Page 493 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

The oft-misunderstood question: “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” takes on a

whole new resonance in an upcoming revival of Shakespeare’s tragic love

story. With Covid restrictions preventing cast members from sharing a
stage, they were instead filmed in isolation and then rendered together

digitally.

Starring Sam Tutty – a double winner at The Stage Debut Awards 2020 – and

Emily Redpath as the star-crossed lovers, alongside Derek Jacobi as the

narrator, the production takes place in a theatre. Except it doesn’t, for this
is a pixelated vision of fair Verona.

Romeo and Juliet’s co-producer and editor Ryan Metcalfe originally started

using CGI technology for another purpose. While studying technical theatre
at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he established a company called

Preevue, conducting laser-scan surveys of theatres, which enables

productions to be designed with pin-point precision. He soon left the

course to work on the company full-time. His first client was Sonia

Friedman, for whom he helped to roll out Harry Potter and the Cursed

Child to international venues.

“It didn’t make sense for people to be flying back and forth from London to

New York just to look at a theatre,” he says. “We enabled someone to look

round that theatre virtually just by putting on a headset. It’s a hell of a lot

easier and cheaper to make changes to a set on screen, rather than once it’s

been built.”

When the pandemic forced the closure of theatres, it struck Metcalfe that he

may be able to repurpose his skills. “I was seeing a lot of Zoom play

readings, which are great for keeping the art alive. But the production

values aren’t there, so they’re very difficult to monetise unless you’ve got
Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in the cast. So I wondered whether we could

use our technology to create full-scale shows.”