspects will both audiences experience, and what will be separate experiences?
- will the two audiences engage with each other, and if so, how?

Another question is: Why? My answer to that is because people want it. Every time we do a show that is happening in a particular physical place, people ask how they can watch it online. We have to say, you can't. We're not in the business of webcasting. We use multiple applications, we have specific screenography (the arrangement of application windows on the screen) and there is interaction between the on-stage performer and the remote performers on the screen that would be difficult to convey via a web cast.

So why not make a show that communicates to both these audiences simultaneously - or at least have a go and see what happens. The difficult part is that until we are actually presenting it to an audience, we can't be sure that it works. The first presentation of "Familiar Features" (at Intimacy & Inyerface was well-received. Things have moved on quite a bit since then and now we are building up to the next experiment ...