“I Don’t Do Zoom”

6 min readApr 29, 2024

“I Don’t Do Zoom”

A friend of mine has developed a show to be performed on Zoom. It’s an innovative concept and she’s doing that innovating in a form where people don’t necessarily expect to see innovation. She asked someone to attend this show and they said, “I don’t do Zoom,” which understandably got under my friend’s skin a little bit. It’s a little like someone saying they don’t go to the theatre when you give them a postcard for your show in a theatre.

Now, the truth is, I don’t do Zoom either (if I can help it) but I would never say that to someone inviting me to their Zoom show. They don’t need that information or need to have it delivered like that. For me, I wish it were not so, but almost every Zoom I’ve ever had has ended with me sobbing on the floor, or in bed with a migraine. I’ve been in Zoom shows, watched Zoom shows, had Zoom rehearsals, Zoom meetings and Zoom parties and the experience has always been more or less the same. And weirdly, the more fun the activity is, the more acute my response. I wish it were not so but it is, unfortunately, the case for me. Everyone thinks their show or their meeting or their rehearsal will be the exception but unfortunately, it’s not the content for me — just the format. It’s weird. I know it’s weird but a pattern is a pattern. I’ve probed it, investigated it and the pattern tends to hold.

But the fact that I personally cannot happily engage with Zoom doesn’t mean I don’t notice when someone is doing extraordinary things with the form. Making stuff on Zoom is hard! It’s like making a movie (or multiple movies!) and a play at the same time! It’s very difficult! But I still think people should do it. Not me, of course, I get enough migraines as it is — but I do think it is incredibly important for artists to take hold of new forms and make new art out of them. I’m incredibly proud of my friend. I’m an advocate for it, even if I can’t watch it myself. ( Check it out! She MIGHT have an encore show in the works and if you join her Patreon, you might be able to see it.)

Creating work on Zoom opens up space to a radical accessibility. It can include people who are not able to leave their homes, which is something, historically, theatre has been unable to do. (Side note: Back in the early days of my theatre company, we used to joke about doing something called PJ Theatre where we imagined we’d go to someone’s bedroom to put on a show so they wouldn’t have to leave their beds. Zoom is pretty close to that!) Zoom can also reach beyond geographical boundaries and connect with people around the world. It’s a means to create a global theatre. I love that. But, of course, even the most inclusive format can still exclude some people. Not everyone can stomach Zoom and for some it triggers some pandemic PTSD. But I feel like people like me are probably in the minority and it’s important to innovate in this form and to serve the people who AREN’T like me. It is important and meaningful work to do.

I feel like I can relate to my friend’s experience of the “I don’t do Zoom” person because I get similar responses when I tell people about my podcasts. There are a lot of people out there who have never listened to a podcast and a lot of them are not likely to. Only 38% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last month. It may seem like everyone has a podcast but not everyone is interested in listening to them. I have taken several people’s phones and physically subscribed them to my podcasts and still, I suspect that they haven’t listened. There are people out there, people I love, who just don’t listen to audio. It’s not just that they don’t know how to listen to a podcast, they don’t listen to the radio, either. Or even music. They just don’t love to engage with stuff through their ears, I guess. They are never going to listen to my audio dramas, no matter how much they love me. I’m learning how to not take that personally. It’s not me, it’s the format.

In recent years, I’ve mostly been making audio, though, so I thought, hey, for our next one, we should do it live so that the people who prefer the theatre bit can come and have the live theatre experience. But so few people came, I’m not sure I believe the “I prefer live theatre” people anymore. In the four performances, spread out over four months, we sold maybe ten tickets? I had two friends come out to see it. Contrast that with the 673 podcast plays we’ve had on the audio drama so far. One of these things has a much larger reach than the other.

Theatre has become more and more expensive to make. It is prohibitively difficult to produce as an indie maker. On top of that it has become vastly more difficult to get audiences to come out for things. I had two friends come to see our show (Thank you friends!) but most people involved with our show had zero friends come, even with the most liberal comp policy you can imagine.

Part of the reason that my friend turned to Zoom to produce her show is that it is affordable. You don’t have to rent a theatre to put a show up on-line. Theatres cost a lot of money to rent. The affordability factor is true for me and audio, as well. Putting up shows that very few people are going to come to is very expensive and involves a lot more annoying fundraising emails.

Theatre is my first love but, at the moment, it is almost impossible to make in its usual form. For theatre to work, you have to have an audience and when audiences stop coming, you have to expect that makers are going to migrate to other forms, some of which you (or journalists) might not like. I was told by a theatre journalist that theatre journalists won’t cover podcasts. I’d be upset about it except that theatre journalists rarely covered my theatre in recent years either, so…no real loss there.

Anyway — when someone pitches you a show in a new form, maybe applaud them for it, even if you know you’ll never go there. I understand the impulse to try and explain that it’s not personal, that you just don’t do whatever the form is but I’m not sure telling me you don’t like audio or telling my friend you don’t do Zoom helps much. In the big scheme of things, most people don’t come to our shows and they never tell us why. But people who do come to our shows, who tell us why they came and (if we’re very lucky) tell us they enjoyed it, those are some adventurers in new media and our arts heroes.