We take as a premise that Social Media is a performance platform both for the new World Theatre and the Theatre of the World.

Who are the new actors? What is the drama that they play? How different or similar might these platforms be from a more traditional performance venue? How does it affect the Performing Arts as we’ve known them? Is it an entirely new Performing Art? How is it realized, documented, preserved? Or is it?

We will play with some of these questions by bringing personal, popular and academic references to the table. E.J. Westlake’s “Friend me if you Facebook Generation Y and Peformative Surveillance” may be a departure point, although we can revise it and update it as we enter the discussion, as many of the references are already obsolete with the development of Facebook, as one of the platforms.

You can view this article here: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9005578/facebookperformativity.pdf

Current events, causes, life stories are case studies for how the media performs and how we perform within the media. Participants should be prepared to present a few of their own examples and be open to play with them – the proposal is to investigate how, for instance, a real life event gets transformed when socially performing to a virtual audience.

Another useful reference for this session is Bernie Hogan’s article “The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media”.

I was having coffee today with an entrepreneur whose start-up revolves around the performing arts. Although her background is in law and government she is passionate about the arts and determined not only to fight our thirty year audience decline- but to grow the performing arts audience well beyond it’s current base – and who is that base? Well, therein lies a  large part of the problem. The same entrepreneur told me a story of being at a show last weekend when the person next to her turned and asked “Who do you know in the show?”, the assumption being the only  reason you would buy a ticket is to come support a friend. Why? Because WE ARE OUR AUDIENCE. We are no longer a draw to the lawyers, the babysitters, the waitresses the financiers or the educators of our communities.  We perform for ourselves. As Jason Gots said in his recent article about Peter Brook “Why We Need Theater Now More Than Ever”

the small percentage of New Yorkers who ever attend a play fall mainly into two camps: the once-a-year Broadway tourists and the friends of actors, playwrights, or directors.

Art museums have understood for a long while that they can no longer depend on the audience that visits their buildings – their audiences are everywhere and they need to find ways to excite, involve and engage their everywhere audience. The have not shied away from experimenting with new technologies and social media platforms as a way to speak more authentically to today’s wired art enthusiast, and the result is that museums are experiencing a rise in attendance, even as ticket sales to live performance continue on its decline.

What technologies can live performance utilize to expand our audience in our wired world?  How can we speak to today’s digital centric community while still being true to the live- performance experience?  What darlings must we slay and what aspects of the live-performance experience are sacred? Let’s brainstorm new ways to engage today’s digital community, a community that is eager to create and share, in the live-performing arts.

For centuries, the conventional definition of theatre has been of an event occurring in real time in front of a live audience in a physical space. In the last decade alone, there have been hundreds of examples that have put that categorization to the test (one example: www.digitaltheatre.com).  With the rapid advance of technology, theatre has a responsibility to embrace this (r)evolution or ultimately fall further by the wayside. How can we utilize these advances, both artistically and administratively, to transform the theatrical landscape so we can further investigate, innovate and interact with fellow artists across the globe?

Until recently, theatre hasn’t been able to avoid creating sleep-inducing footage when it’s recorded or digitized. It somehow loses its spirit as fast as the present becomes the past; leaving one with the same feeling one has when they stopped being in love. Where does the spirit go? How can that magic remain? How can we keep it interesting for everyone, not just academics and researchers? Is it just a document of a past event, or can we find a way for it to be a living, breathing experience?

During the spring semester of 2013, three acting teachers at three different colleges linked their class discussions through Twitter under the hashtag #ACTweets. (The instructions for students can be found here.) The pedagogical experiment allowed students and teachers to directly interact and discuss with others in Acting 1 classes at CUNY colleges around the city. We thought of it like having the one-on-one attention of a smaller classroom, but the scope and breadth of the CUNY system.

This project was motivated by a desire to help students think through and about acting outside the classroom and was organized by:

@eero_laine – Eero Laine, Acting 1 at the College of Staten Island
@rayelz – Rayya El Zein, Acting 1 at City College
@defyinggravitas – Barrie Gelles, Intro to Acting and Acting 1&2 at Brooklyn College

In light of this recent experiment, we hope to have an open conversation about using social media in (and outside of) the performing arts classroom. What has worked? What has failed? How do students respond? Do the performing arts need social media?