Saturday, March 23, 2013
Pushing pixels to promote plays
Local | News | Beacon Herald: The play’s still the thing, but the Stratford Festival has developed some new and innovative strategies to catch the attention of young theatregoers.
Specifically, it’s pushing pixels.
On the heels of its groundbreaking Behind the Scenes mobile app, the Festival is now trying its hand at videogames to help bring a 400-year-old play to life.
Executive director Anita Gaffney said gaming, with its emphasis on challenges and rewards, is the perfect medium to draw a younger, tech-savvy crowd to the Festival’s work.
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2 comments:
I think that video games and stage theatre have some deep connections that are not fully understood at this time because video games are such a new medium. At the same time I don't like what the people across the pond are doing. To me it sounds like these guys are trying to act hip by making an app so that they can sell more tickets to young people. This is nothing more then a marketing ploy. And it might be a very effective one. But the game that the describe sounds like a cheap clone of a million other games out their for the iphone, and not like and meaningful cooperation between to powerful story telling mediums. When I was in high school we had to read Romeo and Juliet in English class. We could make any sort of project that explored the story of the play. I made a video game adaption of Romeo and Juliet. It sounds like are planing on doing the same thing I did. Take a classic story and let a player discover the story as well as some other perspectives that we don't get to see in the script. That's ok, but it's hardly something I would call art or inspirational. Video games and theatre need to start working together, but not in this simple way.
I really like this idea about bringing video games into the mix. I am not sure if they have too many natural links other than the fact that they were sources of entertainment, but I do think this is pretty creative publicity. Honestly I do not think that theater companies need to act like they are "young" or "fresh" but maybe that is because I already love theatre... I agree with Akiva in that the game itself does not sound all too original, maybe people should just put on more interesting or innovative shows in the first place. Ha.
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