Wouldn’t that be jumping to conclusions given that a) the project has yet to run its course, b) you “gave up” and c) you have not seen the live installation part of this project?

“How is this fragmented, cross-platform, ’stream’ of micro updates generating substance of dramatic interest?”

To me it’s quite obvious that the Internet is loaded with “substance of dramatic interest”; from video clips, photos and audio recordings to text based conversations, writings, archives and reprints, it’s a vast source of dramatic substance.

The problem, and you touch on it later on in your comment, is one of filtration. How do you go about selecting and editing this content into dramatic form? Ultimately you will need a strategy and you will have to narrow the playing field by applying a set of parameters. In the Fatebook case, the choice of 13 characters, the choice of platforms, the organisational structure of the online project, the fact that the characters hadn’t met in the ‘physical world’ prior to embarking on the project, the presence of a director, guiding the characters, all these are parameters that aim to nurture and perhaps intensify the dramatic substance.

What’s particularly important about Fatebook is that more than speculate about the how’s and why’s of using social media for a Web-based performance, it’s actually doing it. The project is forging its own way through this nebulous field of data, negotiating new beahvioural patterns, facing new creative challenges and hopefully expanding our understanding of what might constitute “substance of dramatic interest”.

Venues/companies/institutions have by and large adopted online advertising for their shows, whether it’s through publishing promotional YouTube videos, running a company blog, tweeting about, Facebook group, Flickr photo stream etc. etc., but what many have yet to grapple with is taking a step further and employing a member of staff to engage one-to-one with their online audiences.

That doesn’t just mean singling people out on Twitter or Facebook and sending them promotional messages, that means actually taking the time to talk to them, to listen to their feedback on a particular show, to ask what they think of the venue, how it could be improved, what they think of ticket prices, theatre access, programming etc. etc. It means actually caring about who their audiences are and what they have to say.

Sure, I get the point about experimenting with the medium and all that, but if we’re talking theatre here, which it seems we are, then what consideration is being given to the audience in this experiment? How is this fragmented, cross-platform, ’stream’ of micro updates generating substance of dramatic interest?

Wouldn’t it be fairer to say that the online element of this play is more about publicity and generating content for the ‘real’ performance, i.e. the show in Philadelphia in September? Don’t get me wrng, Im not saying you can’t have theatre online, I’m just saying that there has to be a better, more inductive way of presenting this.

For example, why hasn’t there been a centralised feed pulling all Fatebook content together on a page on the website? And that page lists all the characters at a glance, and the archive stretches back to the beginning? Yes it would be alot of data, but at least you’d have a kind of narrative for your audience to get stuck into. As it is, it seems like the ‘audience’ has to spend hours, finding, subscribing, navigating between ‘characters’, and frankly i just gave up.

But despite these misgivings, I’m still interested to hear about how the show unfolds in September. On paper it sounds like a good project, but I get the feeling that it’s too experimental and too unfocused for it’s own good.

I wonder though, if we were talking about marketing a strictly real world show, whether it would be possible to apply the same tactics of online audience interaction? It’s a rhetorical question really, because I’m almost sure it’s possible

The biggest problem, and you mention it in your interview, is getting the creative team to get involved. If it was part of their contract to devote x amount of time to talking about the show via social media during rehearsals and in the run up to the performance, then it might work. As it stands, actors and directors are generally not paid enough to make this extra function worthwhile.

Right now our use of the Web as promotion tool is in publishing video teasers of our shows, interviews with performers, directors and writers on our blog, but that’s about it. When it comes to experimenting with new media, something I’d love to do, we face a fair bit of red-tape from senior staff. Sadly, consultant or no consultant, they just don’t get it.