Third Stage was an online stage for European theatre. It opened when the theatres were closed, and it ran until the last night of our own festival.
New Year 2020/21 to 28 April 2024The stage is dark now. This is what happened on it.
Read the programmeWhen the theatres closed
In the winter of 2020 every theatre in Slovenia was shut. We put cameras in the empty auditoriums, sold tickets online, and streamed the evening live to people at home.
We called it Tretji oder, the third stage: not the main house, not the studio, but a seat on your own sofa. It opened with Jazz from Mestno gledališče ljubljansko and carried on with plays and concerts, among them Siddharta and Vlado Kreslin, until the doors of the real houses opened again in spring 2021.
- Viewers in 202130,000+
- Tickets sold in the first year19,347
- Live streams in the first year130+
Could it work for the whole of Europe?
When the houses reopened, the question changed. Nobody needed a stream to replace a night out any more. But a stream could still do one thing a building cannot: carry a production across a border, to people who would never make the trip.
From May 2022 to April 2024, with co-funding from the European Union's Creative Europe programme, five partners rebuilt Tretji oder as ThirdStage.eu. We wrote to 193 theatres across the continent, listened to what they needed, and worked out a revenue share that every party in a production could read and check.
- PeriskopSlovenia, coordinator
- Art Rebel 9Slovenia
- ADDSlovenia
- CEIPESItaly
- Optiva Media, an EPAM companySpain
19 performances from 17 theatres in 11 countries, subtitled in 24 languages.
That was OpenStage, the online festival the project had been building towards. For two weeks in April 2024 a comedy from Sofia, a dance piece from Tallinn and a clown show from Almada shared one stage, and anyone in Europe could follow them in their own language.
It opened with Jazz, the same play that opened the very first stream.
- 15 to 21 April
- Live week. Every performance streamed at a set hour, with a chat running beside it.
- 22 to 28 April
- On demand. Added because the theatres themselves asked for more time.
- For students
- Free access offered to 98 theatre academies and universities.
- Mestno gledališče ljubljanskoJazzSlovenia
- Teatro EbaskoCirceItaly
- Satirical Theatre Aleko KonstantinovSnowboundBulgaria
- Satirical Theatre Aleko KonstantinovA Jammed StarBulgaria
- Schauspielhaus Wien1000 EyesAustria
- Genìa LabArtI broke the ice and saw the eclipseItaly
- SNG Nova GoricaYakish and PoopcheSlovenia
- SNG Nova GoricaRowan, strudel, dance and moreSlovenia
- Slovensko mladinsko gledališče6Slovenia
- Daugavpils TheatreIntimacyLatvia
- Ratibor TheaterRocket Sugar FactorLEEGermany
- Binocular ProductionMr. KolpertCroatia
- De FactoWalk on the Wild SideCroatia
- Fine5 Dance TheatreFNEstonia
- Teatr Fredry w GnieźnieThe Little PrincePoland
- Maxi BlahaEmilie Flöge, Beloved MuseAustria
- Memento mortisThe coldest spot in the UniverseGreece
- Teatro ExtremoOnce upon a time... or whateverPortugal
- Dailes TheatreEurydiceLatvia
What four years on a third stage left behind
What we built
- A box office of our own. Ticketing, gift tickets and access to the stream ran in one place, from the purchase to the seat.
- A live evening that stayed live. The streams could not be paused or downloaded. A performance started at curtain time, and the production stayed protected.
- Subtitles made by AI, live. Every performance could be followed in 24 European languages. The subtitles were generated by AI and ran in real time, even on shows that were being streamed as they happened.
- A fair split, written down. We developed a blockchain record that shares the income from every ticket among all rights holders and everyone with a stake in the production.
- A clear view of the audience. Theatres could see who watched, from where and for how long, which most of them had never been able to see before.
What it showed
- Language stopped being a wall. The subtitles were what viewers praised most. A play in Latvian is a closed door without them and an open one with them.
- Older plays found a new audience. Productions well past their opening season were given a stage again, in front of people who had missed them the first time.
- Small companies met the continent. Teatro Ebasko from Bologna and Genìa from Palermo showed their work to colleagues abroad for the first time.
- People still love the real thing. Given the choice, audiences go back to the theatre itself. We count that as good news.
A rare chance to look straight into the work of theatres across Europe that we seldom get to visit.
Theatre belongs in the theatre.
The experiences gained from the project underscore the transformative potential of digital platforms in the cultural sector. From the closing report on the OpenStage festival, April 2024
That is what the theatres told us, and they are right. A play is made for a room: for the people on the stage and the people who came out to sit in front of them. A camera can carry the picture and the sound. It cannot carry the room.
Third Stage was never meant to replace that. It began when the rooms were closed, and for a few months it was the only way in. Later it showed what else a stream can do: take a production from Daugavpils to a living room in Lisbon, in the viewer's own language, for someone who would never have made the journey.
So the tool works. What it cannot do is work alone. A stream needs a production to point the camera at, the rights to show it, and a theatre that sees the screen as a second door into the house and not a way out of it. After years of empty seats, filling the auditorium comes first for most theatres. We understand that. We would choose the same.
We are leaving the stage as it stands. If theatres ever want that second door, it can be opened again, together with them. Until then, the best seat is the one in the house. Go to the theatre.
Write to us