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”.