The Crandlewick Amateur Dramatics Society staged its autumn production on Saturday to a hall containing no audience, four members of the film crew and one chair left out from the previous week's jumble sale.

The society began filming its productions last year after deciding that the recording, posted in parts, reached more people than the village hall could seat. It has since concluded that the recording is now the audience, and that the seats are a formality.

Mrs Pearl Andress, who has played the widow in the society's autumn production for eleven consecutive years, said the transition had been straightforward. "You stop acting to the back row, because there is no back row," she said. "You act to the tripod. The tripod is very attentive. It never rustles."

The society's chair, Mr Tobias Grieve, confirmed that the evening's arrangements had been revised accordingly. "We used to worry about audibility," he said. "Now we worry about framing. It is a different craft, and in some ways the same craft."

The curtain call

The most significant change concerns the bow. In previous seasons the cast took their bow to applause from the room. On Saturday the bow was held until the crew had confirmed that the cameras were no longer needed, after which the equipment was packed down and the cast bowed to the crew, who were carrying the equipment to the van.

"It was very moving," said Mrs Andress. "One of them nodded at us, and I believe he was moved, because he had to put a tripod down to do it."

Mr Grieve said the society had considered a compromise in which a small live audience would be seated behind the cameras, but that the recordings had shown the audience to be a distraction. "They cough into things," he said. "The mic picks it up."

Reaction in the village

The production, a two-act drama about a lighthouse keeper who receives a letter, was watched at the time by nobody. Several villagers said they intended to watch it later, in parts, at their convenience.

Among them was Mrs Deirdre Sandbol, who said she preferred the recording to the live event. "At the live event I had to be there," she said. "This way I am a viewer, which is what I always felt I was anyway."

The society will hold auditions for the spring production next month. Mr Grieve said the auditions would be filmed, and that the film of the auditions would be posted before the play, so that viewers could form opinions about casting that the performances would then fail to change.