Digital Theatre

The Challenge
Amidst the pandemic, the urgency for digitalisation surged in the world of theatre. International Theater Amsterdam (ITA), Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) and Holland Festival embarked on a mission with Digital Natives to establish a high-quality digital theatre experience which not only meets the high expectations of real-life art performance but also opens up a whole new world of artistic opportunities in theatre making and audience interaction.

The Solution
Digital Theatre is a Platform as a Service (PaaS), facilitating live streaming and on-demand access to high quality content, for international performing arts institutions a media platform.

1. Key is a ‘show manager’ to plan different phases of a performance broadcast. The audience interface is context-aware and adjust to these phases as well as the user preference, making the experience highly fluid
2. The user experience is designed on the idea of ‘auto-pilot’ as leading principle: offering a leanback automode as default with proactive support and guidance throughout the shows and advanced control when desired
3. Unique is the concept of a digital ‘souffleur’ whispering hints and insights in tandem with the show’s broadcast, engaging audience and guiding in pre- and post-show interactions
4. The product is designed for brand diversity with an adapating interface, making it easily usable for multiple institutions (logo, typography, style, colour and content), resulting in a scalable platform
5. Exceptional effort has been put in realising high-quality streaming ensuring optimal hi-res video and stable connection. To top it off the platform provides secure broadcasting by automatic back-up stream fallbacks

The Impact

The launch of Digital Theatre makes a mark, opening up the global theatre landscape for performance arts. With performances like ‘Climb the Sky’ by Nederlands Dans Theater garnering overwhelming praise. Notably, user satisfaction is high across all metrics, and the platform's reliability is remarked by stable streams even during peak usage. Usability is strong with continuous design user testing resulting in a 17% overall user satisfaction improvement. Technical excellence is growing through rigorous stress testing reducing reported issues by 14%. The mission of Digital Theatre has just started with ambitions for growing the interaction between audience and performer and broader access to the platform.