I was curious to see how Lady in a Veil would transfer to Zoom, doubting the technology would support it easily. So far Lady Mary had thrived on the warmth of performing to people in the same room with all their warm, good humour. The ‘tech’ on the ground is a screen and a projector and if that stalls, as it has, Lady Mary quips and carries on. Zoom performance – with only head and shoulders in sight of the audience – depends on unfaltering ‘tech’. it also depends on all attendees turning off their own microphones to avoid their own domestic noise, echo and time delay, and not accidently screensharing. It may be more challenging to maintain focus as a performer, as the patchwork of faces may shift, change, be suddenly replaced by names in black boxes or intercepted by a chat box. Nevertheless, in lockdown, Zoom is the only platform, and much better than no platform. Moreover, I could send links to friends in America, New Zealand, Israel and Europe who had not been able to ‘catch’ the show on its idiosyncratic tour of England.
A solo show is more fitted to Zoom than performances I’ve seen built on dynamic exchanges between two or more actors. Nevertheless, in the absence of interventions by other actors, the Zoomed solo show’s main challenge is to engage the audience using only the face, upper torso (and mind), in a forty-five minute mid-close-up. I practiced in front of my laptop camera, in selfie mode, watching myself maintain another character while projecting to an imaginary audience beyond the screen. The salon in Turin and the position of its occupants could be signalled by moving my head but, at risk of distracting or cropping fingers, hand and arm movements had to be kept minimal and within shot. The film technique of nuanced facial expression, making the most of what the eyes communicate, combines with the radiophonic technique of apparently confiding the monologue to one person instead of directing it to an assembly. For this intimacy to be convincingly established, I had to focus on one point or frame on the screen and I chose my own Zoom image. It was likely to be more stable than any visible audience frames and the narcissistic experience of connecting with my own eye area seems – according to feedback – to have given spectators the feeling of being individually addressed.