Over the past week or so I have been near the center of exchanges about theatre and social media that feel alternately like discussions, vent sessions, and policy ponderings. Social media and theatre and the mix of both — discuss. And when you add in questions of the directionality of the media stream and who controls it you have an endlessly energized exchange — media in hands of creators, media in hands of theatre administration, media in the hands of audience members, media in hands of performers. The conversations going on at this very moment on these themes among dramaturgs and other theatre professionals are active on individual blogs (see Douglas McLennan’s 1/25/2012 post “Leading from Behind – We Need a Better Definition”), on the occasional discussion forum (see the LMDA listserv discussions) , in print and elsewhere. I shall make no attempts to summarize that rapidly morphing discussion here. What I shall do is provide my own little story and recent experience, and parse that a bit. In this discussion as in all discussions that hit on philosophies of art (personal, professional) and perhaps suspicion of new tools and high emotions, details matter. So I offer a few.

I am a literature major who became a social science researcher who worked in court research for many years and morphed into a theatre researcher and dramaturg. I’ve been a pc user since 1983, and emailer since 1984 or so, at first through university accounts then through employer email accounts then free email hosts like Hotmail then gmail. I first read a play that tried (semi successfully) to incorporate projections-as-email-conversations between two characters as a script reader for one of several DC theatres in 2004. I continue to read on the page and see on various stages in the ensuing years as resident of DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and now New York City the creative challenges for playwrights and the design/creative/ research team attempting to incorporate the use of social media in theatre. Questions, challenges, hits and misses.

So I have the eye of a dramaturg observer, and am technologically experienced, and still openly acknowledge a lot of rough edges. And add to this years of observing individual playwrights and theatre productions (as production dramaturg, as script reader, as critic) as they attempt to bring email and instant messaging and Twitter communications onto the stage into the world of a play.

My active entry into Facebook (2008) was inspired and reinforced by my smart and funny theatre friends and colleagues who used the tool to build communities around their work and their companies, advertise and discuss individual works. Humor and community were my reward for playing in the Facebook playgroup. Twitter use arose similarly for me (2009) – sparked by my curiosity about how theatres were using the tool, and enhanced by humor and instant community. Twitter’s more open anyone-can-follow-anyone structure (unless an account is specially locked down) allows you to learn more about Merrill Markoe’s and Andy Borowitz’s fast and funny brains, for example, than would be possible in the real world. One can get lost in the somewhat messy sea of output in Twitter, but I do find community-level events (such as awards shows or the New York State legislative vote on gay marriage several months ago), organized through hashtag groupings (sometimes jokingly created, sometimes seriously inserted) introduce me to the fun of live tweeting and finding a community instantly, outside my immediate physical world.

Over the past few years I have also observed theatre marketing efforts that use Twitter in a range of ways. I first encountered the idea of a “tweet seat” as last minute notice of ticket availability by various theatre companies. Theatres tweet out news of last minute deals to a specific kind of potential patron – media savvy, quick on their feet (or with their fingers), with flexible theatre-going schedules. I took note. At the same time a different type of “tweet seat” experiment began in different theatres, reported as they occurred in discussion lists, involving audience members given permission to tweet during performances. The commentary I read (on line, in print) about these experiments ranged widely from support for “whatever brings people into the theatre” to concerns about how to control the mechanics and organization of such events to questions about whether this kind of in-the-moment audience interaction/processing has a place at all in the world of theatre. Discussion of the use of a smart phone as a tweeting tool in a darkened theatre can bring up for all of us the annoyance of the light ahead of us, tapping fingers beside us, all of which can distract an audience member from absolute focus on the theatre before her. Any and all of these themes and others seemed to emerge and conflate and enflame in tweet seat discussions.

When an opportunity to become a “tweet seat” participant observer and test out my reactions in the moment to an experiment using social media in a theatre performance, I pounced. I follow @PublicTheaterNY and observed publicity about a planned “tweet seat” event for Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good) coming up just after the Under the Radar Festival in early January 2012. And on January 19, 2012 the Marketing Department of the Public Theater invited selected Twitter users to attend and “live tweet” a performance of Gob Squad’s Kitchen. Here’s a little summary of the sequence of events.

1/26/2011
@PublicTheaterNY
Playbill reports on our Tweet Seats: MT: @rss_playbill: Public Opens 1st Perf of Gob Squad’s Kitchen for Live-Tweeting bit.ly/tL4XgZ

I read the article. It feeds into my recent experiences an curiosity, and I am alert for further notifications from @PublicTheaterNY. I do not have to wait long.

I read the article. It feeds into my recent experiences an curiosity, and I am alert for further notifications from @PublicTheaterNY. I do not have to wait long.

1/2/2012
@PublicTheaterNY
Just a few more days to enter SYTYCT for a chance to live-tweet GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! #kitchenlive #warhol bit.ly/vpz5Y6

Aha, the mechanics are now clear. I follow the instructions, through which you are led to a form (requesting name, a few facts, email, and your Twitter account name). And you are told to wait to hear if you’re selected. I don’t know what the selection process is, though one supposes there was at least a look at the Twitter feed of the folks applying.

1/3/2012
@msteketee
Decided to try to get a ticket to tweet about Gob Squad doing Warhol. I think. We’ll see! @PublictheaterNY #kitchenlive

I enter this day, and tweet that fact, and my tweet is immediately acknowledged with a “good luck” by @PublicTheaterNY. The submission period ends several days later. I tracked two tweets in particular:

1/8/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
@HESherman Tweet Seat event is experiment for us – may not be satisfying for actors/audiences. We’ll see, it’s exciting to see what happens.

1/8/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
Also, last day 2 enter: Win Tweet Seats for GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! Winners will live tweet 1st perf from special section! publictheater.wufoo.com/forms/m7x3s5/

Note that the question of who is served by the Tweet Seat experiment is already a topic of discussion. And it is clear here that the experiment is “for us” meaning the Theater generally or the Marketing Department in particular. The tone is experimental.

The contest is wrapped up and winners notified on 1/10/2011 with a Twitter Direct Message to check email. The contest is called here and a few places (including handouts in a kind of press pack the performance evening) “So You Think You Can Tweet: Gob Squad Edition”. The rest of the public process is regular reminders until the Tweet Seat event occurs. Note that the #kitchenlive hashtag can be referenced even now for tweets before, during, and after the guest tweeting on 1/19/2012.

1/13/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
Less than a week before the 1st perf of GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN! You will be able see live tweets from that show by following #KitchenLive.

1/18/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
First perf of GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN is tomorrow! Be sure to follow live tweets from our guest tweeters at #kitchenlive from 7:30pm to 10pm!

1/19/2012
PublicTheaterNY The Public Theater
GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN has arrived! Follow #kitchenlive for live tweets from guest tweeters for tonight ‘s first perf -7:30-10pm. #warhol

When we arrive on 1/19/2012 we are presented with a lanyard and laminated tab with our twitter name (see image at head of this blog post), our real name, and the TWEET SEAT SECTION designation . For some of the participants this quasi-review role is a new one and they comment on it among themselves. We are also handed a folder that includes a set of rules: silence cell phones, no calls during performance, lower brightness on phone, only tweet during performance, no photography – though this rule was modified when the performers gave their o.k. for photos before the performance began, to use the hashtag #kitchenlive, and to tweet at the level we wanted with no expectations. We are not informed beforehand in any formal way who the other Tweet Seat occupants will be or how many, though it is clear that many of the crowd know one another. I am older than most by several decades. It turns out there are 25 of us, some of whom brought guests. We alone as a group occupy the last three rows of the Newman Theater on the first floor of the Public Theater, across the lobby from Joe’s Pub. The Marketing folks are most gracious, thank us publicly and privately post event, and give us a free drink at a nearby bar to debrief.

1/19/2012
@PublicTheaterNY
Thanks to all our live-tweeters for capturing the first performance of GOB’S SQUAD KITCHEN. a fun night! #Warhol would approve #KitchenLive

So what do I make of this experience? I journal, I observe, I write up experiences in theatres with great frequency – for my own blog and for other outlets. I would rather be in a rehearsal room or a theatre experiencing the wonders possible there than almost anywhere else on earth. And I found the personal experience as a participant in this partially controlled experiment to be a struggle with role strain. I acknowledge this is in part due to my desire to experience a play as an audience member who might review, therefore I want to be fully engaged and give myself over to the actors and designers and playwright, body and brain, in a way that is simply not possible when one pauses at regular intervals to tweet a reaction or a sensation that is in essence a note for deeper reflection at a later time. Any person attending such an event should expect to have a partial and “distanced” experience of the art before them.

This tweet from midshow on 1/19/2012 that captures a moment and a reflection to which I will return in my formal critical notes on the show, based on both viewings. This was a rare pause and moment I by chance capture on the fly (eyes up and down and taking notes and trying to function, right and left brain together). I was fascinated to hear during the 1/25/2012 performance post show conversation one of the actors in fact references the Woody Allen film Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) as an inspiration for the group for this moment in the show. This movie occurred to me immediately upon seeing the sequence captured in the image at the link below, and visible at left here.

1/19/2012
@msteketee
Simon has gone to other side. Very purple rose of cairo. Others try entice him back. #kitchenlive yfrog.com/o0svjnj

What it was:
Well organized, sensitively structured effort by the Public Theater’s Marketing Department to invited 25 Twitter Users to observe and comment upon a partially improvised work involving projections, audience involvement, and evocation of some of Andy Warhol’s movies.

What it was not:
An artist-driven effort to inform their work directly or to provide information instantaneously fed to the actors. This experiment was not intended to integrate the audience reactions to the theatre creation in any meaningful way – though in this case one could imagine that it might have been perfectly Warholian to dedicate an additional screen somewhere to scrolling audience responses to what they were seeing.

What it all means:
This limited experiment illustrates that such theatre observers can be incorporated into an audience without disturbing other patrons. As a Twitter user in this reporting/experiencing role, I experienced deep role strain in attempting to observe and experience in my conventional audience role while simultaneously attempting to engage as a Twitter user consuming the same experience (observe and note and publicly share fragments of thoughts in the moment). I returned to the show a few days later, taking up the Marketing Department’s offer to the Tweeters of another pair of seats as a kind of acknowledgment of our efforts during the experiment. I yearned for the repeat viewing. And serendipity rewarded me with a postshow conversation with actors and audience members that revealed more of the theatre makers’ art that I could have captures with one viewing, much less one during which I was Twitter-distracted.

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow’s just a dream away

Walking into the darkened New World Stages for TEDxBroadway, I half expected to see a sign saying “Presented by General Electric,” or at least a robot welcoming me to the great big world of tomorrow. After all, this niche TED talk was billed as an imagining of Broadway in 20 years. If Walt Disney were in charge of the daylong event, there would have been intricate models of Times Square—circa 2022—complete with flying cars, jet packs, and a monorail.

Alas, there were no glamorous peeks into a sterile Times Square, save for a brief joke from organizer Ken Davenport, rather the day was full of theatrical industry types waxing poetic on the future of Broadway. Much was made of the current state of affairs—Broadway has seen steady grosses over the past decade, despite economic downturn and tourism lulls—with a hint of urgency when considering the current demographics funneling money into live stage productions. As organizer and Situation Interactive leader Damian Bazadona pointed out, around 83% of Broadway’s audiences are white with average household incomes of $250,000.

While there often tends to be a sense of skepticism when speaking of Broadway’s future, TEDxBroadway was more about thinking positive, and brainstorming for the sake of live theater. Bazadona rattled off a list of needs for the viability of Broadway: incredible original productions, full theaters with diverse audiences, a wider platform to share our greater purpose, and less risk from external factors. “Broadway needs to become an idea factory,” he proclaimed, equating this industry to another—Silicon Valley.

It’s Bazadona’s hope for less risk from external factors that rings closest to the truth for Broadway’s sustainability, and ultimate growth. Theatrics aside, it all boils down to business, not art—money remains the bottom line. Yes, creative types need to continue being creative. Customer service must bounce back from the often-lackluster approach current front-of-house staff take when dealing with New York’s tourists. And marketers must work hard to cultivate new audiences. But the lasting lesson to come out of TEDxBroadway, and the idea most akin to a world of tomorrow, is the necessity for re-thinking the insular mentality most theater owners and producers have when thinking of the live entertainment industry.

Collective thinking is the future of Broadway. No longer can a producer pray for the failure of another production, merely to snag an open theater for their latest work. Billy Elliot might have just shuttered—Nice Work If You Can Get It producer Scott Landis was reportedly sniffing around Times Square, hopeful a show would flop in time for his Matthew Broderick vehicle to plop down for the winter in a warm house—but Elton John’s musical lesson in solidarity must not disappear into the Playbill vault.

Joseph Craig, an entertainment-marketing expert, proved the most provocative on the matter of collective thinking. “We want [tourists] to say ‘and see a show’ when planning their New York trips,” he said, fixating on the need for tourists to look at Broadway as a “must do” attraction. His greatest advice: “worry about how to get people to Broadway in general, not to an individual show.” I half expected to hear the TEDxBroadway audience, made up mostly of business insiders, to roll in the aisles at this blasphemous talk. Why would the Nederlanders want to help a Shubert show fill its seats?

Like it or not, everyone with a theater between 40th Street and 54th Street works in the theatrical industry, emphasis on the latter term—industry. Broadway is only as strong as its weakest link. Tourists are not looking at the minutiae of theatrical ownership and producer credits. Tourists come to Broadway to see a show. They bring their children to see a show. And, hopefully, those children will return to see a show. Business economics 101: Brand Loyalty. Broadway is the brand in question.

Barry Kahn, a dynamic pricing expert, added fodder to argument towards collective thinking, aiming his sights on a universal box-office experience. “What if all Broadway theaters worked out of the same box office?” he asked. Without touching on the precarious situation of box-office union red tape, Broadway as an industry could only benefit from a single point-of-sale. I still find myself irritated over the split between Ticketmaster and Telecharge offerings. In 2012, why must I toggle between two fundamentally different systems when trying to see what shows have open inventory on a Thursday night?

And, from a tourist’s perspective, why do we not hear about touring productions while waiting for a Broadway show to start? Would it not behoove the entire theatrical industry to alert patrons to relevant touring shows while the potential ticket buyers are ripe for arts marketing? I should be able to walk out of Jersey Boys and immediately be pointed to a customer service representative that can tell me about other jukebox musicals playing in my hometown. Movie theaters do this by way of coming attractions. Broadway does it by, what exactly?

There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

TEDxBroadway planted the seed for a great big dream to blossom in the theatrical industry’s mind. However, the dream is merely a start. It is now up to every person in attendance to see that dream through to reality. It’s time to drop the theatrics of narrow-mindedness, and open up to a collective future. That’s the only way Broadway will be standing on two strong legs in 20 years.

As the founder and now social media manager for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival, I have recently had the delightful and curious experience of being able to dip my finger daily into the stream of material our 100 plus world premiere projects have created to promote their shows. I asked myself, how can I harness this wealth of creative promotion in ways that can be of value to our national new play community? With that in mind, welcome to Post One of a multi-post series called “STEAL THIS IDEA.”

First, some quick background:

The Fertile Ground Festival attracts projects from literally all walks of life and all levels of professionalism- from a writer who successfully overcame homelessness and the sex trade to a writer whose last piece was for NPR and whose next piece might well be for film or television. It also attracts all scales of producing partners- Portland Center Stage and Whitebird Dance both have fully staged world premieres in the festival, while the PDX Playwrights collective has probably 20 plays that will receive bare bones staged readings over the course of the festival. The common link amongst all the projects is that they are all Portland generated, and they are all world premieres.

Every project is tackling the same problem that all new work faces: How do I overcome the “never heard of it” barrier?

Audiences want to get a sense of what the experience will be like before they take a risk on a new work. The challenge is that it is nearly impossible to have real performance footage of a new work before it premieres. So how do you help a prospective audience member glimpse the future of a work that is still in the process of creation?

Here are five incredibly different, very intriguing ways this year’s festival participants are using video to address that challenge:

Variation One: Go Graphic

Festival Project Waxwing, from tiny and brand new theater collective String House Theatre employed the talents of an illustrator to take audio recordings from their new work and create a whole world of atmosphere. Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Two: Showcase the Artists

The NW Children’s Theatre and School has participated in the festival three years in a row, contributing world premiere work for young audiences that often attracts some of the festival’s largest audiences. For this year’s project, Rapunzel- Uncut! created by local playwright James W. Moore, they focused their video efforts on a behind the scenes peek at the young rockers who create the ‘house band’ for this hip update on the Rapunzel story.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Three: Direct Address + F word = WIN

Portland’s LORT theater Portland Center Stage, brings a main stage world premiere of Jason Wells’ The North Plan to the festival, creating a video that feels like a direct address confessional from the character’s foul mouthed and hilarious lead character. None of the language in the trailer is directly from the show, but the result is a pretty good snapshot of the show’s key ideas.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Four: Inspire with the Mission

Playwrite, Inc. is a social service organization that utilizes playwrighting as a tool to help transform the lives of “youth on the edge” in Portland. Their project trailer takes a totally different tack, inspiring the viewer with the effect of the work on the young writers themselves rather than focusing on the pieces being performed (which are probably not even written yet!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Variation Five: Fake it… Artfully

Portland Playhouse, a mid-sized theater company that’s had three very successful festival projects, uses the real actors from their performance to create a trailer that feels like an artful fake of the real show. Particularly effective are the intercuts of slightly disgusting food closeups that create the same unsettling sense of everyday foods that feel suddenly, subtly WRONG that Dexter uses to great effect in their intro sequence.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the things I find fascinating about these examples is that, with the new technology available for video creation, it is nearly impossible to identify these projects by budget size simply on the basis of their video trailers. Each is creative, each is polished and feels professionally produced, and each creates a very different set of expectations for the show being promoted.

What can you steal from this? And which approach works best with your mission and aesthetics? I invite you to share your own samples of newplay video in the comments below.

Once upon a time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, I read a really fascinating article which posited that the arts would get more coverage in the media if they opened themselves up and provided greater access to the media. It suggested that the arts were working too hard to “control the story” at every possible turn and that as a result, we received only perfunctory coverage. Why, asked the article, which I believe had been presented as a speech at a conference of arts journalists, couldn’t the arts be more like sports, which gave the press access to practice sessions, to the locker rooms, in addition to the game itself?

Now I’m remembering this article (how I wish I still had it) at a temporal remove, so it would do no good to try to refute many of the points that made up its argument, which was perhaps hyperbolic, or even tongue in cheek, in the first place. But the issue of access remains with me, as someone who used to be one of the guardians who sought media coverage yet attempted to control every interaction between the artists at work in my theatre and those who would write about them.

I’m singing a somewhat different tune these days, although I’m no longer a publicist. While I never placed theatre in an ivory tower, I did respect that the artistic process shouldn’t be constantly opened up to scrutiny at every turn, and that to do so might well be detrimental. But I was doing my job in the very earliest days of the internet, and certainly before blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like transformed every individual in a given production, and on the staff, into a broadcaster of news, gossip and personal opinion, readily accessible to not just the press, but to audiences as well. Consequently, the issue of access has fundamentally changed, in both positive and negative ways.

Several weeks ago, my Twitter sparring partner Peter Marks took exception to the fact that Arena Stage was holding a summit of some three dozen industry leaders to explore the issue of new play production in America. Prompted by a press release announcing the event, which listed the theatre notables expected to attend, Peter sought to report on the two day “convening” but was rebuffed. After protracted discussions, he did not attend; he subsequently set down his thoughts about access in a piece for The Washington Post.

When first made aware of the situation, I stood squarely (but silently) with Peter, assuming that the November event mirrored Arena’s January convening, where the participants numbered over 100, the public was invited and panels were streamed live. But the recent event was by invitation only and, had it not been announced by press release, might have actually taken place unnoticed.

The January meeting, for which a summary report was just issued, became infamous forremarks about supply and demand in the theatre industry as voiced by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. News of those comments came fast and furious onto my Twitter stream as he spoke and, I confess, I called the theatre desk at The New York Times to suggest they might want to read what I was seeing (of which they were unaware), fueling what became an industry furor. To the best of my knowledge, no such news came out of the more intimate November convening, perhaps because of a shared commitment to privacy among the participants, but more likely due to the lack of tweeters and bloggers amongst our artistic and management leaders

While trying to keep any conversation in this day and age from reaching the public is difficult, I do believe that there are some conversations which can be most productive when people can speak in complete candor, which public or press presence can immediately mitigate. No one should interpret every closed-door meeting to be nefarious, nor should they cease because of pressure for unfettered inclusion (I should note that I know of several in the non-profit community who resent not having been invited as well). I’m not advocating exclusion, but privacy has its merits. TDF new play study, Outrageous Fortune, was not discounted upon its publication because it emerged from private conversations and used unsourced quotes, after all.

On the other hand…

Recently, a theatre in New York held a public panel on the arts, an event to which the public was invited to attend for a moderate price. Although I am not a journalist, I inquired about whether I might attend and “live-blog” the discussion, in the interest of sharing the conversation with a wider audience. I was rebuffed by the press office, being told that the theatre wanted to keep its event intimate and quiet. Because I have many personal relationships at the organization and because I am not a journalist, I did not pursue this further.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. After all, this was a public event and anyone there could have tweeted or written about what took place. If I hadn’t wanted to bring my laptop and access a wi-fi connection for contemporaneous reportage, surely nothing would have stopped me from reporting via iPhone tweets (save for an eagle-eyed usher, perhaps). If I did not consider myself part of the theatre community, if I didn’t have friends I might offend, I might well have barreled ahead and, having seen no reports of the event, maybe I should have. I do consider it disingenuous to label something as a public forum and then suggest that only those physically present should have any access to what occurs. A very different case than what transpired at Arena.

All of this brings me around to the buzzword “transparency.” In both of the examples cited, the events were not fully transparent; I agree with one company’s position, while I’m mildly resentful of the other’s. I think transparency is, overall, positive, but it isn’t necessarily an all-access pass. Indeed, some may question why in my latter example, I’m not naming names — in the interest of transparency. I do so because I know the company in question will see this, may well be prompted to consider their future approach and I don’t wish to embarrass them or reveal private communications; I name Arena because the incident is already part of the public discourse.

Let me share a third example, in which the media plays no role. At Hartford Stage in the late 80s, a benefit for donors of a certain level, which proved quite popular, was the opportunity to observe tech rehearsals. With as many as 75 donors at the back of the theatre, the rehearsals proceeded, but a flaw in the plan was quickly discovered: the attendees were bothered that they couldn’t clearly hear the director’s instructions to the actors, the designers and the crew. As a result, the director was fitted with a body mic, to be turned on and off at will, which would allow everyone to hear directives more clearly. While it may have saved on vocal strain, and was perhaps incidental, it did have the effect of transforming that rehearsal into a sort of performance, where with every booming pronouncement, the show’s production team and company were reminded of the patrons at the back, whose presence had impacted upon process, whether imperceptibly or fundamentally we’ll never know.

Smart phones, ever-smaller computers, social networks, the rise of the citizen reporter and critic, the persistence of the mainstream media all promise to insure that we are living in an ever more transparent world. We have seen the impact upon politics and governing (not always the same thing) and every day we see society evolving to address the new openness, whether cultivated or abhorred. While our dressing rooms may remain off limits, we may well be reaching a point where little else in the creative process can be protected, and where surely the field will benefit from broader, open conversation in so many instances.

Perhaps rehearsal rooms will be fitted with the one-way mirrors employed by police dramas (and presumably the actual police), so that rehearsals can be observed, but with those rehearsing none the wiser. Perhaps every pre-show and post-show discussion, every panel and forum, will be streamed or recorded for public consumption. Perhaps the inspiration of first rehearsals and the very first table read of a script will be opened up either live or through technology. Perhaps we can demystify the process of theatre so that more people can appreciate its magic (and no, that’s not an oxymoron).

Let’s face it: we’re heading in a direction where transparency is unavoidable. Would we do better to hold on to the shutters from the inside, waiting in fear for outside forces to rip them from our hands, or to open them (and the doors) as often as we can, perhaps supporting the argument for those times when a little privacy may be of value? The way may not be completely clear, but only with unobscured vision will we succeed in managing this transformation.

This post originally appeared on the hesherman.com website.

Thanks to Travis Bedard, I don’t need to say anything about Michael Kaiser’s latest post. And if that weren’t enough, you could read more from Jeremy Barker and Isaac Butler in reaction.

I will say this. The irony of complaining about citizen bloggers in a post at the Huffington Post is a beautiful thing.

This wave of participation isn’t going to roll back. As came up at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Louisville several times this week, you can opine all you want, but it’s not going to change. The way we engage and interact–as artists, as audiences, as critics professional or not–is evolving. If you want to move forward, you need to adapt. Embrace the change and work with it. Are you going to help lead the way or bitch and moan about being dragged along behind? Or are you just going to tell everyone to get off your lawn?

Here’s the thing. This weekend, Howard Sherman and Peter Marks will be talking about this very subject at an event at Arena Stage. Twitter and theatre, critics and laymen, audiences and engagement. The event will be streamed live and later archived at the NewPlayTV site. I will be in D.C. for this as well–we’re going to have a 2amt meetup at Arena from 3:00 pm until the talk begins at 5:00 pm. If you’re in town and free, come on by.

I’d like to invite Mr. Kaiser to join us, but I’ll understand if he can’t make it. 2amt meetups are usually a healthy blend of actors, playwrights, designers, journalists, directors, audience members, you name it. In many cases, when we have these meetups, we’re meeting in person for the first time. We’ve been brought together via Twitter and the 2amt conversations there, or through hearing about this website at conferences like NAMPC. I know this particular event will have a few people coming from out of town just to get together before and after the talk itself. And, as always happens at these meetups, I know everyone will talk not like strangers just meeting but like old friends who haven’t seen each other in years.

That kind of instant engagement can be daunting. I know, I’m still getting used to it myself. So I completely understand if he doesn’t want to come to the 2amt meetup or the talk.

But. As long as I’m in town, I’d be happy to come down to Foggy Bottom and have a drink with Mr. Kaiser. Heck, I’ll buy. Coffee, tea, something stronger, doesn’t matter to me. I’d just like to take a few minutes to introduce him to what’s happening on the ground, what’s truly possible now and what we can do moving forward.

If nothing else, they do have a nice lawn…

Over the weekend, @NewPlayTV streamed three interesting, presumably unrelated talks. The first was from Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival, titled How to engage 21st Century Audiences for New Plays, followed an hour later by one from the PlayFest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater on How to Make a Living as a Playwright? Monday night’s was from New Dramatists in NYC, titled Beyond the Culture Wars: Arts Funding in America. (The links lead to the archived videos of the talks; some of them are in multiple parts, just so’s you know.)

On the surface, there are connections–they’re all about theatre and they all feature playwrights as panelists. But one common thread leapt out at me and reminded me of conversations we’ve had on the #2amt stream on Twitter. It began with Robert O’Hara and Marisa Wegrzyn on the Steppenwolf panel talking about how they as playwrights had been welcomed into the marketing process at various theatres and, in Marisa’s case, more deeply involved as a partner and co-founder of Theatre Seven. I’ve done much the same for Riverrun Theatre as a founder and co-producer, largely for the same reasons–we enjoy it.

The next panel, from PlayFest, began with the question, “What’s a playwright got to do to make a living?” Panelist Charlie Bethel answered first. “Everything but playwriting.” He was only half-joking–he went on to list all the occupations he’s had in order to support his writing. Gloria Bond Clunie noted that “Not sleeping is really essential in holding two jobs…” And, “if you identify yourself as a writer, then you have to decide what else has to fall away so you can focus on that.”

Minutes later, Jason Loewith, executive director of the National New Play Network, asked a question we’ve been asking for a while now.

“Why don’t theatre companies with budgets of more than $2.5 million have a playwright on staff?”

Steve Yockey countered with, “Why not $1 million?”

Finally, Monday’s wish-list post by Gwydion Suilebhan and that night’s debate from New Dramatists echoed and continued these thoughts. Gwydion offered the wish that more playwrights should be on staff. At the debate, economist Eric Helland asked, “Why is the Playwright the only person in the production not on salary?” (I know several designers who’d argue with that. But let’s stick with the seven-figure-budget theatres for now.)

Several months ago, Kristoffer Diaz and I went back and forth on Twitter (both on and off #2amt) about the idea of a staff playwright and what that would entail. We agreed that it meant more than a residency or a commission, more than the ability to use office equipment and have steady health insurance. It meant more than simply putting words on paper for people to speak aloud on stage. It means, first and foremost, being there, being part of the heart of the company.

Fine. But what would a staff playwright do?

What if you had someone who could shape your social media experiences, someone trained in the art of dialogue, the craft of story? We all agree that social media works best as interaction and engagement, not as a one-way broadcast for ticket info. We’ve seen several variations on storytelling-via-Twitter–I did it in 2008 tied to an original show, Such Tweet Sorrow did it last year, Bill Corbett’s presenting a novel one tweet at a time as we speak, the list goes on.

How would this work? Let’s take a real life example. The Goodman did something like this last winter, letting Ebenezer Scrooge hijack their Twitter feed. Did it work? The idea was cute, but the execution left me cold. For one thing, the character was a little too quippy and playful, which didn’t gibe with the character in the play or the book. There was no guarantee anyone would interact or engage with him. Beyond that, because the production ran beyond Christmas Day, the character had to “go back to normal” for a few days past Christmas, which contradicted the story. Worst of all, by hijacking the primary Twitter feed, it blocked out people genuinely looking for information about the theatre. After a week of watching, I used Muuter.com to hide the Goodman account in my regular day-in, day-out Twitter stream until after the show closed. I visited their page to see keep tabs on how it was going, but avoided it otherwise.

If I’d been planning that, I would have created a second, specialized Twitter account, perhaps GoodmanScrooge–that’s funny right there. I would have pointed people to that account and given them the option of following it instead of forcing it on them. And I would have had the two accounts interact with each other, effectively doubling the amount of attention paid to the theatre and the show. This would also allow each account to pull others into the conversation, whether staff or patrons, by showing that it was okay to play. But that’s because I see these things through the prism of storytelling, crafting a narrative, even if only something as silly and ephemeral as a box office and a classic fictional character bantering for a couple of weeks.

So okay, you’ve got your playwright tap-dancing on Twitter. What else?

What if you could create games and events themed to your productions? Online, mobile games using nothing more complicated than SCVNGR and Foursquare and other mobile apps? A good game needs a good storyline, and it needs possibilities. It’s got to be more than “check in here, get 3 points.” We know story.

What if you wanted to host 360 Storytelling events throughout your season? Your playwright could act as host and occasional storyteller. Strawdog Theatre in Chicago has been trying weekly 360 events of late, hosted by–you guessed it–a playwright. (Full disclosure, I would go just about anywhere to listen to Hank Boland tell stories. And if you don’t know him or his stories, you should fix that.)

In both cases, your playwright becomes another face for the theatre, another contact point for your community. And your playwright could–and should–be out in the community as well, doing outreach and educational programs as well. They would also become a liaison between visiting playwrights and the local community. At the same time, you’re not just cultivating an audience for your theatre, you’re cultivating an audience for your playwright. You’re giving the audience a stake in the work, a deeper sense of connection. It’s not just a visiting artist visiting a neighborhood, this is someone who’s part of the warp and weft of the community.

What if you wanted to design season brochures and media with a message beyond, “Hey, these are the plays we’re doing! Buy a subscription!”? There are too many theatres I could call out for awful, easy-to-ignore season brochures. The worst I’ve seen try to create a mood or theme that has no connection to the plays in the season. Maybe worse is the generic, static brochure that barely changes from year to year, changing only the photos and the blurbs. By contrast, Steppenwolf has been finding themes among their plays each season and working from there. Woolly Mammoth has been doing a great job of connecting the shows to a theme that lends itself to a clever design. Just look at Woolly’s season brochure this year–it’s eye-catching, it’s engaging, and best of all, it makes sense. Best of all, such creativity–and thematic integration–fits with Woolly’s mission. Win-win.

A great many playwrights work by day in marketing and communications already. On the PlayFest panel, Tim Bauer pointed out how that training had helped him, and how being freelance allowed him to travel as needed for productions of his plays. Marisa Wegrzyn talked about creating Theatre Seven marketing materials as well as videos for other companies that produce her plays. I work in advertising by day and naturally applied that experience to my own small theatre company. Then there’s the lovely team at Marshall Creative in Chicago, an advertising firm riddled with Neo-Futurists, New Leaf Theatre people Improvised Shakespeare and probably carny folk, for all I know. Their mission?

We believe in building brands and connecting people through storytelling and technology.

Unquote. Still, much of our work is outside theatre, and I don’t just mean the client list itself–it’s also about hustling for clients, finding people and businesses looking for that kind of creativity. What if we were all working in-house for theatre companies?

Oh yeah, we could write plays, too.

Let’s work off the template presented by the New Play Institute at Arena Stage. Maybe you commit to producing 1 play by the staff playwright every two years, for instance. At the same time, you help to workshop whatever else the playwright might be working on. Not full workshops per se, but maybe some table reads with acting apprentices or company members, a lighter version of the traditional development process to get plays on their feet. If the script winds up being produced in-house, great. If it’s produced elsewhere, that elsewhere knows the script’s already been put through its paces to an extent. Maybe you take a smaller percentage in subsidiary rights to plays developed in-house, because you’re not committing to a full-scale development process, and you’re not commissioning a one-time event from a short-term visitor–you’re supporting a staff member and getting their creativity in other departments in return. That’s just one way to do this, we’ve got more…

Can every playwright do this? No. But there are plenty who could. Look around, we’re out here.

Can every theatre do this? It depends on your budget, your mission, your willingness to change the formula. I do think every theatre whose mission goes beyond remounting classics should have a playwright-in-residence, even if it’s an unpaid position outside of actual productions. Even then, I think classics-based theatres could benefit from having staff playwrights for all of the above reasons, right down to helping the playwright develop scripts. You may not produce them, but there’s no reason why you can’t read them aloud a few times. And if you’re a company whose budget is seven figures or more, then you really have no excuse not to try this. The larger the institution, the more important the need for faces, consistent personalities and contact points within your community.

Woolly Mammoth is already doing this, expanding their definition of company members beyond actors to include playwrights and designers. As if that weren’t enough, they provide a home base for the National New Play Network. They’re well established in both their local community and in the national scheme of new play development, and yet they’re willing to shake things up.

Why do we want be on staff? Morgan Allen from New Dramatists asked yesterday, “Is it the idea of a living wage/benefits with no expectations you seek or connection to an institution?” Kristoffer Diaz replied, “I’m looking for a connection. I want to play a role in the artistic life of a company.” I’m looking for both, somewhat. I’d like enough of a wage that I wouldn’t have to worry about outside work–which is not necessarily the same as a living wage, mind you–but what interests me most is the thought of helping to shape the narrative of a company, to tell the stories of a community, or even multiple communities within a given region. I’d like the security and freedom to focus all my creativity on the world of theatre.

In short, I’d like to drop the “Everything but” in exchange for the “playwriting.”

“Everyone,” I wrote in a tweet to promote my previous blog post, “enjoys a good blurbing now and again.” Although I didn’t mind if someone read some perverse double entendre into “blurbing,” it was neither euphemism nor metaphor. I was referring to the time-honored and oft-criticized practice of skillfully extracting positive phrases from arts reportage or critique in order to employ them in service of marketing a show. As a former “flack” (if we’re going with slang, I’m going all the way), I gave good blurb; it was part of my job. When I left Hartford Stage, the graphic designer who did our print ads presented me with a framed “Ellipsis Award,” for the most skillful use of those three dots, which could cover a multitude of sins and through which one could, if they chose, drive a figurative truck.

I have not personally practiced the dark arts of blurbing, nor craftily employed the ellipsis, professionally for almost 20 years. Yet just as many came before me, others have followed, and publicists and marketers still employ “pull quotes” for press releases, ads, brochures, and the like with skill and abandon, all to pull in the rubes (that’s carny slang for marketing).

I have watched the quotes themselves grow larger as attributions grow smaller; in some cases ads are designed to appear as if the uniformly glowing words at the top are quotes, when in fact they carry neither the necessary punctuation or any source. The pinnacle (or nadir) of this practice came when a Hollywood studio was revealed to have invented both a critic and a press outlet solely for the purpose of manufacturing positive blurbs.

Several decades ago, those of us inside Hartford Stage would have philosophical discussions about the use of blurbs, as well as my artful insertion of ellipses that turned positive words into enthusiastic ones. Wouldn’t the people who saw the ads realize the quote had been subtly manipulated? No, we decided, since no one was likely to have saved the original copy  (remember, pre-internet). Wasn’t the ellipsis itself tipping people off? No, because frankly most people didn’t study them them as we did (and besides, to use an excuse popular in so many situations, everyone else was doing it). Wasn’t using quotes reinforcing the importance of critics, when we wanted audiences to decide for themselves?

To that last question, the answer, to our own chagrin, was yes. We were emphasizing critical opinion for our marketing needs. We had to. Why? Well here it is again: because everyone else was. Blurbs, pull quotes, what have you – they were a necessity. We believed that if a show had opened and we couldn’t feature at last one positive quote from a prominent media outlet in our advertising, the audience would be convinced the show was a dog. Even after the show had closed, we used those blurbs again: in subscription brochures, in grant applications, in annual reports. Blurbs were crack and we were hooked.

25 years later, little has changed, even if the media has. Despite the ability of anyone with a computer to locate a complete review, blurbs, be they accurate or artful, proliferate. The brevity of Twitter facilitates such practice. Even though the original context can be quickly recalled on Google, we still cling to quotes in our marketing, embracing reviews even as (and thus was also always the case) we often vilify the source, namely the critic.

This paradox is at the center of arts marketing. We do everything we can to make our productions critic-proof, yet we throw our arms wide open the moment a critic, any critic, praises the work.  If we bitch about critical power, why do we reinforce it? In brainstorming sessions, over drinks, we dream of cutting the cord, going cold turkey and abandoning quotes in our ads, but we can’t do it. We need our fix and seem convinced that our audiences do as well. As subscription rates have, overall, declined, blurb-laden ads are perhaps more needed (we think) than ever, since single ticket sales have reasserted themselves in our economic models (as they have always done in the case of commercial work).

I will paraphrase the producer Kevin McCollum here, only because I’m not positive I recall this comment precisely: “We are the only business that decides what to do tomorrow based on how we did it yesterday.” And indeed, we in the age of the internet deploy blurbs just as they were used by hucksters a century ago, locked in a perpetual cycle of believing that outside affirmation is the best, and perhaps only, means of assigning value to our work in order to lure audiences.

I’m not raising the paradox to pan critics; in fact I think we must do all we can to insure that full-length reviews written with intelligence and care remain part of the arts landscape. However, the attention span of both editors and consumers seem to favor ever briefer consideration of the arts – which are then further reduced to a ranking of so many stars on a scale, or a subjective, simplistic thumbs up/thumbs down summary by third party aggregators. Arts writing is coming to us pre-blurbed.

In a world of new and ever-evolving media, we are mired in an archaic marketing technique which has, to my knowledge, no empirical proof that it even works. Blurb if you must, but can’t we do better? Or are we just a …. bunch of … addicts?

Dear @Resident Theatre Company or @Individual Show:

You know I love you and so I’m sorry to do this impersonally. But we have to talk. I know it’s hard to hear those words, because they always lead to the same thing. And to be perfectly honest, this time, it’s not me, it is you.

When we started this relationship on Twitter, it was filled with the blush of first love. For the first time, you could talk to me and I could talk to you. You would know my innermost theatergoing thoughts and I would always know what you were up to, where I might see you, how I could learn more about all of the great things you’re doing. Those were heady days back in 2009, made all the more exciting by the fact that we didn’t have to be exclusive to each other; we were part of something bigger than ourselves, freed from the usual strictures that society and technology had placed upon us.

But instead of growing together, I’m feeling let down by you.

There’s a group of you that’s very shy. While that’s enticing at first, I don’t know why you’re in this game if I never hear from you. Sure, you may read about me, but I don’t know what’s going on in your world. At some point, you just have to get past your uncertainty and meet me halfway. I can’t take the silence, the lurking.

On the other hand, more of you are unbelievably self-obsessed. I understood there would be inevitable narcissism, so I don’t resent that. In fact, I want to read articles about you; I want to know when you’re on TV, on radio, on blogs – that’s why I got into this. That allowed me to break up with Google and its random, sometimes meaningless flings in search of a single shred of information. With you and Twitter (and Facebook and perhaps even Google+), I could keep abreast of what’s going on at each stage of your life, while remaining open to others.

But now you just keep flaunting others at me. You retweet this stray person who liked your show and that nameless egg-head who liked your performance; every night between 10 and 11 pm, or first thing in the morning when you rise, it’s the same thing. You’re cool, you’re mind-blowing, I’ve got to run and see what you’re doing. It’s boring. And let me let you in on a little secret: I know you’re being selective and if I feel like it, I can find all of those negative tweets you never seem to mention. How do you feel about that, huh? The same goes for reviews, and while I appreciate the opportunity to read thoughtful, in-depth appraisals of your work, I can go back to my ex, Google News, and find all of the reviews as well, not just the cosmetically chosen ones that play up your best features. You’re not fooling anyone.

Plus, let’s face it, I know you’re a person behind a façade. You shield yourself with a company name or show name. But I sussed out a long time ago there’s not a whole company pushing the buttons, just one person. Just like me. You need to remember that too, because I find it hard to believe that your façade is out drinking with friends – it’s just not that mobile. And surely you’re not so gauche as to root for particular sports teams under a broad pseudonym, at the risk of sharing stuff that some of us really don’t want to know.

So I have to ask myself, should I keep following you if our relationship is so unrewarding? Not to throw others in your face, but Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company tantalized me with messages about its audiences’ deepest fantasies during their run of In The Next Room. Next to Normal snuggled up to me (and a million others) by letting me contribute to a new song related to the show. The New Victory is letting me assemble a video of things we have to look forward to together, with our kids (how can you forget the kids) and displaying them for all the world to see on YouTube. 2amtheatre constantly offers me something both attractive and profound to chew on. A few of you have even dropped the curtain that often separates us and I can hear directly what your leader is thinking, like the newbie Robert Falls of the Goodman or Kwami Kwei Armah of Centerstage. For my part, when you let slip an interesting bit of insight into what makes you tick, or even what simply interests you, I retweet you with abandon, sometimes four, five, six times in an hour. It’s tiring, but worth it.

This thing we’re in – it’s called social media. It can’t be one sided and you can’t constantly remind me that all you really care about is filling your seats. That’s awfully crude and while it may be good for you, it’s unsatisfying to me.  I want more of you, but all facets of you. Don’t reduce what we have to a transaction-based thing, like I was someone to whom you merely want to advertise your wares. It makes me feel cheap.

Oh, wait. No, stop. Don’t cry. I hate that.

You say you can change? I’m willing to give you another chance. Calm down – I won’t drop you, even though I can do it anytime with the merest press of my finger. I’m sorry, that was cruel.

So I’ll hear more from you? You’ll give me real insight, not just blurbs (not that I don’t enjoy a good blurbing every so often)? I won’t have to endure the clutter of your various partners telling me how wonderful you are every night? O.K. then, so we’ll stay mutual followers. I really want this to work, for you, me and our thousands of partners.

You’re blushing. Now that’s endearing. Come here and let me give you a digital hug.

Love,

@hesherman

Every March, tens of thousands of people obsessed with technology, music, and film gather in Austin, Texas for 10 days of learning, hand-shaking, business-making, art-creating, and of course, debauchery. Some call it Nerd Spring Break. Others, South-by. But one thing is clear: The Interactive Conference at South by Southwest (SXSWi) has been overrun by artists and arts-enablers this year. More than 50 (admittedly, of 3,200+) panels submitted for possible inclusion in the 2012 SXSWi explicitly reference the arts. From hacking DDR for ballet dancers to augmented reality installations, meetups for techs who want to be artists and artists who want to be techs, to philosophical treatises on How to Steal Like an Artist, and Brands who want to be Artists, from museums to libraries to theatres, SXSW has officially gone artsy. And of course, there’s our very own panel of 2amt folks, and panel about 2amt-like communities. Did I mention I also have a panel proposal?

There was no “Arts” listing among the 17 categories of panels, but if there had been, we would have beaten out Convergence & Green Tech by volume, so here’s hoping next year’s conference planning committee takes the hint. Instead, these panels were woven throughout nearly every other category, mirroring what’s happening with the art world offline. In 2010, I bemoaned the lack of arts orgs attending SXSW. In 2011, we had a great 2amt meetup featuring Travis Bedard, Alli Houseworth, Marcus Romer, a bunch of people I’m forgetting, and #fishtacos. Hopefully even more of the 2amt community turns out for 2012.

Public voting accounts for 30% of the decision making process for which 500 panels will actually make up SXSWi 2012, and voting ends this Friday. Commenting on panels is also highly encouraged. Consider supporting your fellow artists by checking out a few of the following panel ideas:

Tech Influencing Arts

• Cadence Degradation: Conversation Latency & Rhythm
• Culture vs Technology: Death Match
• Your Arts Organization = A Start-up Business
• “But Is It Art?”: The Aesthetics of Social Culture
• If Bach could Tweet: Why tech will save the arts
• Lowering the Velvet Rope: Access, Art, & Internet
• Performance and Technology: Keeping Arts Alive
• The User Experience of Media
• Open Art, Open Audiences – The Edinburgh Festivals
• Digital Curation: Separating Necessary From Noise

Art Influencing Tech

• Data Visualization, Policy, and the Arts
• Purveyors of Cool: Art, Culture and Brands
• Against the wall: Converse takes street art social
• Social Storytelling: Real-World Experience
• Bridging Art & Big Data for Global Empowerment
• Brands: The New Indie Filmmakers?
• Beyond Dance Dance Revolution
• Creative Energy: Renewing the fight for renewables

Museums

• Marketing Museums: From the Web to the Door
• The Public is Present: Exhibition Subsites at MoMA
• Radically Open Cultural Heritage Data on the Web
• Buttons & Boogers, A year at the Exploratorium
• Virtual Playdate With Mona Lisa
• Out of this World Engagement

Making Art with Tech

• Theatre: Games Audiences Play
• Film, Art and Branding in Experiential Design
• The frontline report of Japanese Interactive Arts
• QR Codes, Technology, and a New Era of Fine Art
• Artists in Labs: Participatory Design at Eyebeam
• 3D – From Idea Concept to Money Maker
• Doing it in a Browser: UX Design and Internet Art
• Storytelling Within a Self-Propagating Engine
• Mobilizing Digital Design
• You’ve made Something Good, but is it Art?
• Virtual Gets Physical: The Future of Installations
• Living in Media: Cinekid’s Experimental Garden

Arts Convos that happen to be taking place during a Tech conference

• Everything is a Remix, So Steal Like An Artist
• Transmedia Writing for Screenwriters
• Cultural Conversation: Do we need Arts Journalism?
• Creative Business Models Beyond Copyright
• Tagging Culture: Digital’s Memetic Legacy 9
• DIY Design for Social Innovation

Artists Meet Techs

• Creative Love Bytes
• Meetup : Booze, Bites and Branding
• Expose yourself: Create a Design Career Mashup
• Why Creative Technologists Are the Future

And now for something a little different…The following panels didn’t actually mention art. But when reading the descriptions, their possible applicability to artists, makers, and managers was unmistakable:

• How the 2nd screen changes sports journalism
• Turn Inspiration to Action: Connect with Mobile
• Reykjavik’s Best Party and radical social media
• Storytelling Beyond Words: New Forms of Journalism
• Beyond Screens:Design for Interactive Environments
• “Making” stories: Libraries & community publishing
• Brain-Based Bonding: Winning People w/ Experiences

You don’t know me.

You may think you do. After all, if you read my blog, follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, ask me a question on Quora, join my circles on Google+, you know a number of things about me. You certainly know of my devotion to theatre, my love of film, my enthusiasm for social media and my predilection for jokes and puns. You may have watched or listened to me on the podcasts I did while with the American Theatre Wing. We may have exchanged messages of varying lengths on these topics, you may have been kind enough to thank me for some of what I have done. But for the majority of you reading this, you haven’t met me and don’t truly know me.

I have a wife, but do you know her name? How many siblings do I have? Who are my closest friends? What are my political views? What are the jobs I wanted but didn’t get? Which are the employers who wanted me, but to whom I said no? Who did I date before marrying? Was my heart ever broken? What experiences have resulted in my most profound sense of loss?

Mind you, I’m not taunting anyone, nor am I trying to discount what we have together. If you if are research inclined (or stalkerish), you can find the answers to many of these questions online (in some cases, with photos, for your amusement). My point is about – like most of what I share – social media and theatre.

I have about 3100 Twitter followers and about 550 Facebook friends (hello, everyone). I have no idea how many people have watched me on “Working in the Theatre,” listened to me on “Downstage Center,” or god help me, watched me in a judicial role on Cupcake Wars.  But as a result, most of you know the me I want you to see, the me I want to be. I am in control in a way I am not in face-to-face human interaction; there are many deleted tweets and blog passages that were in danger of going too far.

Social media offers us a particular opportunity to be the best version of ourselves, if we choose to use it for such a purpose. As someone who has always retained a sense of awkwardness in certain social situations (even though it may not be apparent), social media affords me the chance to say only what I want to say when I want to say it. I can edit it as necessary and, if I’m quick enough, even delete it before it really gets out. It gives me the means to gather an ever-widening circle of people with common interests, with whom I can talk, joke, or debate, if I choose to do so. And I can withdraw whenever I wish, to the insecurity of real life, ironically enough.

I have said more than once that I was drawn to theatre in high school because, while I wasn’t shy, I thrived on the experience of being in plays since I always knew what to say next. Someone else had worked out the conversation and all I needed to do was deliver the lines and if I did so with what passed for 17-year-old skill, I could achieve the desired result, particularly laughter, which is my drug of choice. As I grew older, and genuine talent was required, I stepped aside, seeking a life in which I could be of service to those who wrote the words and music, spoke and sang the lines, who could produce the desired effect.

Social media has given us all the opportunity to be on stage. What is Twitter but an ongoing play where brief thoughts must be translated to words? Isn’t it an extended improv exercise, or a perpetual, immersive Sleep No More (with much more talk but without all the running and sweating)? Aren’t blogs our monologues, rarely spoken aloud in our own voice? Perhaps they are our inner monologues, depending upon our topic, and how much we choose to share.

I often read comments from people pondering, discussing, hoping that social media and theatre will converge in a manner which produces a whole new experience, for artists and audience alike. But I think that social media is theatre already, a set of artificial worlds which we choose to enter or not. It is not cute like SimCity, it is not as visceral as L.A. Noire, it doesn’t burn calories like Wii Sports. We can choose anonymity, pseudonyms and avatars behind which to hide, but that defeats the purpose. It is a world much like our own, although we can banish those we find objectionable, by blocking or unfriending them.

To join, enjoy and benefit from the never-ending story playing out in social media, we must be some simulacrum of ourselves, always in the moment, always open to whoever may join the scene. By joining, we brand ourselves as exhibitionists, putting ourselves into the spotlight for others to enjoy or judge. But we are part of a team writing a script, billions of words every second, and though we know there are countless scenes playing out elsewhere, we are always in our own, or choosing which to observe. And it’s all being saved on hard drives around the world, perhaps to be played out again someday.

The quote under my high school yearbook photo was apt then, as the star of high school plays, and remains apt today, as a figure of minor recognition in a certain field. It is drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Mother Night, the story of an American spy whose true identity is never revealed, and so he lives in hiding, reviled as a Nazi sympathizer. “We are what we pretend to be,” wrote Vonnegut’s protagonist. “So we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

My name is @hesherman. What’s yours? Let’s play.

Why did I go into PR? It’s simple, really. I like telling people about things that I’m excited about. Truly and authentically, and that’s it. I’m a music and theater nerd, so I sort of stumbled from oboe performance major and Michael Olmert’s British plays in performance class to student job to internship to full-time job, learning as I went, and telling myself “don’t screw up.” I’ve occasionally referred to PR as “my art” when explaining, wistfully, that I no longer play oboe.

Learning on the job is tough. I haven’t had a lot of guidance, I’m expected to produce results, and I didn’t know where to start. I spent a lot of time looking for mentors, advice, and “how-to.” The Internet was my library, and the Bad Pitch Blog became my very favorite encyclopedia.

The Bad Pitch Blog has been famous for the last 5 and a half years as a PR industry watch-dog. Co-founders Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer ‘out’ PR people who have written really bad pitches and then sent them, untargeted, to the media masses. In the very first post on January 20, 2006, Dugan explains, “It’s our hope that the Bad Pitch blog will entertain the true victims of this practice, the PR industry, and it will help the guilty parties improve. Hopefully the blog will someday become obsolete.”

Of course, it is still going strong.

I took these case studies to heart, and the advice gleaned from PRSA panels with veteran journalists and the occasional PR pros who I sought out: journalists hate certain kinds of follow-ups. No one reads full-length press releases, unless they are looking for particular details that aren’t all in one easy-to-read format. Journalists hate phone calls. Journalists are cranky, busy people, who need certain kinds of information when they’re looking for it, and if you ask stupid questions, you will get fried. If you are annoying, unprofessional, or rude, you will get shut down.

Why do PR people keep doing the same things?

Reading these case studies, and the many outed by industry publications, TechCrunch, etc, I am baffled by the practices of many established PR firms who somehow continue to book big clients and enjoy relationships, even when they don’t have their clients’ best interests at heart. We still have PR panels where journalists repeat the same “Dos and Don’ts,” and we still have PR firms charging their clients for hours to write press releases that may never get read “because that’s how we do things.” PR professionals, unlike an in-house person wearing many hats, have (or should take!) the time to dedicate to getting their core craft right.

Does an arts organization, or a startup, or a small business really need PR?

I know that arts administrators, like start-ups, are over-worked, under-paid, and trying to stretch every last dollar. They don’t have time or money to waste on a firm that can’t deliver value or would somehow make them look bad. And worse, I know that the problematic PR people are the ones talked about the most, so non-PR folks are distrustful, anxious to let go of their baby or entrust the message to someone else.

But sometimes, you might be too close to your message, which can lead you into similar (or worse) mistakes.

How do you sort through the clutter to find someone who’s going to be right for you?

One of the reasons people are hesitant to invest in PR is the challenge of measuring results and communicating value. You want to trust that your partner/consultant understands what is important to you and timely/relevant to the press, media, and target audiences, so that, even if they are not producing results immediately, the work over time will build awareness around the right message. With PR, marketing, and social media consultants, you want to look at two things as a client: first, what is this person’s track record, and, second, what is the process by which they communicate your message, pursue coverage, and create buzz?

As I continue to learn and build my own full-time PR shop, it’s important to keep things in perspective, and hold myself to high standards.

To that end, I am delighted to announce an event sponsored by Tweetreach, Hansen’s Natural Soda, 2amt and Adobe, titled How to Choose the Right PR Solution in a Crowded Market at Adobe Systems in San Francisco on September 6, 2011. We will have Richard Laermer himself on a panel with some of my other mentors: Stuart McFaul of Spiralgroup and Rory O’Connor of Fleishman Hillard. Matt Rozen from Adobe will join us, and we’ll discuss all of these questions and more. As my co-organizer Evan Hamilton likes to say, “Blood is expected…”

Sometime in the 1970s, the once ubiquitous gossip columnist Rona Barrett began reporting box office grosses during her regular appearances on Good Morning America. Prior to that, such statistics were available only to readers of Variety, long the entertainment bible (and perhaps to Hollywood Reporter readers as well, though as a teen I only knew of Variety). What she unleashed was a revolution in entertainment reporting, in which the general public began hearing about weekly grosses for the movies, detailed Nielsen television ratings, volume of record albums (later CDs and later mp3) sold weekly, even the Broadway box office grosses. Across the country, what was once industry information became popular fodder, so much so that the movies manage to get press out of projected box office tallies on Monday, actual receipts on Tuesday and projected receipts on Thursday and/or Friday. Entertainment became about “the numbers.” (Ironically, in this same period, as Variety shrank, Off-Broadway and regional grosses disappeared, even for those in the industry.)

A successor to this awareness came courtesy of Amazon.com, which hourly updates every book’s sales rank, and while the number is based on relative sales and does not reveal the actual count of books sold, it has proven fascinating as well. For authors of newly released books, it’s like crack. Ask anyone you know who’s had a book published. If they don’t admit to checking their Amazon numbers frequently, they’re lying.

But “the numbers” have taken an interesting turn in these burgeoning days of social media. First, it was simply how many friends we have on Facebook (thereby diluting the true meaning of the word ‘friend’ for much of the world), then how many followers we have on Twitter. Most social media platforms provide some comparable measure, and in doing so, set up a competition among users.

We’ve learned just today that the numbers can be gamed, for a while at least: Newt Gingrich’s million Twitter followers turned out to be highly inflated, as the vast majority of them proved to be fictitious accounts created solely to aid those who were collecting numbers across Twitter; others were bots that automatically follow people, often in an effort to get them to click on highly suspect or even dangerous links.

The next step in social media numbers has been the emergence of services that seek to rank users influence in social media across platforms. Klout may be the best known, Peer Index is gaining recognition, and they’re proliferating: Twitsdaq, Twitalyzer, TwentyFeet and Tweetstats are among the many seeking to rank you (and get you to subscribe to their “premium,” paid analytical services). There are also reports that in some industries, employers are beginning to look at these rankings when considering candidates for jobs.

Why do I recount all of this? Because while we may not yet have bar codes tattooed on our arms or the backs of our necks (choose your own dystopian vision) , we are ourselves being reduced to numbers, our worth being determined by our online activity, with little leeway for vacation, illness, or simply the demands of everyday life.

I’m being hyperbolic, I hear you cry. Yes, of course I am. But once out of college and past the arbiter of class rank, we have been judged solely on our achievements. Perhaps those on Wall Street could be judged by earnings, or film stars on their quoted payday per movie, but the people and organizations involved in creating art were judged qualitatively and subjectively, not quantitatively by some unknown algorithm.

I have fallen prey to this insidious practice and its lure of achievement by rank. I am weaning myself from it, although only two weeks ago I took part in a series of e-mails with PeerIndex because I was convinced that their data on me was wrong (in fact, it was, and my ranking has been rapidly rising ever since). I shudder to think that, had I not caught this and some prospective employer decided to check up on me, I’d be viewed as a social media failure. But I’m now controlling the impulse to check my rank on all of these services daily, or to seek new tools of measurement, though I’m not about to forgo them completely (hey, Klout is sending me a $10 coupon because I’m influential enough to sample a sandwich company’s new pulled pork offering).

But I worry about numerical assessments of effectiveness, especially if social media becomes truly ingrained in the national psyche, and it’s certainly well on its way to being lodged there. Having worked in a field where the primary goal is qualitative (read artistic) achievement, albeit with budgetary and audience measures, we may begin to be judged not just on what we put on our stages or produce as individuals, but as influencers or the influenced, those who lead and those who follow.  Now we don’t just hope for a maximum number of stars from a critic for our shows, or the greatest amount of money we can raise, we are being personally quantified, compared and scored.

During my years at the American Theatre Wing, I would often, when discussing The Tony Awards and its peers in film, TV and music, make reference to a fascinating book entitled The Economy of Prestige by James F. English. Boiling the book’s thesis down with utter simplicity, it explores the process of awards-giving for artistic achievement, and how that process will always be imperfect because by comparing, ranking and choosing a “best” among works of art, we are forcing those works out of the creative realm and into the language of the marketplace. So it is with social media ranking.

Klout, PeerIndex and their cohorts now dispassionately judge our organizations and ourselves daily, and their wider acceptance can only diminish our creative achievements. As a longtime fan of science fiction on the page and on film, I see these rankings and I fight against them like so many revolutionaries who fought (will fight?) futuristic totalitarian societies, and I want to shout, “I am a human being. I am a man of the theatre. I am not a number.”

Like all speculative fiction, we’re not going to know for a while what this all means, but maybe we can prevent SkyNet from becoming self-aware, stop the crystal in our palm from turning black, rebel against Big Brother. But it all depends. Are you keeping score?

The inquiries, mostly via Twitter, are cordial, casual and polite. “Let us know what you think,” they ask, in response to my mentioning what show I’ll be seeing later that day. “I loved it,” they say, “Hope u do 2.”

Until three weeks ago, I had a standard answer to these conversational inquiries about Broadway shows. I would say that given my role at the American Theatre Wing and The Tony Awards, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to voice my opinions one way or another. People respected that, and often seemed sheepish about having asked. I’m sorry if I undermined the very point of social media by refusing a reply, by being anti-social.

Now I have no cover, so to speak. But I’ve decided, at least for now, to maintain my policy in a general sense. I have been known to send effusive tweets over Off-Broadway or regional work that isn’t in Tony contention and I’ll still do so, while saying little about Broadway work, since I retain a Tony vote. You might ask whether pointing out what I go to see isn’t waving a red cape if I’m staying mum about my ultimate opinion; that’s a fair charge, but I do it mostly so those who have come to know me online will not think me solely a Broadway baby and develop a sense of the range – and limits – of what I see.

Keeping one’s opinion to one’s self is hardly the operative ethos of Internet intercourse. Indeed, many see the Internet as the perfect medium for broadcasting their opinions on a wide variety of subjects, whether or not they have any educated basis for such opinions.  Despite that cavil, I have often applauded the means by which the Internet has afforded every individual a broadcast voice, via Twitter, Facebook or countless other applications.

Too often I’ve seen this populist medium used as the platform for virulent versions of what professional critics do in the conventional media: declaring a show worthy or unworthy, attacking artists for offenses current or past, saying whatever comes to mind because there’s no editor or editorial standard to which they must adhere. More than once I’ve likened social media to the early days of broadcasting, and that’s still true, but in so many cases it also resembles the Wild West, with its language closer to Deadwood than to Oklahoma!.

We all know that strong, highly opinionated voices get attention and that is proven daily in the polarized messaging that passes for political conversation.  This cannot be the language for the arts. I worry that in trying to make a name for oneself in the online media circus, people seek to be as provocative, as snarky, as incendiary as they can be in order to stand out from the crowd, generating more page views, more retweets, more +1’s than the next commentator. While they may in fact do so from a place of passion about the art of the theatre, their actions, their writing, serve it poorly, since their negative hyperventilations serve only to promote or define themselves, rather than prove of benefit to anyone involved in the making of art.

Now don’t misunderstand me – I am not anti-critic, whether old media or new. I admire and maintain cordial relationships with a number of fairly prominent critics, and enjoy their insights regardless of whether I agree with them or not; I bridle only at those who seem to take pleasure in their pans. Unfortunately, it is those latter critics who the newly enfranchised prefer to emulate.

So, some might say, why don’t I use the internet to become the critic I hope all should aspire to be? There are several reasons, but one is perhaps the most important: conflict of interest. I have been working professionally in theatre for some 30 years, and so it is relatively rare that I see a production where I do not know some artist (in some cases many artists) involved in the production. For me to take on the role of critic now (even though I did so in my collegiate years) would create an impossible dilemma: either I risk offending people who I admire, enjoy and even love (since no one’s work is always impeccable), or I would have to lie to readers, making the point of my taking on a critic’s mantle completely hypocritical.

God knows, I have opinions. Most people can tell that within minutes of meeting me, and certainly those who know me have heard my thoughts about the many shows I see, often at length. But what I say in relative private is measured for each individual who hears it; I rarely dissemble, but I do omit. Social media simply doesn’t afford that degree of narrowcasting and personalization.

I am happy to engage in discussion and debate about theatrical topics, and Twitter and blogging have afforded me that opportunity, far beyond the circles in which I travel here in New York. I’m pleased to enthuse about remarkable aspects of works I see, without necessarily offering a blanket opinion, for broad public consumption. I’m most pleased when I can add a few obscure facts or personal reminiscences to discussions of theatrical work that I spot in the endless stream of online opining.

But what did I think of this show or that? Is my thumb up or down? Unless I’m enthusiastic and the show lesser known, I’ll remain silent or nibble around its edges only, as contrary as that is to my nature. I will not be a cheerleader who loves indiscriminately, but if I cannot say anything nice, as my mother taught me, I will not say anything at all. Readers can read into that silence as they wish. Theatre doesn’t need more people saying what’s wrong with it. I’d rather be someone who reinforces all of the things that are so, so right.

As a result of fairly assiduous Twitter use, I have a very respectable score on Klout. However, now that Klout is about to start factoring in FourSquare activity, I have begun “checking in” these past few days, though I registered at least a year ago and find it somewhat juvenile (Badges? I don’t need no stinking badges). I am one of the select 10 million (an oxymoron to be sure) who has secured a Google+ account, however thus far I have made but a single post, comparing the coming Facebook/Google+ wars to the VHS/Beta wars of some two decades ago. I make only the occasional Facebook post, but at least I no longer restrict my friends to those I met in school. I keep up on LinkedIn, but only connect to people with whom I have genuinely worked, to maintain the integrity of the platform. My PeerIndex score is lousy, due I believe, to a tech error (reported, unresolved) that leaves out the vast majority of my Twitter activity. I’ve largely given up on Quora, because the questions being posed in the areas where I have some expertise are predominantly: a) subjective, b) silly and c) reminiscent of the Monty Python “How To Do It” sketch which offered simple instructions on things like how to be a gynecologist. I captured one of the free Spotify accounts earlier this week due to a car company promotion (I already forget the brand, and I don’t own or intend to buy a car anyway), although I have listened to only a single song.

Enough?

Let me also remind you that these are all personal accounts, as I’m in a job transition. So all of the above is either building my personal brand, providing fun as I decompress from a series of stressful jobs, or completely wasting time that I could be using more productively.

If this is what I’m facing, I can’t help but wonder how arts organizations are wading through the developing, churning world of social media, since every week seems to produce a new site or app designed to revolutionize how we relate to each other, be it as individuals, businesses & patrons, artists & audiences, and so on.

Traditionally, arts organizations haven’t been early technological adopters, largely because of a lack of internal expertise and the high cost of entry. I am old enough to remember Hartford Stage’s first fax machine (a wonder), first computer network (so much better than electric typewriters), first Mac and desktop publishing software (which we discovered didn’t actually design things for us) and first computerized ticketing system (somebody else’s headache, but terrific). But that technological adoption, in the latter half of the 1980s (e-mail became a standard while I was at Goodspeed Musicals), seems slow by the standards of today.

One significant factor in today’s more rapid adoption is that of cost. The most prevalent tools of communication at the moment, many name-checked above, are free. If you’ve got a computer and internet access (and for real convenience, a smartphone as well), you’ve pretty much got what your organization needs to jump into the fray.

But the challenge is deciding whether to do so or when to do so. Certainly if a promising new service appears that requires you to secure your company’s name from squatters (remember the domain name rush that characterized the spread of the internet itself?), it should be done right away. But beyond that, there needs to be a certain amount of wait and see.

If your organization has an in-house IT department (now the norm at large not-for-profits), there are probably one or more technologically savvy individuals forever lobbying every department about a new tool that can make their work more efficient, from the newest in collaborative CAD programs to online donation systems. Development, marketing and p.r. departments are watching social media in particular, both to give the organization an edge and to show the public that the organization has an edge.

But it has generally been acknowledged that just as freedom isn’t free, neither is social media. The cost is one of time and brainpower: does the organization have someone on staff who has the conceptual and technical savvy to figure out how to best use the cascading platforms? Can the organization afford to give over a portion of the time of an existing staffer to that pursuit, or to hire someone to focus exclusively on this area? Is the cost-value equation favorable for being active and meaningful on multiple platforms? What is the ultimate goal for the organization?

I am hardly the first person to pose these questions. Indeed, my Twitter feed is bombarded by advice — and solicitations to pay for advice — on how to best utilize these resources. In fact, I’m pretty stunned by the number of people who proclaim themselves as social media experts or gurus, in a field that is, in terms of widespread awareness and usage, maybe six or seven years old. I’m not being dismissive of true experts and explorers, as I’ve spoken with some very shrewd folks, but just as companies paid a fortune for their first websites because the practice of building them was so new, I fear the ratio of people with true insight to those who merely post a lot on Facebook poses risks for less sophisticated groups who feel they may be missing an important trend.

So I want to offer a single piece of pragmatic advice about adopting a new platform or, as the once dominant MySpace has shown, when to abandon one. That advice is to analyze, in a full organizational survey, why you’re doing it. What do you hope to achieve? Can the platform conceivably do what you want? Has it reached a tipping point where more than just first-adopters are playing with it?

As an aside, I should say that in most cases, the leaders of large organizations are ill-equipped to make these decisions, because they haven’t the time to understand these new forms of media themselves. They know how to search on Google, they can click on the link for a funny YouTube video, they may have a personal Facebook page, but their jobs don’t afford them the time to delve deeply into these areas. Indeed, I fear that many of them feel they are above it; at a recent LORT conference, I did a show of hands survey of managers asking how many knew their organizations were using social media, and how many had their own presence. Many hands appeared for the first question, but few remained up after the second. Yet these platforms are not just “for the kids,” and they certainly shouldn’t be relegated to intern-level responsibility, as is so often the case. This will change over time, as succeeding generations will take social media as simply the norm, not innovation.

Social media, like it or not, is transforming how people relate to each other, to the businesses they frequent and the organizations where they participate and which they may support. It is ignored at its own peril, but it is also embraced, if not with danger, then with caution.

While adopting a child is significantly more profound on many lives, adoption of social media platforms demands some marginally equivalent level of self-scrutiny and awareness. Otherwise, your organization will find itself making errors in public perception and in allocation of resources. And as we’re learning again and again, we post, tweet and share at our own risk. If a twitter revolution can ostensibly bring down a dictator, think what could happen if you use it wrong – or it turns on you, like an ungrateful child.

P.S. Those who found this essay online probably find it to be obvious, or old news, precisely because you’re far enough into the social world to be ahead of the thinking herein. But perhaps you have some discussion to provoke within your organization, or someone to persuade. Maybe this can help.

It’s a great word. “Embargo.” It seems to come from a different age, or a world in which brinksmanship over major issues comes into play. Oil embargo. Trade embargo. But it’s alive, if not exactly well, in the relationship between the media and those that they cover.

In the past 36 hours, there have been some very interesting comments on Twitter via #2amt about “embargoing” reviews of arts events. The primary participants have been Trey Graham of NPR, Peter Marks of The Washington Post, Alli Houseworth from Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Nella Vera of The Public Theater. As a “recovering” publicist, I’ve lobbed in a few thoughts as well, but I though the issue was worth more than a few 140 character salvos.

In brief summary: there has been a longstanding “gentleman’s agreement” (pardon my patronymic) between arts groups and the media that cover them that while productions may be seen by the press in advance of the official opening at designated performances, reviews will be embargoed for release until that official opening occurs. This has been in place for some time, although it is not theatrical tradition from days of yore – it is something that has been in place in the U.S. for not more than 50 years and is, I believe, an even more recent phenomenon in England.

Social media has upended this polite détente (as has, perhaps, Spider-Man, but for this discussion, let’s declare that an anomaly and move past it), since we now have personal media platforms that allow any audience member to broadcast their own opinions immediately upon exiting a theatre, if not during the performance itself. So the major media, with more traditional roots, finds itself either days or weeks behind in reporting on a cultural event while the court of public opinion renders verdicts left and right, or they have to report on that very public opinion before issuing their own.

Marks has commented that he is precluded from tweeting his opinions in advance of his review appearing; Frank Rizzo of The Hartford Courant was tweeting his thoughts on a show at the Williamstown Theatre Festival the very night he saw it, although in that case it was the press opening. There’s obviously no industry-wide practice and every outlet is formulating its own approach.

I should make clear that none of these journalists are sneaking into preview performances to which they’re not invited. They are respecting whatever preview period the company or producers have requested; they just chafe against having to wait, either out of professional courtesy to an externally imposed release date or an internal policy which dictates adherence to the print date.

I also need to state my belief that the performing arts do not truly come alive until they’re before an audience, and I believe that artists should have a reasonable amount of time to work on their creations in front of an audience (yes, a paying audience appropriately advised as to the show’s inchoate form) before opinions are rendered. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like have certainly made it impossible to completely manage such a protected environment and that’s just a reality of our world; to rail against it is foolish and unproductive. The question is whether major media (old or new), with its vast reach, should play by the old rules, or adopt the “embargoes be damned” attitude that the public has unknowingly employed.

For arts groups, one rationale for the embargo has been to achieve a “roadblock” effect with their reviews – a great many come out on the same day, having a better chance of achieving traction in the public’s mind. But as members of the press will often say, they are not marketing arms for the arts, but reporters or writers of opinion, so why must they adhere to a marketing or press plan? Frankly, so long as journalists don’t start writing about works of art before they are acknowledged to be complete, this practice may have to fall under the weight of the populist-driven social media.

As for tweeting a mini-opinion in advance of a full review, I have to say I don’t think that serves anyone. If the public, as some posit, want only bite-sized chunks of information, then critics are playing into their hands and hastening their own demise. After all, if you know a review is pro or con, will you necessarily look for a more nuanced appraisal a day or two later? Will the craft of reviewing at long last be reduced, in all arts, to the thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach popularized by Siskel and Ebert? Does anyone want reviews to be nothing but capsules, star ratings or a little man and his chair?

I must confess to puzzlement about how much the traditional media is approaching social media. Instead of using it to deepen its own coverage, since website space is less dear than newsprint, and the reach unfettered by geography and logistics, some papers undermine their own print versions in their race to populate a Twitter feed. The New York Times, inexplicably, shares virtually all of their Sunday arts coverage through Twitter two or three days before the Sunday paper is out, rendering the section old news by the time it appears fully online or (yes, I’m old) on my doorstep.

I will say I’m intrigued by critics like Marks or the prolific Terry Teachout, who will actively engage with their readers on social media, breaking down the ivory tower mentality cherished by critics only a generation ago. The idea that critics will interact with individuals, and perhaps artists, in a public forum, is tremendously exciting to me, and may well be the best thing to happen to artist/critic relations in many years. Indeed, might early tweets result in critics getting feedback and perspective before their final verdict is rendered?

As for the embargo: I think it has begun to crumble and that erosion will only accelerate as every single person who cares to becomes their own media mogul and true stars of the medium begin to achieve influence akin to that afforded by old media. I say, as long as the artists’ work is done, let’s be happy that the press is so eager to cover us. But I caution the press not to be so eager to adopt the new paradigm that they undermine themselves, leading to ever-briefer, ever-more-marginalized assessments of artists’ work.

or, How Meta-Conversations are Taking Over Our Theatres

Photo illustration featuring members of American Theater Company. (William DeShazer/Tribune / July 2, 2011)

My friend Briana, a brilliant arts educator and visual artist, alerted me (via a tag on Facebook) to an article about the rising phenomenon of texting in the theater and asked me, as an enthusiastic social media proponent and arts administrator, what my thoughts were on the subject. The article quoted multiple sources that implied that the rise in smartphone use during performances, movies, and live events represented a new infantilization of adults- a sensory distraction that was addictive and destructive to the social fabric and to the performances themselves.

So what do I think about that?

I think that you can’t give hundreds of millions of people a device that fits into their pocket and gives them instant access to all the information ever gathered on the planet (and everyone they’ve ever met) and expect this not to transform the way we do everything (including experience live performance). Right now, we are about 2 years past an event horizon that we will later look back at and describe as being as truly transformative as the invention of the electric lightbulb. Right now we tend to only notice when it disrupts our social norms (like the expectation that the only conversation happening in a darkened theater is happening between the speaker/actor/performer and the audience as a silent, absorbent group).

Its a kind of social wild west right now, a lawless time where disruptive technology has arrived but the social agreements that integrate that technology into our lives successfully is still emerging. The new etiquette will emerge. But it will not be the same as before smartphones existed. And the social explosion definitely privileges the visual learners and fluent writers/communicators (whether they are introverts or extroverts) over the kinesthetic and auditory communicators. An extreme introvert who is a fluid writer has a better chance of finding strong community and rising to the top socially in this new world order than the extroverted verbal communicator or the athlete for whom words are not a strong suit.

To use a high school shorthand, watch out captain of the football team, the world popularity contest might just be won these days by the D&D nerd with a wry sense of humor and a good grasp of the english language .

This is  going to create new elites and make those (like teachers, politicians and stand-up comics) who are used to dominating a one way communication channel through primarily auditory cues, extremely uncomfortable.

But here’s the thing:

The ability to have a meta-conversation with an external community while you are experiencing a primary event (through texting, twitter, facebook, etc) is a hugely useful development (we are already seeing it transform how conferences are managed,  how politics gets done, anywhere where the work is about compiling or influencing consensus opinion). It’s too useful to be suppressed from all but the most necessary aspects of daily life. It provides a feedback loop, knowledge base, basis for social cohesion and opportunity for reflection/revelation while an event is in process, rather than in the car on the ride home.

Some of that feedback loop is “shallow.” But it serves the same ends toward relationship building and social cohesion as time honored practices like small talk and coffee meetings- light touches that pave the way for more meaningful network building. And some of that feedback loop can disrupt the primary conversation in useful ways… as Alli Houseworth recently demonstrated with her conference tweets heard round the world.

A paradigm shift is coming. As primary communicators (artists/performers/speakers) we will need to let go of the expectation that silence and eyes on the front of the room means attention successfully grabbed. Instead we should  look for active meta-conversations about the topic/performance to signal successful absorption and dissemination of the experience.

For the performers/speakers who successfully make the paradigm shift there are huge opportunities to gauge the relevance, impact, popularity and success of an event in a whole new way. There’s also huge risks- you will not be able to control the message if you bomb. You will need to work harder to be more interesting than the meta-conversations you have inspired. You will need to create work that allows space for meta-conversation to unfold. That will be an uncomfortable adjustment for most people.

And, just like our brains require the occasional absence of light in order to have downtime and recharge (thus we don’t keep our lightbulbs on all night) society will ultimately evolve  safe spaces where we will, by mutual agreement, turn off our devices and be whole and complete in the moment. Will the theater be one of those spaces? I’m not so sure. Perhaps.

I know that I, avid social user that I am, give myself 10 days in the desert each year, at a place where the local cell tower can only handle 24 calls at a time, where I am forced to be disconnected, unplugged, and engaged with “meatspace” full time for a week. But I understand that respite for what it is. Not a return to a non-connected “normal” but a momentary nap from which I will awake into the meta-conversation that is the new defining normal of our lives.

Join us this weekend at City Theatre in Miami for the CityWrights Conference 2011. We’ll be livestreaming several sessions via NewPlayTV. We’ll also be tweeing throughout the conference using both the #2amt and #cwc11 tags over on Twitter. Send questions, comments and conversation our way.

Below is a schedule of the weekend’s livestreamed sessions.

Friday 24 June

2:00 — 3:30pm ET - Dramatists Guild Town Hall Meeting
led by Gary Garrison, Executive Director of Creative Affairs, Dramatists Guild, and Andie Arthur, Executive Director of the Theatre League of South Florida

3:45 — 4:45pm ET - Dramatists on the Web
A conversation with 2amt’s David J. Loehr & Andie Arthur about playwrights and the internet, social media and outreach, with a focus on new methods of making connections, telling stories and working together.

Saturday 25 June

2:00 — 3:00pm ET - Professional Development Without an Agent
A talk by David Faux, Director of Business Affairs, Dramatists Guild

4:00 — 5:00pm ET - Theatre Smarts and Etiquette
A discussion on how to build relationships effectively

6:00 — 7:00pm ET - Decisions & Transparency in Season Programming Roundtable
A roundtable with Artistic Directors: Henry Fonte, Israel Horovitz, David J. Loehr, John Manzelli, Ricky J. Martinez, Stephanie Norman, Jeff Revels & Deborah Sherman, moderated by Andie Arthur

John Lahr, New Yorker theater critic, wrote a piece on Julie Taymor’s frustration with the process of creating a new theatrical work in the era of instant feedback, Twitter, and focus groups. It’s a great piece, full of historical perspective on the role of audience (that is to say, amateur) criticisms of theater. He rubbed me the wrong way, however, when he generalized his annoyance with those who tweet their opinions. He asserts Twitter users are “crickets, not critics,” spewing a “cultural gas of opinion and vitriol.” And, per Lahr, “the Tweetosphere [sic] has no interest in ambiguity, irony, or careful distinction.” So, I proved him right and vented my spleen in this tweet.

A few people must’ve enjoyed this, because they retweeted it, in the process boosting my Klout score 1 point. And I know why. Snark sells. Especially on Twitter. Or in Lahr’s words, “the glibbest and loudest rule.” This may be why Twitter was the perfect medium for Dan Sinker‘s brilliant, satirical @MayorEmanuel saga. With 140 character limits, Twitter encourages the sort of reductionist, over-confident, unambiguous sound-bite phraseology that I so lament in “serious” public discourse.

I suppose, therefore, Lahr has a point in his critique. But he makes the mistake of conflating the limitations of the medium with the limitations of the users. That’s like blaming Peter Parker for not being able to execute aerial acrobatics without visible guide wires in the theater like he does in the movies. As David Loehr and Brandon Moore said, many who tweet are also long form bloggers, informed content matter experts, well versed in subtlety and irony and all that nonsense.

That doesn’t automatically make us Lahr’s scholarly nor critical peers. I’ll be the first to admit nobody would ever give me a theater critic job at The New Yorker. But we also know that there are far fewer such jobs then there are gifted critics. Many are simply toiling away on blogs and on Twitter, because that’s the outlet available to them, and are frankly not deserving of Lahr’s ignorant judgment.

But I’m not really writing this in defense of amateur critics. The good ones can write better than me and defend themselves. I’m writing this because Lahr’s vision of theater as essentially a one-way communication form (with an indulged peanut gallery giving feedback only through gasps, laughter, jeers or applause) may still be dominant, but is by no means unchallenged.

Devised work is showing that you can, in fact, create art by committee. Though, theater artists have been collaboratively creating art for so long that we shouldn’t be surprised. Lahr writes, ”the essence of great theatre is an expression of the individual voice of the makers,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the oxymoron in his own sentence. What, exactly, is the individual voice of a (plural) group of makers? Scripting and otherwise building a show through ensemble improv is certainly nothing new. Conference panel discussions, which are sort of a less entertaining form of theater, can be shifted and enriched mid-course by a gutsy provocateur. If art can be created by committee, how can we so glibly rule out focus groups? I’m serious.

Why not include and build on the audience’ input, either in development of a piece or during a performance? And I’m not just talking about the mad-lib type suggestions that you might throw out at a Second City review. I’m talking about making the art more relevant to the audience by including them in the creative process. Directly, transparently, without defensiveness or arrogant posturing about the false superiority of the story-teller over the story-tellee.

What could be more hyper-local and intensely relevant to new audiences? What could engender deeper communication and relationship between artist and community? In what better way could theater artists learn more about diverse audiences that we so desperately claim to want to serve? How else can we better hold up a mirror to society?

I’m bone-tired of theater artists and institutions that seem to think they have a monopoly on illuminating the human condition. When we treat theater as one-way communication, why are we surprised when the stories we’re telling don’t lead to a flood of new audience members banging down our doors? Instead of thinking of ourselves as uniquely qualified to tell stories, let’s realize that our unique qualifications are really just to tell stories in a certain WAY, with actors and a live audience. Everybody has stories they want to tell, including (and maybe especially) our potential but untapped audiences. Let’s use our skills to first learn and then share their stories, using our artistic forms. Let’s include them in the process, all but guaranteeing that they will become our collaborator-audience. In the process, we will broaden our own understanding of the humanity around us, which might even make us better artists.

NOTE: There are a few Chicago groups I know who are already doing this, in very different ways. I’d bet there are groups doing this all over the country, though they’re probably not on John Lahr’s radar. And even though these examples are in Chicago, I’ve a feeling even Scott Walters would approve. Further, I’d bet these models are sustainable in ways that some of our traditional theater companies can only dream of.

Barrel of Monkeys produces the hilarious and ever-changing That’s Weird, Grandma! from the texts that come from from writing workshops they run in Chicago Public Schools.

Albany Park Theater Project is an excellent multi-ethnic youth theater ensemble that builds their scripts from the life experiences of residents of Chicago’s diverse Albany Park neighborhood. The actors write and perform stories from their communities, while developing their talents as artists and performers.

Among other initiatives, Storycatchers sends theater and musical artists into a juvenile women’s correctional facility to help the young women perform their stories through scene work, poems, and song.

Companies like these give me great hope for the future of theater in an increasingly multicultural, networked society.

I’m live-blogging the first-ever Dramatists Guild conference. Please feel free to log on and either lurk or join the conversation. If there are opportunities for questions, and you submit any, I’ll try to sneak them in.

I may also be tweeting from time to time if you’d rather follow along that way, too. You can follow me at @GwydionS or check out the #2amt hashtag.

You can also view several sessions live, embedded below or directly at the New Play TV page at Livestream.

The Follow Friday posts are back!

We look at communities remembering their own stories and pulling together to give to the arts, philanthropy from donors and from theatre companies themselves, playwrights living in towns small and large. We also look at theatre companies working together and, well, working at all. And we check into the New York Public Library for some fun and games. These are the stories we’ve been following at 2amt this week.

Kris Vire on location, location, location
A look at Theatre Seven’s Chicago Landmark Project, a collection of short plays inspired by specific locations. The shows have their first previews tonight. Instead of inspiring future productions of this work, their hope is to inspire other places, other communities, to put together their own landmark projects. So let’s get on that.

Laura Axelrod on her town
Do you have to live in a city to be a playwright? Laura Axelrod asks and answers that question by sharing her own experiences. She continues by highlighting the benefits, the changes and the disadvantages of working from a small town. Finally, other thoughts and considerations. An excellent series of posts.

Howard Sherman on taking a break
Taking a break from the American Theatre Wing blog, Howard Sherman writes for the New York Times, suggesting that we stop and smell the roses. Is seeing too much theatre a bad thing? Do we spend too much time in the dark? Mark Shenton responds from across the ocean.

Euan Kerr on a free for all
In Minneapolis, Mixed Blood Theatre has decided to stop charging admission for mainstage productions. AD Jack Reuler calls it “radical hospitality.” Admission will be first-come, first-served. What some of the recent “are they crazy?” conversations online have missed is the fact that patrons don’t have to gamble on that–they’ll be able to reserve seats for $15. Are they crazy? Maybe. Like foxes.

Sasha Hnatkovich does the math
Can we do less, but better, with the same amount of funding? Sasha Hnatkovich of the Marin Theatre Company tries to follow the logic of Ralph Remington of the NEA and John McGuirk of the Hewlett Foundation as presented at the 2011 Theatre Bay Area Annual Conference. He’s not sure their numbers add up.

Aaron Andersen makes a federal case
Over at Createquity, Aaron walks us through the “sausage factory of government spending,” pointing out why it’s important to understand how and why it works. He also reminds us that we need to pay attention to more than questions of funding for the arts.

Bill Zlatos on Pittsburgh’s giving
Earlier this month, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and The Heinz Endowments initiated the Arts Day of Giving, sponsored by The Pittsburgh Foundation.. This was a 24-hour long, online campaign, a challenge to raise money against matching grants. Did it work? They raised $1,410,617.00, with a final matching percentage of 34%. Let’s see how many other cities and communities take up the larger challenge of trying an Arts Day.

Stephanie Orma on adding dimensions
A lovely profile of the work Alfalfa Studio has been designing for Amphibian Productions. Do your marketing materials and posters pop? If not, why not?

Jonah Lehrer on unconventional wisdom
When does the bounty of information and the solicitation of opinions become too much? Jonah Lehrer looks at the wisdom of crowds and the independence of individual thought.

James Still on remembering the future
In his keynote address at the Cohen New Works Festival at the University of Texas at Austin, James Still stops to take in the world, and takes us with him in the process. Creativity, individuality, observation and, in the end, connection.

Maxine Kern on women in theatre
From literary manager to artistic director, producer to dramaturg, Maxine Kern has had an amazing career. Here, she talks about the difference between working on new works and revivals, as well as her hopes for women in the current and future world of theatre.

Joanna Harmon on working together
As part of TCG’s What If…? series of blog posts, Joanna Harmon asks, “What if small companies and loose collectives of theatre artists were enabled by a single group of administrators, rather than each company reinventing its administrative wheel?” How would this work? It already is working in a few places. J. C. Lee responds, asking why we create our own companies to begin with, and why it’s important for artists to have a firm understanding of the business side of things.

James Fritz on the dearth of young male playwrights
In the Guardian, James Fritz panics at the thought that young male playwrights aren’t being adequately represented on the British stage. Meanwhile, Kimberly Lew picks his article apart, noting that the status quo is in no danger. Instead of focusing on what a wider, more diverse pool of writers takes away from one group, why not celebrate what they add to the art as a whole?

Charles McGrath on a literary shuffle
This is why we love the Elevator Repair Service. Having adapted and performed the totality of The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises as well as the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury, they devised a mashup of the three–to be performed in 22 minutes–and presented their Shuffle at the New York Public Library. You know you want to see this.

Elizabeth Keim on a flash mob in blank verse
Jane McGonigal devised a game as part of the New York Public Library’s anniversary celebration, Find the Future. Elizabeth went along for the challenge, a 24-hour sleepover at the library that, ideally, would end with a 600-page, group-written epic aided by–and tasked with unlocking–the secrets of the NYPL. Did it work?