Break the fifth wall between the online and in-person audiences.
principle — attributed to John Woo
Woo extends the theater concept. The fourth wall is between the audience and the story. The fifth wall is between the online audience and the in-person audience at a hybrid event. An event is networking around common ideas, thoughts, and like-minded people. To deliver on that purpose in a hybrid format, the design has to bridge the fifth wall. Online attendees who experience the event as a video feed of an in-person event have not been included. They have been excluded from a room. The producer's job in hybrid events is to architect the connection between the two audiences, not just to broadcast one to the other.
For corporate event producers, brand experience agencies, and conference programmers designing hybrid events. The principle is most useful as a design criterion when the hybrid program is being treated as in-person plus livestream.
fifth-wall, hybrid-connection, online-in-person, bridge