Our friends down at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) recently posted on their blog about the NEA’s recent findings about attendance to the arts. In that they talk about OntheBoards.tv and begin wrestling with questions about how our project relates to audiences in-house:

However, the main question about in-house audiences remains: if people won’t come through the theater doors, is it truly possible to reach them elsewhere? Will OTB.tv be able to draw viewers who couldn’t make it to the live show? The quality of the content is certainly there, but will audiences readily replace the live experience with a recorded one?

Read the full post to see the solutions they muse on and the other questions that come up along the way.

A hot tip from OtB managing director Sarah Wilke came in this morning about a WNYC podcast related to performance in non-traditional settings. Sarah writes:

“I think OntheBoards.tv challenges the traditional view that performance should be seen only in a theater setting. Along these lines, I found this conversation between PS122 Artistic Director Vallejo Ganter and Whitney Biennial co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayari very interesting. They discuss the merits and pitfalls of performances presented in a museum or gallery setting.”

Listen to the podcast.

Today just keeps delivering more and more descriptions about OtB artists that are kind of incredible. The title of this post comes courtesy of nytheatre.com in reference to Radiohole. The company’s latest performance (soon to be featured on OntheBoards.tv) inspired this new description and this:

Life was dull and joyless, my theatre-going lackluster. Late-winter New York City blues have left me impatient, fractious, and listless. Where was the new important work to give me something to talk about, something to brag to friends that I’d seen? Who will blow my mind? What’s a culture maven to do?

But now I have found Radiohole and avant-garde unicorns are leaping over candy-colored experimental rainbows. Vigorous sloppy hilarious Radiohole, who put the fun, weirdness, wrestling, and beer back into downtown performance art.

Read the full review.

…Radiohole! They won hearts in Seattle during their 2009 run of Fluke and are currently making waves in NYC again with Whatever, Heaven Allows at PS 122. According to PS122’s website, here’s what they’re up to this time:

Radiohole’s newest work is a star-spangled American meta-melodrama inspired by film director Douglas Sirk’s 1950s potboilers and Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. Our heroine is an all- American “Eve” who must save her home from an evil-doer while struggling to find fulfillment in a lasting relationship with a supposedly good man who looks like god. Radiohole’s newest synthesis of cultural flotsam is sure to be bawdy, silly, possibly transcendent, and a touch disturbed.

In the next couple weeks we’ll be flying crews to NYC to film the project for OntheBoards.tv. Watch for more info to come about the OntheBoards.tv release of Whatever, Heaven Allows. In the meantime, click on the image below to check out a teaser trailer for the show.

Pinter Industries (aka Ian Pinter) helped us get the videos up on OntheBoards.tv. Earlier today he posted a little something about the playback component on the site. Interested in tech? Head there to learn a little about what makes OntheBoards.tv tick and find more info on coding and software development.

Brangien Davis at Seattle mag sums up OntheBoards.tv for Seattlites at large:

If you’re kicking yourself for missing recent killer performances at On the Boards, such as Reggie Watts & Tommy Smith’s Transition (laugh-out-loud funny and true), or Diana Szeinblum’s Alaska (stunning athleticism and emotion), or Allen Johnson’s Another You (oh-my-god brutally good), well, you should still kick yourself, actually, because, where the hell have you been? There really is no excuse for missing the always intriguing and usually stellar programming at our very own On the Boards, but thanks to their new [OntheBoards.tv] video on demand project, at least now you have some reprieve when you do have an excused (or unexcused) absence. 

Read the full article.

Flavorpill, a national guide to art and culture, chose OntheBoards.tv as their featured pick of the day:

“OntheBoards.tv rescues innovative live performances from the ether with front-row video recordings that fans can purchase, rent, or stream with a low-cost subscription.”

Read more and watch some trailers.

[Tanja Liedtke | construct. Image by Chris Herzfeld]

Matt Daniels from Thinklab, Inc has shared a couple images on the Thinklab photo stream from the Sunday night film shoot for Bruno Beltrão | Grupo de Rua. Here’s one of them:

[click through to embiggen]

The release date for H3 is pending, but keep checking back for more OntheBoards.tv updates!

William Cusick, the man behind the stunning film used in Americana Kamikaze on OntheBoards.tv, was recently interviewed at Live Design about the concept behind the integrated film used in the performance. Here’s a tidbit from the article:

The concept of a parallel narrative in the video world is an ongoing exploration by Temporary Distortion. We’re interested in creating complicated narratives that move through variable states of reality and time. By juxtaposing filmic reality with live performance we create an altered state unlike the unique experiences of theater or cinema.  While the onstage dialogue unfolds tense, static storylines, lush dream-like video sequences expand the narrative world beyond the stage boundaries.

Read the full interview.

KadmusArts has offered up their thoughts on OntheBoards.tv:

Good news: Live theatre discovers digital distribution.

As featured in last week’s KadmusArts News feed, a new initiative at On the Boards is helping “progressive contemporary performances” reach a wider audience. In a not-for-profit venture, OntheBoards.tv selects performances to record in HD and distributes them via a pay-per-view network. The producing theatres and artists share in the proceeds.

Unfortunately, the knee-jerk response to the news was that this initiative will lead to a further decrease in audiences for the live event.

Can’t they hear the music?

Read the full post.