ABOUT

The roots of Social Distance Theatre began to grow on March 20th, roughly one week into the COVID-19 pandemic, when founder Fergus Ryan reached out via social media to see if anyone involved with theatre wanted to participate in virtual play readings. This was met with positive response, and a group of people was quickly assembled. Fergus ultimately decided on the play being William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, a light-hearted yet melancholy comedy that he felt would be a warm distraction for audiences. Throughout this process, the readings began to grow more and more intricate, and more show-like qualities began to be incorporated (virtual sword fights, the passing of objects through a screen, etc.). This evolved into considering Twelfth Night as more of a virtual show rather than just a reading, which it ultimately became by the time of its April performance. By the end of the performance, Fergus Ryan sought to put on more virtual shows, and thus formed the company, Social Distance Theatre (or SDT).

Now in the mind of creating virtual productions beyond just readings, SDT took a more ambitious, experimental approach to its next project, Richard III. Being viewed as a production from the start, Richard III sought to tell a dramatic, riveting tale of modern-day fascism and power grabs, featuring simulated death and battle scenes, further utilization of more elaborate props, as well as utilizing the capabilities of each actor's space.

SDT's third project, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, further grew the company, and much more experimentation began to happen around the concept of using Zoom as a theatrical medium. It was with this production that the company began to incorporate audio effects, and began to play around with a more surrealistic approach to the production. This approach ended up further setting the eerie, unusual feel of the world of The Seagull, placing ten confused, isolated characters into a confusing, isolating space.

Now, several months later, SDT is ready to take the results of its experimentation and bring everything together into one last show: King Lear. With Richard III, the experiments were primarily with physical space. With The Seagull, the experiments were more with virtual space. For King Lear, SDT plans to take the best results of both, amplify them, while simultaneously delving into further experimentation with the medium.