Tanya Vital Spoke at The Stage's Future of Theatre Conference
How Does the Craft of Theatre-Making Survive?
© The Stage
Vital Culture UK's Founder Tanya Vital joined a panel at The Stage's Future of Theatre Conference in April 2025.
Tanya joined industry leaders to explore the question: how do we ensure the craft of theatre-making not only survives — but thrives — in a rapidly evolving world?
The Panel:
Graeme Farrow – Chief Creative & Content Officer, Wales Millennium Centre
Marc Silberschatz – Director, School of Stage & Screen, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Lilac Yosiphon – Theatre Director
Moderator - Jamie Hale – CRIPtic Arts
Themes:
In April 2025 I travelled to London to speak at The Stage's Future of Theatre Conference — on a panel titled How Does the Craft of Theatre-Making Survive?
The short answer I gave: theatre isn't dying. You're just not looking in the right places.
The room was full of people from established institutions, wringing their hands about declining audiences and the future of the craft. My argument was that young people are deeply engaged in play, performance and storytelling — just not in the buildings those institutions run. The crisis isn't with theatre. It's with who gets to decide what counts as theatre.
I made that case from experience, not theory. I've been active in GTA RP and VRChat communities where people aren't just playing games — they're writing scripts, building sets, casting actors, running live talk shows, fight nights, talent competitions and film screenings inside virtual worlds. My character owned a TV studio. We produced Britain's Got Talent formats, concerts, live events with real audiences, the lot. The production values, the performance craft, the audience engagement — it's all there. It just doesn't happen in a building with a bar and a programme.
Grand Theft Hamlet documented two out-of-work actors attempting to stage a full production of Hamlet inside GTA Online during lockdown — then turned the whole thing into an award-winning film. It won best documentary at SXSW 2024 and has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The establishment film world celebrated it. The theatre world largely didn't know it existed.
© David Monteith-Hodge
Spatial, VRChat, GTA RP — these aren't novelties. They're where a generation of performers and storytellers are developing their craft right now, largely without recognition or resource from the sector that claims to care about theatre's survival. It ruffled some feathers. Good. That was the point.
I was on the panel alongside Graeme Farrow (Wales Millennium Centre), Marc Silberschatz (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and Lilac Yosiphon, moderated by Jamie Hale of CRIPtic Arts. The conversation was sharper for the disagreement.
This is the same argument I make through Vital Stories, through TwitchCon, through every piece of work that sits between theatre and gaming and refuses to pick a side. The craft survives by going where the audience already is — not by waiting for them to come back to venues that were never built for them in the first place.