Before March 2020, Bay Area performing arts organizations prided themselves on pulling audiences away from the digital world and into the world of live art. Turn off your cell phones, they’d tell us before a show started. Leave the internet behind for just a couple of hours.

Then the pandemic hit, andthe internet became a lifeline.Dancers and actors and musicians broadcast homemade videos from their backyards, migrated to Zoom and streamed events from their recorded archives over the web.

现在,随着生活performance gradually becomes a possibility again, all that digital activity, which might have seemed like a stopgap measure at the time, is still with us, and local arts outfits — from one-man bands to institutional heavyweights — understand that those options are here to stay.

All they have to do is figure out how to use them.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” says Shotgun Players Artistic Director Patrick Dooley. “The irony is that just before the pandemic happened, our marquee was like, ‘Check out our new season: less streaming, more dreaming.’ And now all we do is f—ing streaming.

“ ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ the universe tells you. ‘I’ll show you! You’re going to be doing some streaming, brother.’ ”

The performing arts used to be local by definition. Now what?

Conversations with representatives of more than a dozen local arts organizations reveal that the question of how to integrate digital media into the cultural landscape is a live issue for everyone.

Some, like Theatre Rhinoceros Executive Artistic Director John Fisher, regard digital programming as an opportunity to explore new artistic realms.

“我认为这是一个全新的游戏,”费舍尔说,谁has performed a new play every week online since the pandemic hit. “Call me a Pollyanna, call me an early Christian, call me a Mormon going to Utah, but I really see the promised land opening up in front of me.”

Even for more traditional outfits, the advent of digital media has been a spur to recast their offerings in ways that are long overdue — to hasten an increase in ethnic and gender diversity, to broaden the performing repertoire.

The Santa Rosa Symphony, which broadcast newly recorded concerts onYouTubeand local television throughout the pandemic under Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong, plans to return to live performance in the fall with a season featuring four world premieres — a marked increase from previous seasons that might have boasted one or two at most.

According to CEO Alan Silow, reaching a digital audience requires the kind of adventurous programming that will allow a regional orchestra to stand out.

“We now know how to do digital video and recording, and to do it well,” he said. “But if we use that just to broadcast a concert of us doing Beethoven’s Ninth, who’s going to care?”

The orchestra is putting money behind the digital push. Buoyed by a 166% increase in new donations during the pandemic year, Silow has earmarked an estimated $150,000 out of the orchestra’s $5 million annual budget to make digital recordings of six of next year’s eight programs.

“We want to create a digital video library that we can make available to donors,” he said. “It’s a lot to spend, but we consider the outcome to be something like a capital asset.”

Opera SanJoséembraced digital programming last summer, when the company deployed a six-figure contribution from a board member to create the Fred Heiman Digital Media Studio within its headquarters. Since then, the company has used that resource to stream song recitals, one-act operas and rarities it would not have been able to present on its main stage.

“Digital programming is now part of what we do, and it’s always going to be part of what we do,” said General Director Khori Dastoor. “We’ve identified this whole other market, with another business model. There are lots of chamber pieces and shorter pieces that we can do in a digital context.”

In many cases, an online format can help arts organizations reconnect with audiences who might otherwise lose touch. Some have moved away from the Bay Area. Others may have become new parents with less flexible schedules. Still others have mobility issues.

“This is a very big change in how we talk about accessibility,” says Marcelo Javier, co-founder of San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company, which produces a virtual variety show Thursdays on the streaming service Twitch.

A show segment Javier created initially for his bedridden grandmother, for instance, opened his eyes to new digital possibilities for outreach.

“The ability to come into her home during a global pandemic and sing some of her favorite songs was special on a personal level,” he said. “But it also made us realize how many people can’t physically come into a theater.”

Even among patrons who are physically able to return to the theater or concert hall, presenters anticipate a lingering reluctance to take the health risks involved.

Courtney Beck, executive director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, says her organization is considering adding a live stream option to every concert set in the coming season. At Lamplighters Music Theater, Executive Director and Interim Artistic Director Cheryl Blalock expects something similar.

“A certain percentage of the audience just won’t come back, and we don’t want them to feel abandoned,” said Beck. “We have an obligation and commitment to the people who support the organization.”

In addition, digital operations can help organizations reach out to entirely new patrons, a way of expanding the base that many are loath to give up.

Shotgun’s Dooley said a digital option lowers barriers for newcomers. He cited the company’s recent Zoom production of “Feel the Spirit,” which featured multiple trans or gender-nonconforming performers, who drew spectators from like identities.

In the past, he said, those newcomers might have thought, “Well, I don’t know about this group. They’re doing a play that’s interesting to me, but I don’t know if I want to come all the way out there and check it out.”

Online, Dooley said, is “an easier gateway.”

One especially notable success story for digital theater isLauren Gunderson’s“The Catastrophist,”which premiered in January in an online co-production by Marin Theatre Company and Round House Theatre.

It’s still running, notes Marin Theatre Company Artistic Director Jasson Minadakis, and has even expanded to include 10 additional partner theaters each selling their own tickets.

5月初,马林就已经达到7000澳元ience members in all 50 states and 10 countries.

“I don’t see us going forward with new writing that doesn’t have a digital component to it,” he said, adding that the League of Resident Theatres, which comprises many of the top nonprofit theaters throughout the country, has negotiated contracts with theatrical unions to be able to record shows through June 2022.

“If we can start selling out the live seats, and then sell the rest digitally around the world, that changes the income stream for the organization,” Minadakis said.

Costs might be lower, too, according to Lamplighters’ Blalock. “One of our shows costs $250,000 to put on, but for $50,000 to $60,000 online, we can do something different and innovative,” she says.

Still, leaders have to be realistic about whether they can be two companies at once — an in-person performance presenter and a digital media producer — in the face of straitened budgets and shrunken staffs.

“We’ve had the beginning of that conversation internally,” said Philharmonia’s Beck. “It’s unbelievably expensive to do digital, and now audiences have come to expect it.”

American Conservatory Theater is concentrating its resources on in-person offerings rather than radically shifting its mission, said Associate Artistic Director Andy Chan Donald. It plans to host some very small, to-be-announced gatherings in the fall, just to reintroduce audiences into the theaters, in preparation for January 2022’s in-person mounting of “Freestyle Love Supreme,” a co-creation by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale.

But for Donald, there’s a paradoxical danger in making digital offerings too successful.

“We want people to feel like they can come back into our space and share air with other people,” he said. “We don’t want online content to be so good that it replaces the live experience.”

Ultimately, that seems like an unlikely outcome for most arts presenters and organizations. The digital component that has proved so essential during the pandemic — the live streams, the prerecorded video and audio programming, the ability to open up panel discussions and other supplementary programming to a broader audience — will stick around in some form or another.

For San Francisco theater fan Vivien Sin, an online option could help deepen the spectating experience even after the pandemic. She loved seeing ACT’s“Gloria”in person before it was forced to close, then watched it again when the theater made it available online.

“There are certain lines that the first time around I missed,” Sin said. “There’s savoring, when you’re watching the second time. The first time, it’s more of an experience. The second time, there’s more room for cognition and analysis of the play.”

But in-person performances promise to remain the central focus for most, if not all, arts presenters.

“Our goal has been to create something that’s digitally native, rather than just a temporary replacement for the live experience,” said Oliver Theil, the head of digital innovation for the San Francisco Symphony, “because there’s just no re-creating the visceral excitement and power of a live orchestral concert.”