How to Design One-to-One Theatre for Online or Hybrid Audiences

One-to-one theatre for online or hybrid audiences is not a broadcast scaled down to a single viewer. It is a performance form in which the dramaturgy, technology and care structures are designed around one participant’s live relationship with a performer, guide, recorded voice or interactive system. The practical answer is to begin with the participant contract, choose the delivery channel as a dramaturgical decision, write for mediated intimacy, rehearse the technical and ethical frame, and document the encounter without exposing the participant.

What one-to-one theatre means online and in hybrid form

One-to-one theatre usually means a performance made for one audience participant at a time. It may still involve a small crew, a host or a technical operator, and it may be repeated many times. The term describes audience scale and relational focus, not necessarily a private room or a confessional style. Online one-to-one theatre uses a mediated channel; hybrid one-to-one theatre mixes co-present and remote elements, or pairs a remote participant with a co-present one.

Naomi Smyth’s research on liveness in digital performance frames liveness as an embodied experience for the individual audience member and examines forms including Zoom, social VR, binaural audio, one-to-one telephone shows and video livestreams with interactive interfaces (Smyth). This is a useful starting point because it shows that one-to-one design does not depend on a single technology. The telephone can be a complete theatrical channel; so can a video call or a social VR room. The design question is what kind of encounter each channel can support.

The Between Worlds report, a Digital R&D project between Punchdrunk, MIT and university researchers, describes an experiment that attempted to join two audience members to a coherent, shared storyline: one physically present in the space of Sleep No More and one online, while testing whether an online interactive experience could match the physical and visceral quality of live immersive work (Dixon and Egglestone). That project is not a template for every production. It is evidence that hybrid one-to-one design must solve a double framing problem: the remote participant and the co-present participant need to understand what each can see, hear, do and consent to.

Begin with the participant contract

The participant contract is the explicit and implicit agreement between the production and the person taking part. At minimum, it should answer: Is the participant alone or in a group? Will they be asked to speak, move, write, share images or disclose personal information? Can they leave at any time, and how? Will the encounter be recorded? What language or access support is available? Who can they contact afterwards? In hybrid work, it should also explain how the remote participant will be visible or audible to a room, and how the room will be visible or audible to them.

The contract is not a legal disclaimer bolted onto the booking page. In one-to-one work it is part of the aesthetic frame. A piece that invites disclosure needs a clear route to decline; a piece that uses silence needs a way to check that silence is chosen rather than distressed. Consent should be ongoing, not a single tick box. Practitioners working with vulnerable participants should plan safeguarding and moderation with trained staff rather than improvising crisis support during performance.

Choose the channel as a dramaturgical decision

The channel shapes attention, risk and access. A practical comparison can help a creative team choose deliberately rather than by habit.

Brannigan, Nicholson and Zalipour propose a model for online live-streamed intermedial theatre built on three foundations: acting, screen interface and production setup (Brannigan et al.). The wording matters. The screen interface is not a neutral pipe; it determines framing, eye contact, scale and the participant’s sense of being addressed. A production that treats the interface as part of the dramaturgy will test it in rehearsal, not only in the final technical check.

Write for mediated intimacy, not scaled-down spectacle

One-to-one performance often fails when it is written as a play for a crowd and then delivered to one person. The language needs to address a participant without assuming compliance. Invitations work better than commands: ‘You may sit down’ or ‘If you want, tell me’ leaves room for refusal. Pauses need to be real, not merely written as beats. On audio, breath and silence carry more information; on video, the frame and eyeline become part of the writing; in social VR, onboarding and avatar boundaries must be dramaturgised.

Mediated intimacy also requires a deliberate attitude to liveness. Smyth argues that digital performance contains multiple livenesses and that these are shaped by technology, interface and the participant’s embodied experience (Smyth). A one-to-one piece should decide which liveness it wants: the immediacy of a telephone voice, the shared attention of a video call, the spatial illusion of VR or the composed liveness of a livestream. It should not claim physical co-presence when the form is doing something else.

Virtual theatre does not automatically produce intimacy. Edward Einhorn’s 2020 account of watching a streamed concert from Berlin while in New York describes a quiet, lonely affair in which the performer bantered with an invisible crowd and viewers sent hearts and claps (Einhorn). That is a useful warning for one-to-one design: a visible audience reaction is not the same as a relationship. The form has to build a specific channel for reciprocity.

Designing the hybrid relation

In hybrid work, the remote participant can easily become a spectator of the room. To avoid that, give the remote participant a specific agency: a question to ask, a choice to make, a sound to send or a view that the room cannot see. The Between Worlds experiment was concerned with a coherent, shared storyline across physical and online participants (Dixon and Egglestone); coherence depends on mutual legibility, not on giving both participants identical access. The design should state what is asymmetrical and make that asymmetry meaningful.

Rehearse the frame: roles, technology and care

Rehearsal for one-to-one online theatre is not only line-learning. It is a rehearsal of the whole participant journey, from booking to aftercare. A small team may combine roles, but the responsibilities should still be named: a performer or host, a director or dramaturg, a technical operator, an access lead and a person responsible for safeguarding and consent. In hybrid work, add a room manager who can see both the co-present space and the remote connection.

Technical rehearsal should test audio clarity, latency, lighting, camera framing, waiting rooms, backup channels and failure protocols. It should also test social failure: a participant who freezes, a third person entering the room, a connection dropping during disclosure, a participant who asks to stop. The aim is not to script every response but to give the performer and operator agreed options. A pilot with a small invited group can reveal where the booking language, access information or consent process is unclear. The pilot should include people who have not been involved in making the piece.

Access should be designed, not added. Captions, transcripts, audio description, BSL or other sign language interpretation, language interpretation, quiet routes and flexible timing may change the dramaturgy. In one-to-one formats, access can be more individually tailored than in a mass show, but it can also make privacy and labour more visible. Ask participants what they need and say what can be provided.

Document without exposing the participant

One-to-one work is difficult to document because the encounter is small, private and often dependent on consent. A production should decide in advance what can be recorded: rehearsal documentation, fictionalised or aggregated audience responses, consented interviews or a director’s score. Recording a participant’s image or voice requires separate consent, and hybrid work needs particular care because a camera may expose the remote participant to a room or the room to the remote participant. Data minimisation is part of care: collect only what the production needs, store it securely and say when it will be deleted. For research or evaluation, separate consent for documentation from consent to participate.

A practical design checklist

Use this as a starting sequence, not a compliance ritual.

• Define the participant contract, including what will happen, what is optional and how to leave.
• Choose the channel for a dramaturgical reason and test its access limits.
• Write for one person: use invitations, real pauses and no assumed physical ability.
• Plan access support such as captions, interpretation, audio description and flexible timing.
• Name roles for performance, technical operation, access and safeguarding.
• Rehearse technical failure, withdrawal, distress and third-party intrusion.
• Decide documentation and data policy before booking opens.
• Pilot with a small invited group and revise the participant journey.

Conclusion

One-to-one theatre online and hybrid succeeds when the medium is treated as a relationship rather than a pipe. The strongest designs are specific about the participant they invite, the channel they use, the liveness they create and the care they can provide. That specificity is more important than technical novelty.