Some thoughts from the internet on the future of theatre

Hipster dance classes are taking off in LA. Photo credit nytimes.com

by Michael Wheeler

The past week has hosted some novel conversations on contemporary theatre and how it is developing. Most interesting is how all of these perspectives are contributing to a larger conversation about what form theatre can take to engage, well, anyone under 40 who isn’t already in theatre. Here are some recent highlights:

In The Guardian, Lee Hall laments that the 20-30% arts funding cuts will bring down the curtain on British theatre’s golden age. At the core of his argument is that the new budgets will leave theatres unable to take artistic risks or be able to nurture and mentor the next generation of artistic talent:

“The post-1945 consensus understood this completely. The need for municipal theatres, the need to fund the experimenters (who of course become the next establishment), the need for national institutions, the need to represent the rich diversity of our society – allowing a place where we can all become richer by including the excluded – was centrally important to the interventions made. But more than this, there was an implicit understanding that our greatest talent could not be nurtured without support.”

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Huffington Post critic Monica Westin has a decidedly more upbeat perspective on Why Hipsters Will Save Theater in her review of David Cromer’s Cherrywood. Her thesis proposes that the ironic disengagement that permeates hipster culture has the potential to create a new kind of  theatre, that combines both “alienation effect” and “happening”. They (we), are capable of creating and enjoying this new approach to art as “the first generation of bohemian youth culture that’s not going to look like idiots–like the hippies and the punks–later for pretending to have all the answers, when all we had was a new way of dressing stupid.”

“But it’s the combination of the alienation effect and the happening that makes Cherrywood so important. In 1968 Peter Brook declared in The Empty Space that “The alienation effect and the happening effect are similar and opposite–the happening shock is there to smash through all the barriers set up by reason, alienation is to shock us into bringing the best of our reason into play… leading its audience to a juster understanding of the society in which it lived, and so to learning in what ways that society was capable of change.” How does alienation work? According to Brook is can use any rhetoric: “It aims continually at pricking the balloons of rhetorical playing–Chaplin’s contrasting sentimentality and calamity is alienation.” Brook couldn’t imagine a theater piece in which both could happen at once; life now demands this of theater, and Cherrywood delivers it.”

The TKTS iPhone Ap

Of course you can’t be a theatre-conscious hipster looking for the latest, coolest, cheapest tickets you can find without this new Ap for your iPhone, which lists all the Broadway and Off Broadway shows and discount rates that TKTS has available each day. This sort of technology is probably much better suited to attract the new generation of potential theatregoers that make same-day plans and aren’t looking to fork out an arm and a leg for a night out on the town. Is there the potential for indie companies to collaborate through this same technology? Now that we have thrown out the notion that we have to perform in the same space to have marketing/ticketing alliances shouldn’t we be all over this?

If you used your iPhone to get tickets, maybe you should keep using it once the show starts? Over at 2amtheatre they had a multi-perspective post and conversation about the type of interactive, invite the audience to communicate with their PDA during the performance type of stuff Praxis was experimenting with in March at Harbourfront Centre.  The consensus opinion seemed to be that imposing tweets on pre-existing scripts was a recipe for disaster, but that tweeting during shows had the potential to expand the medium if the pieces were built with this level of interactivity in mind. Travis Bedard provided some questions that should be considered while choosing to make work this way:

“But what can this technology enable for a playwright or deviser creating NEW work?

This is another possible tool on the utility belt for writers. It is indeed another entire plane of existence for characters.

Can extra-stage characters exist only in the Twitter-verse? Can the audience team up with one another for or against the stage characters?

What does the interaction between the sequestered, in-space audience and the free range Twitter audience look like?”

How well can the playwright and director control that?”

This last question is probably why there hasn’t been a HUGE amount of experimentation with this sort of thing. It is a process that confers less power to both playwright and director. Unproven methods that reduce the influence of the artistic leaders of a project are tough to get off the ground. I’m also a little confused about why Twitter is the only option being discussed as a technology to do this sort of thing. Facebook statuses, texts, tweets, IM, email, skype – we’re all using interactive digital technologies to improve our capacity to communicate. Why stratify it to a single tool exclusive to, well, hipsters? If we’re going to save theatre, we’re still going to do it with everyone else. It’s also important to remember what can happen when we get obsessed with a particular brand of technology.

Praxis has a brand new Fan Page (and Fan Page Sheriff)

Hello, Praxis blog readers!

A few weeks ago Michael Wheeler put me, Brittney A. Filek-Gibson, affectionately known as BFG, in charge of Praxis Theatre’s social media strategy. By which I mean he gave me the password to the Twitter account.  And held me to my months-old promise of creating a Praxis Theatre Facebook fan page.  I graciously accepted my newfound social media supremacy responsibility, along with the official title of Person Who Understands The Internet, though I suppose in hindsight that Internet Goddess would’ve been more concise.  But I digress…

With the tweets tweeting and the fan page built, M. Wheeler told me I should write a blog post introducing myself because, “I always think it’s weird that you don’t know who you are talking to through these tools.”  I was also asked to include an image, which I happily agreed to since the only other picture of me to appear on this blog is absolutely ridiculous (Fun Fact: it’s the first thing to pop up in a Google image search of my name, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?).  So fine, agreed, fantastic.  Except that now I’m staring at a computer screen the night before I promised my post would be done, I can practically see him shaking his head, and I have no idea what to tell all of you.  Eeek!

First I did what any reasonable person would do in my circumstances: stalled for time.  Then I did what any reasonable person who understands the internet would do: asked Twitter and Facebook for help.  My friends Carl and Lois suggested I tell you that I’m awesome.  Great, check, done. And that I was once in a play Carl produced in a parking lot. Long story.  Facebook yielded zero helpful results.  I assume this is because they recently changed their layout for the zillionth time, it keeps crashing, and no one can find anything.  Two strikes, social media, you are really failing me here!  I believed in you! And now I’ve made this whole post, which probably didn’t need to be longer than a paragraph, into a minor melodrama.  That is something you should know: I have, on occasion, been know to be the teeniest, tiniest bit dramatic.

Which leads me to the best suggestion Twitter generated this evening: talk about why I’m a performer.  I’m going to expand on “performer” and say that I’m a theatre artist.  And I’m a theatre artist because I believe that theatre can change the world.  Which might sound naïve or idealistic or silly, and maybe it is.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.  Theatre creates community, between artists, audiences, institutions, between everything and everyone with whom it comes in contact.  And through these connections, theatre is capable of impacting society, policy, people, ideas, and leading to change.  Or at the very least, asking the questions that lead us to the evaluations that lead us to change.  This is what I embrace as an artist, and I think it’s fundamental to what Praxis does as well.  In fact, Section 98 and the open-sourcing of our creative process is a perfect example of this attitude.

And what better way to contribute to and to expand our community than through social media?  While the blog is still the central focus of Praxis’s online presence, I think that both Twitter and Facebook provide another interesting opportunity to engage with the company in a different capacity and to continue creating that community.  And I am really excited to be part of that dialogue.  After all, the internet is basically responsible for me working with Praxis in the first place, which is the last thing I’m going to tell you about in this post (you could find out more about me and my antics by clicking here if you were so inclined).

As a recent graduate of NYU, I moved back to Toronto in late 2008.  I hadn’t lived here since I was nine, and it didn’t take long to be discouraged by the fact that I knew not one single person in the Toronto theatre world and I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.  This was a frustration I expressed at length in the comments on this very blog and one that I am not entirely done talking about. This was my official introduction to Praxis Theatre, followed by a brief meeting in the real world. Now fast forward to the Fringe Festival and an email offer of help on my behalf.  “Straight up, we need a stage manager,” says Michael Wheeler.  I was on vacation in Moab, UT at the time and I blame the desert heat for making me think this was a fantastic idea.  I’m grateful I agreed to take the risk of making a fool of myself, having never stage managed anything before, because I’ve had a blast and made some fabulous friends.  And I’m still doing it!  I’ve even figured most of the stage managing bit out since, although I still have no idea how to program a light board and please don’t talk to me about sound.  My point is that a little over a year ago, I was just a few initials in the comments section of this blog.  And now, here I am, Praxis, your guide to Twitter and Facebook.  Such limitless power responsibility! You’re stuck with me.  And I’m thrilled.

So I’ll leave you with the question that started it all: what should we talk about now?

Click here to join the new Praxis Theatre Facebook Fan Page