The Stage

Traverse shows to be screened live in cinemas during Edinburgh festival

Published Friday 11 June 2010 at 15:56 by Thom Dibdin

Hibrow Productions, a nascent internet platform dedicated to streaming the performing and visual arts online, is to receive its first tryout during this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The company is to screen Traverse Live!, a one-off evening performance of the theatre’s Impossible Things Before Breakfast strand of rehearsed readings of new plays, to Picturehouse cinemas across the UK. The chain is already known for its involvement with the Met Opera and NT Live screenings.

Don Boyd, the founder and editor in chief of Hibrow told The Stage that the company is “expected to launch towards the end of October,” as the “world’s first comprehensive platform for the visual and performing arts across the board: classical music, opera, theatre, literature, ballet, dance and poetry.”

He continued: “I have collected together a whole group of people who are practitioners in all of those fields, ranging from film directors to choreographers to theatre directors. They are known as curators, and are going to be the conduit to the work - and in some cases the producers.”

Sponsorship and advertising will ensure that the service is free for the audience, according to Boyd, who said that the company’s planned launch earlier this year had not materialised after money “drained out of anything like this”. The attraction of two big sponsors, he said, means that the project is now likely to go live in the autumn.

The screenings of the Traverse shows result from artistic director Dominic Hill’s participation as the curator for theatre with Hibrow. The shows will also be filmed for later webcast with writer, actor and director interviews - whether Hibrow’s planned launch goes ahead or not.

Speaking after the Traverse’s fringe launch, Hill told The Stage: “The whole point is about furthering opportunities for artists. That has always been at the centre of what we do. It is about how we get the work of artists greater exposure. That is the whole premise behind both Hibrow and the Traverse.

“There are things that we have to sort out as it is new territory,” he conceded, “but they are staged readings, which makes a difference. We aren’t presenting a full production of the play and they can’t be downloaded, they are only going to be streamed online.”

Impossible Things Before Breakfast includes new plays by Marina Carr, David Eldridge, Linda McLean, Simon Stephens and Enda Walsh.