Theatre
Interview with Robert Gibbons
writer and producer of podcast play Playback WORDS BY URSULA DALE
Ursula: First, can you tell me a little bit about Playback?
U: Has COVID-19 impacted your creative process? If it has, how so?
Robert: Playback is a podcast play consisting of three different episodes of three different podcasts and it follows one person who hosts all three, whose name is Kate Morgan.
R: Yes, it definitely has. I mean COVID has impacted everything and the creative process is part of it. I suppose I'll start with the positives, which always feels weird given that we're talking about COVID, but like it has given me a lot more time to write and a lot more time to consume things and to watch. Like I've watched and listened to and read a lot more this year than I have in previous years. And a similar thing, I live way out in the country in County Meath and I live with my family and when I want to be alone I go on walks and I end up going on these long walks just through fields and fields and fields, which gives me a lot of time to think. In terms of negative impacts it's a lot harder to bounce ideas off each other – it's a lot harder to, you know, kind of have that contact with other people in that easy way. This is kind of all from a writers’ perspective, I wrote it and I did produce Playback as well, but from a writer's perspective I do miss just kind of sitting down with somebody over a coffee and chatting without having to schedule like an hour aside to do that.
U: What attracted you to radio theatre over a traditional dramatic format? R: To be honest it was mostly the pandemic. I love in-person theatre and I love sharing space with people and I love the energy that an in-person performance has and the fact that it feels like it's all just there in the moment. Partially I think what it is that podcasting, which is the form that the play takes, has a similar improvisational quality and a feeling like it's kind of happening right in front of you. As a rule it feels very natural, so it's not in-person and it's definitely not completely ad-libbed, but that was part of it. So yeah, in absence of being able to be in a room with people, in a sense the kind of intimacy you get with podcasting is the next best thing.
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