New York Theater: “As a theatre artist, I love space,” Whit MacLaughlin is saying as we leave the building that houses both a theatre and the offices of New Paradise Laboratories, the company he founded in 1996, and travel to downtown Philadelphia for an unusual tour. The question we set out to explore is: Where do real space and cyberspace come together?
The answer for today: Rittenhouse Square.
5 comments:
This article is extremely interesting and it brings up more questions than what it answers about using social media in theatre. For starters although I agree with the writer I don't think tweeter plays are meant for the stage they are meet for tweeter however, it is a starting off point for what we can do with tweet. When people tweet back and forward to each other it is essentially a script why not use it?
Nerve Tank's interaction reminds me of how Susan Tsu talked about how responsive audiences in sports are compared to audiences in theatre and it seems with the technology that twitter and iPhones provided gives everyone a way to easily interact with their performance, and as Susan said give them a choice. Their experience in the theatre is up to them they control the meaning and truth they get out of the theatre which alters the essence of theatre.
Creating characters through twitter, Facebook, and youtube does not seem like a new concept however the way Fatebook gathered people up and created people gave off this anonymity which is hard to define. You could see these people you could talk with them interact with them on such personal levels where these people could have no doubt in my mind they are real yet, Who is to say that a person could not have fallen in love with characters, however I could never truly meet them. This level of deep connection intensifies theatre to a level where theses characters are always being watched and their ideas read.
Like the article says, people are becoming more and more interested in accessible relatable entertainment. This "Fatebook" that is described as having attempted to bring Shakespeare's Macbeth into a modern setting through social media is in my opinion how theater is supposed to be done. By that I mean that if we as members of the theatre community remain enamored with an archaic way of doing theatre, it will continue to become less and less popular. As popular culture changes, we must allow these changes to have and influence on the way we choose to create and display theatre. Just as the traditional formats of Grecian theatre have changed over the years based on changes in culture. The integration of social media into theatre is just another progressive step, if we do not allow progress, how can theatre survive?
Its interesting to think of twitter and faebook and things being used in these ways because they are still new to use but if you think about it in 20 years it will be our history, and a big part of it just like books and the invention of cars. Its something that will just happen to make its way into literature and plays because its what we are doing. And expanding that idea and using it as a form of media is great.
I am not very into the idea of bringing these medias into the theater world for uses other than publicity because I think it makes a show look very inauthentic. One thing I love about theater is that those who work on the show create a different world that the audience can get sucked into. If there are things like facebook and twitter, that defeats the point of getting lost in a different world. HOWEVER there are shows that are interactive which makes the show as good as it is. I worked on a one man show, a comedy, that required the audience to answer questions and the comedian would respond. In this case, the show was a hit and a lot of fun to watch and participate in.
It's so interesting to think of the internet as another way to perform. Everyone at one point or another has been told to be very careful about the things we post on the internet because we never know who will see them. However its sort of the same thing with theater, isn't it? The things that we perform can be seen by anyone as long as they are willing to watch it. I love the idea of marrying the two and using social media in theater as another way to make the show relatable, real, or just to be processed in a different way. Also, people are constantly talking about how the new generation is being affected by technology and the way we interact with each other. Many shows (almost all of them) are about human interaction and I think we should be performing shows that talk about that new change.
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