UKTheatre.TV Latest News

Well where do I start ?

You probably know about the plans for UKTheatre.TV already but in case you haven't, its basically getting as much theatre filmed and put online in the interests of promoting
UK theatre to a worldwide audience. We are also uploading Actors Showreels and Stage Performances already filmed. Around the country we are enhancing our team of reviewers with film crew who will work together and do interviews and reviews to camera. From this we will be bringing Pay-Per-View theatre to the web shortly.

Edinburgh
The Edinburgh crew got together very quickly, largely due to Director Diana Elmegaard's enthusiasm and energy. We filmed Stand Up Spartaki at The Stand in Edinburgh which was a production of theatre sketches and performance poetry and along with actress Karen Douglas there were two MSPs in action (Robin Harper and Mark Ballard). Rosalind McCaig interviewed the cast and Tim Welburn, Ben Fleming and Paul Diffey were in action with the cameras. We also filmed The Art of Silence (review online) and we will be including that material with the others in a programme not unlike Film 2005 but for Theatre.

Glasgow
The Glasgow crew had an initial interest but when we set a date of 1st November for the filming of NTS, there were clashes of dairies. So we decide to use the Edinburgh crew to do the filming in Glasgow. It wasn't ideal as they had to travel all the way through but Tim Welburn was committed to the job at hand. Gillian Dodds also joined us for her debut performance with UKTN and we were delighted when she rose to the challenge.

Next up.....
The BAFTA Scotland Awards are on next week and as I had chatted to Alison Forsyth, head of BAFTA Scotland, at the NTS event (Alison is the one in the middle of the top pic), I contacted her office and found out that there are "red carpet" opportunities. So, we've got our next assignment already. We also have offers of filming plays further north so we are looking at the deal there.


Manchester
Director Michael Wray and his team are getting together on the 10th November and we have had initial offers from a few plays to review to camera including a full production to film.

London
Producer Anna Lindgren is now on board and we have been invited to the People Show to film The Obituary Show. It may be too short notice to get a film crew organised but we are going to make some initial enquiries. 2 weeks notice is much better for planning purposes but we're always up for a challenge.

Ireland
I've had initial contact from a very experienced Director in Ireland who is keen to help grow the network over there. So that's developing well.

USA
We currently have reviewers in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia out of recent marketing I had done. I have also been promoting the concept on bulletin boards and gaining an increasing interest. The hits on the website are now averaging 4-5000 per day (1.5m per year) which hasn't been seen for a while, so the profile of the network is growing and this is shown on UKTheatre.Net Visitor Statistics.

More updates in the coming days........