How Social Media has changed British Theatre

I’ve been following the development of the National Theatre Wales. They officially launched sometime this month with 13 shows slated for their season. What’s special about them is that their organization is hinged on the use of social media

The Telegraph covered its launched, done entirely on web-cast:

It’s hard to disentangle the medium by which NTW was launched, from its message – that the kind of work it will produce will be of a piece with the internet age: communal, participatory, geographically far-flung. On paper, what we have is theatre that looks to YouTube or social networking sites as its lode-stars. In the birth of NTW, we might just be seeing the death of the individual as the key driving-force in our theatre. That’s as potentially scary as it is exciting.

The mix between social media and theatre making is truly exciting. National Theatre Wales lowers the “4th wall of curation” where the artistic director decides what is relevant to his/her target community (I’m talking about non-profit focused theatre making of course, not the overtly commercial focused kind).  I disagree however, that the individual loses centrality. The individual is still important because there is some kind of commentary made when an actor/director/writer stands up to stage a piece. You can’t take that away from the looking glass that is theatre.

I’m excited to see how the Internet can positively change the way theatre is made 🙂