In 2007, I asked a question almost no one in the arts was asking: what happens when live performance meets the internet — not as a recording, but as a real-time, interactive, global experience?
I spent the next decade answering it. In partnership with Joey Brenneman and Erin Bigelow, I founded VirtualArtsTV — the first company dedicated to live-streaming the performing arts to audiences worldwide while integrating social media into the real-time experience. We produced the first live-streamed digital play. We launched the first ever live-streamed performing arts festival. We built educational programs. We shot and directed live theatrical broadcasts for national distribution.
Years before the pandemic made "virtual event" a household term, we had already built the production systems, the interactive platforms, and the audiences — and we were doing it at broadcast quality..