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National Theatre Appoints Head of Digital Media
The National Theatre has appointed David Sabel as its first head of digital media to develop and co-ordinate its growing digital strategy. Having joined the NT in September 2008 as producer of NT Live, the ground-breaking initiative to broadcast plays live from the National's stages to cinemas worldwide, David Sabel takes up the new full-time role immediately.
The National Theatre's digital strategy is a central strand of the NT's ambition to engage more widely and deeply with audiences. The Digital Media Unit will look to increase the reach of NT Live; develop the NT's new media tools and resources; create more high-quality content around the productions in the repertoire; and experiment with new technologies, methods of production and distribution.
The pilot season of NT Live launched in June with the hugely successful broadcast of Phèdre with Helen Mirren, which was seen by 50,000 people in 19 countries around the globe, and continues with a live broadcast of All's Well That Ends Well on
1 October. NT Live performances are filmed live at the National Theatre in high definition and broadcast via satellite to over 70 cinemas and performing arts centres in the UK and 260 more around the world (including the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Scandinavia and Europe). The performances at the National are nominated in advance to allow cameras greater freedom in the auditorium.
The National's website was recently relaunched, integrating content and functionality more seamlessly, and answering the growing public curiosity about theatre-making processes with a new interactive tour comprising over a hundred short documentaries on the work of the NT's many departments, all produced and filmed in-house.
The National has also made its first documentary for broadcast, Making War Horse, a behind-the-scenes insight into the smash hit production now playing in the West End, which is available on DVD and will be shown on television this autumn.
David Sabel trained as an actor at Northwestern University in Chicago and Jacques Lecoq in Paris. After having worked as a chef for three years, he received an MBA from Cambridge University. His dissertation, looking at digital opportunities in the arts, brought him to the National Theatre where he stayed on to produce the pilot season of NT Live and the National's first documentary commission, Making War Horse.
1st October 2009
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