I mean, point totally taken. But if I just type shit like "More Nazi brain-eating jokes," it doesn't make for a coherent blog post; and for people following me on Twitter, it'd just be spammy and annoying. I'd think.
I would really like to hear how this went for other people, either those who participated or those who followed it on twitter during or after the fact.
Full disclosure: I work at PCS. But following along the live tweets from home tonight was fascinating. Having already seen the production, I found the tweets putting the show back into my head, scene by scene, with all of the strong visuals really clear to me. Like seeing the show again, but with the audience's brains. I wonder if tweeps who see the show and then read the Twitter stream will have the same experience? will be interesting to know.
A year ago, I thought Twitter was the exemplar of the worst sort of navel-gazing. I really did not care if you just had a delicious cup of coffee... but it seems to have morphed, and now the people I follow actually provide information, entertainment, and the conversations emerge as full pictures. Will Twitter continue to be something different? Don't know. Will it even be in a year?
but it's compelling to wonder, and this little experiment, like the play -- new, interesting, entertaining, and not perfect. But I was never bored during either.
Do you think if you hadn't seen the show you would've found following the #apollo tweets interesting? The more I think about it, the more a chatroom-style liveblog seems like a better option to meβI imagine most people at the show tonight were following each other's updates anyway. The thing that held me back from Twitter tonight was a reluctance to bombard everyone who follows me with what would be, for any non theater fans (and I'm afraid there are many), pretty inane and irrelevant tweets. Because I do think Twitter can be informative and entertaining, but only if the people using it are exercising some restraint. Obviously the preponderance of #apollo tags was a boon for PCS's web visibility, but I'm not yet convinced it served any end beyond that.
This will obviously take some more time to percolate through my brain, but I found the process rather useful. I've always been frustrated by the traditional sit in a dark room and don't respond to what's happening culture that is our theatre.
Shakespeare's time allowed for people to respond to the show in real time, and for actors to directly address audience. There needs to be more of that in our time. Twitter allows that to a degree.
There were some useful thoughts and insights in other Tweeple's posts. I will digets them over the next couple of days.
I was up there in the balcony last night too. I thought the play itself and the Twitter thing were both mixed-bags. Like everyone else, I spent too much of the first act trying to come up with snark and ignoring what was happening on stage. I finally gave up and decided to just pay attention instead once Walt Disney showed up.
All in all, Apollo was waaaaaaay too dense and exhausting of a production for something like this. Even without the distraction of my iPhone and the couple near us that talked nonstop, it was hard enough to try to keep all of the facts, metaphors and historical figures straight.
As a total outsider on this entire experiment, I have to say that to me it just played as a "oh, everyone's into this Twitter thing, let's try to capitalize on that buzz for a bit" more than anything else.
But I do think that "More Nazi brain-eating jokes" should be tweeted randomly by more people throughout any given day.
I think experiment is the operative word, and I enjoyed the opportunity to be part of it and to do something totally different...maybe I annoyed the people who followed me, but heck, sometimes they annoy me too! I (almost) never tweet about what's in my cup or on my plate...so if on this particular night I tweeted more than usual, I think it all balances out. Plus, as someone who self-edits way too much, it was probably therapeutic to just let thoughts fly without polishing--or even proofing. (V2, not B2... Sheesh!) For me theatre is about seeing the world through someone else's eyes, in a way that makes me think or laugh or feel. I was totally engaged, even if it was in a kind of schizophrenic way. I'd like to see it again sometime in a more conventional way...hopefully after it's been edited down a bit. - @carmenhill and/or @fearless youth
I enjoyed the experience a lot, perhaps in part because this is not the kind of play that personally engages me. (Loved Pillowman here, though.) I got a lot of insight on the play -- which was kind of like a puzzle anyway -- by reading fellow tweeters' comments in real time. They provided some of the humor that this show needed (and lacked).
Mentioned over at PCS blog that it was an interesting idea. It would be cool if they wrote a blog post about what they learned from doing it. What worked, what seemed not to work, what would you do differently. I give them a hand for trying different ways to use social media and live theater.
@alison I was at a show at Backspace and reading the twitter #apollo updates from other peeps, giving lines from the play and such. To an outside observer, it was, indeed, just as senseless and silly as you suggest.
My critical reading, it is shot... would you recommend this play? Will you be reviewing it fully at some point? Sounds like it might be neat if I'm not iBlogging while watching.
Temple Lentz will be reviewing it in this week's paper. I can't recommend it, because I had no idea what was going on and in fact spent the last act reading Huffington Post, because that's what happens when you tell me I have permission not to pay attention to something.
Just enjoy the show and pause to add a one-line quip or impression once in a while!
A year ago, I thought Twitter was the exemplar of the worst sort of navel-gazing. I really did not care if you just had a delicious cup of coffee... but it seems to have morphed, and now the people I follow actually provide information, entertainment, and the conversations emerge as full pictures. Will Twitter continue to be something different? Don't know. Will it even be in a year?
but it's compelling to wonder, and this little experiment, like the play -- new, interesting, entertaining, and not perfect. But I was never bored during either.
Shakespeare's time allowed for people to respond to the show in real time, and for actors to directly address audience. There needs to be more of that in our time. Twitter allows that to a degree.
There were some useful thoughts and insights in other Tweeple's posts. I will digets them over the next couple of days.
All in all, Apollo was waaaaaaay too dense and exhausting of a production for something like this. Even without the distraction of my iPhone and the couple near us that talked nonstop, it was hard enough to try to keep all of the facts, metaphors and historical figures straight.
But I do think that "More Nazi brain-eating jokes" should be tweeted randomly by more people throughout any given day.