Shakespeare at Home

Lessons for a Product Manager

Published in

The Startup

7 min readAug 21, 2020

A Summer Tradition — Cancelled by the virus

Watching Shakespeare’s works being brought to life by professional actors on a warm summer evening, in a minimalist open-air setting, alongside an enthusiastic crowd while feasting on takeout is one of the must have experiences on my summer list each year. Popularly referred to as SF Shakes, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival brings this free yearly experience to “everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, financial status or education level”. So, when the pandemic hit and the annual “Shakespeare In The Park” adapted to “Shakespeare At Home”, I wasn’t thrilled. In fact, I haven’t attempted to tune into this year’s production, King Lear, until last week although the virtual shows have been out for a few weeks now. After a barrage of social media nudges on the upcoming shows, I finally gave in and watched the online production this last weekend and was completely blown away. In the virtual production of King Lear, I witnessed a fantastic union of four unique products , SF Shakes, Zoom, Open Broadcaster Software and YouTube — each quite impressive on its own — but when put together created a total experience whose value greatly exceeded the sum of the individual parts.

Here is my take on the lessons that I’ve learnt as a product manager from the brilliant adaptation of each one of these products to suit the changing times.

“The Forest setting in the 2019 production of “As You Like It”

SF Shakes — “The Show Must Go On”

The power of staying true to the mission and vision

In a COVID-19 impacted world with its social distancing guidelines, even though the outdoor production was still a possibility to engage with the audience, safety of the actors meant they couldn’t be in close proximity to each other on a stage. In spite of this general setback that was not of their choosing, the SF Shakes team refused to give up and cancel the shows for the year. They chose to think outside the box and their unwavering focus on their mission helped them adapt to the changing times and improvise.

As Artistic Director Rebecca Ennals, describes it , “SF Shakes exists at the intersection of art, nature, community, and access. This is who we are, and who we’ve always been. We don’t know when we can come together again in person as a community, in nature, to enjoy a live presentation for free in the park. What we do know is that engagement, the exchange between artists and community, between neighbors who sit beside each other to break bread, laugh, and cry at our shared human experiences, is our mission just as it has always been. We can’t be with you in person right now. But we ARE still here, and we are still committed to offering Free Shakespeare, either in your park or in your living room, featuring the brilliant actors you have always enjoyed seeing on stage”

That was the beginning of a virtual production of “King Lear”

The irresistible promo of the event on Facebook — Image from the sponsored ad

Zoom — “Product proposes, but customer disposes”

The realization that exaptation leads to innovation

Who would have ever guessed that a conferencing tool popular for showing all the participants in the same window to simulate in-person interaction would one day be used by an actual professional theatre gang to film their individual acts while “standing on a tape mark and speaking to another tape mark on the wall” — not their fellow actors? For sure there are hiccups — degraded video quality in most places, Edgar’s sword wielding arm looking as fragile as a stick in one of the tail end scenes etc etc. As Zoom sees increasing usage in a similar fashion, at some point they will be forced to improve the offering or walk away from this segment of supporting professional theatre. But for the moment, those flaws are completely eclipsed by the sheer brilliance with which the product steps up to the task by providing an easy to use interface that a non-technical user like a professional drama artist — who is stuck in their apartment with no technical help — finds easy and intuitive to use for the purpose that it is not intended to. That, is the hall mark of a great product UX.

Step 1 in the production of live, virtual theatre — Image from the the sponsored ad by SF Shakes on Facebook. “* Indicates member of Actors’ EquityAssociation”

Open Broadcaster Software — “Break away from the pack”

The spirit of being available and accessible to the user

OBS forms the foundation of a magnificent virtual set for what otherwise would have been another boring zoom conference of actors. It holds the promise of providing an inexpensive alternate to costly physical sets and outdoor locations for select segments — bringing palaces, landscape and intimate settings to life in the digital world with ease using a simple green screen behind every individual actor and a designer built virtual background. The tool may not be the best of the breed in all aspects of screen casting but it does stand out among competition by providing the broadest subset of well baked features expected of the category — features that can be appealing to the small production houses everywhere. Technical director Neal Ormond at SF Shakes chose OBS to organize his actors within the virtual setting and to mix the individual zoom recordings to tell a cohesive story.

Step 2 in the production of live, virtual theatre — Image from the the sponsored ad by SF Shakes on Facebook

You Tube — “Skate to where the puck is going to be”

The ability to envision the future

As Google notes on their product blog, this product has the highest reach and viewing hours among ad supported streaming services and serves a quarter of all the streaming demand in the United States. Many years prior to COVID-19, YouTube had already anticipated where the puck was going to be in future and made efforts to facilitate communal watching on a TV instead of a laptop or a mobile. Be it the YouTube app on Playstation or a Chromecast stream from a device to the big screen, YouTube had uniquely positioned itself to bring varied content into the living room of the viewers — thus catapulting itself from the category leader in content discovery to a formidable presence in content distribution. As a result, when the user behavior shifted suddenly as a result of COVID-19, YouTube saw overall watch time jump to 80% — with a majority of them watching content that is less than 7 days old — and doing so in groups on a television. Content creators at SF Shakes couldn’t have asked for a better channel to take the digital production of “King Lear” to their audience and to fulfill their mission by creating those digital spaces in which the community can come together.

The final output !! . “* Indicates member of Actors’ EquityAssociation”

A Summer Tradition — Revived by people that wouldn’t give up

There were many missing elements in the whole experience with “King Lear” — the smell of summer grass in the park, the anticipation as the actors take to the stage, the infectious excitement of the fellow watchers as a popular scene is played out , the carry out, and even the welcome warmth of the blanket as the night grows cold — the list goes on and on. But when I lived through the whole virtual experience this year, I realized that there were several compensatory magical elements in the virtual production that more than made up for the things that I missed out on in a park experience. It is a promising format that would only get better with time with the available and upcoming technology. Not too far away are days where I would probably wear my VR headset on my living room sofa and roam through the virtual castles, forests and seas of medieval Europe as a future Shakespeare plays on a virtual stage — while eating takeout ordered via an integrated Facebook Marketplace or Google Shopping experience. The possibilities are endless and that is good news for all the parties in the ecosystem — content creators, content enrichers, content distributors, content consumers and even third parties like restaurants.