American Theatre practitioner and founder A Taste of Theatre Festival, Victor Gulley has innovated the ultimate virtual tool for every theatre producer and practitioner, the Upstage App.
The Upstage website and App enable theatre producers or directors who are bogged down by lots of details in preparation for a production as result of wearing many caps in order to cut costs, to automatize their tasks, for maximized results.
With Upstage producers can manage production details such as auditions, rehearsals, global publicity, even have their performances funded by signing onto the platform, for a nominal cost of $19 to $20.
By signing-up with Upstage, and uploading crucial details, theatre companies’ production can be managed from the creation of a metadata of the play, its genre and type of audience, to audition arrangement, notification of actors casted for roles, to citing and notifying crew members of rehearsal types (technical or regular rehearsals), dates and times as at when due, to notifying audience/theatre-goers of all theatrical productions happening within a 50-mile radius of their location, Nigeria, UK and the United States included.
Upstage further allows for rescheduling of events, makes it easier for actors to identify the suitability or specificities of roles they can audition for. For instance, a registered actor can search ‘roles for black, female, protagonist roles’, be reminded by upcoming audition and rehearsals, or changes to either schedule. Same goes for props, tech or stage managers.
Theatre organizations can upload audition lines/dialogue for actors to access. And finally, with its enlisting capacity of investors and donators, investors and donators can select theatre groups to invest in or non-profits they wish to donate to, while Upstage fosters direct connection between the two parties.
Speaking at the 31st edition of Holding Talks, a theatre-chat initiative of Arojah Royal Theatre, Nigeria, Gulley who first announced the project on the platform at the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic in 2019, said it took over nine years to materialize.
“I have been working on (Upstage) since 2013. It’s taken that long because it took years to get the information on how to manage a how the way a union theatre (in America) does. That’s where all the stage management report come from. I also spoke to people in Nigeria, and London to find out what those reports would look like, and put those into this programme.
“Also, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing when I started. So, I had to learn, and it took time to figure it out. I had to figure out what backend you had to use, what frontend to use, the right UI and UX, things of that nature.”
Gulley was inspired to create the app at a time when he was burnt out from wearing so many hats in his productions with little result.
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