Tuesday, July 16, 2013
To Tweet Seat or not to Tweet Seat: A Perspective
Technology in the Arts is a service of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Arts Management and Technology.: To tweet seat or not to tweet seat; that’s the question on everyone’s mind. After a rather engaging conversation at the Theatre Communications Group Annual conference in Dallas, I went home thinking about the pros and cons of new technology and how it can be used to engage today’s audience. If our audiences are evolving, why are we still connecting with them in the same manner as the previous generation of administrators? After the success of email, facebook, and blogs, it only makes sense to give the Twitterverse a try, right? But what I realized in Dallas was that the question, “Why?” can be applied to anything; and should actually be applied to everything. Your success with Twitter, just like your success with any initiative, will have a direct correlation to a clearly defined “Why?” It’s easy to think that you should jump on the tweet seat bandwagon because supposedly everyone is doing it, but that is simply not the case. If your “Why?” is something like “I want tweet seats because XYZ Theatre has tweet seats,” then you will have a hard time finding success. Every organization is unique and you should do what is in its best interest.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think that it's a theatre's dicision whether or not they should have tweet seats based on if they think it will help or hurt their business. Personally, I believe there shouldn't be tweet seats because it takes away from the immersive feel of going to watch a performance. When you take out your phone and go on twitter, not only is it disrespectful to the actors and people around you, it only takes you out of the world of the show and lessens the experience for yourself. A theatre's real goal should be to capture their audience through their show, not the other way around.
Although I believe that it should be up to each theatre to decide, I do not think that theatres should offer "Tweet Seats". For hundreds of years, comments and dialogue about a show people had seen had been spread with the word of mouth. This system still works and provides the best honesty about the show. I agree with Sarah that it takes away from the experience and distracting others. It kills any world or atmosphere the staff and actors had put together, whether 5 or 50 minutes into the show. If you were to use a version "Tweet Seats", I think Huntington Theatre Company in Boston is on the right track. The experience can be spread through modern communication but it does not take away from the experience.
Post a Comment