Tim Smith writer of Clef Notes, told of a twitter
contest calling for opera plots in
140-characters or less. The WNO
offered the winner tickets to a performance of Turandot as well
as the "company's high-society ball."
An interactive and clever contest of this caliber draws in invested and
educated audiences. Yet the
conclusion of this story has an interesting twist - Smith summarizes:
"Turns out the winner lives on the other side of the
country, and he wanted to donate the prize. This he did in a most endearing
fashion, locating a D.C. public school music teacher and arranging for her not
only to enjoy the night at the opera, but, for the ball, to do so in a gown
created for her by WNO's costume department. Very cool." Read the full story in the Washington Post here.
In another utilization of twitter, the NSO's conductor, Emil
de Cou, posted real-time tweets to
it's audience during the performance of Beethoven's Sixth. The musically timed commentary not only
provided historical context, but also explored the conductor's interpretation
of the piece. Read more here.
Others in the neighboring
business of musical theater utilize twitter in a controversial manner. Just when the business couldn't be more
brutally informative, a casting director decided yesterday to tweet live during
an audition session with her anonymous critiques a-blazing.
Her rebuttal:
"When else have actors had a clear
line of communication to casting directors beyond assistants, interns, and the
dreaded submission box? I started
a Twitter account to provide insight to the life of a casting director and have
an open dialogue with actors/agents/producers. All too often is our role misinterpreted. For example, I get letters from actors
asking for my office to represent them. That's not what a casting director
does. The New York Times still refers to casting directors as casting agents.
We are not agents. ... My Twitter account is meant to be informative."
Perhaps some of the best PR of AEA time, in
connection with, of course broadwayworld.com - the ultimate non-confrontational
Web site. As a casting director
myself, I've worked for half dozen top casting houses, and found two that were
talent friendly - to their face and their 16 bar memory. In one of the leading Beauty Casting
houses, I witnessed a model being torn apart one eyelash at a time in brutal
rant (for no apparent reason) by a complete vomit-faced girl. So, while I believe a few of those
tweets were meant to be informative, I also believe power issues ensued and ethical
lines were breeched in distribution.
Lastly, The Mass Media News, on the other hand, remains
tentative to fully adopt social media platforms. Why did it take me until April to get hooked into
Twitter? Why did many of my fellow
classmates never set up an account until two days ago? What is the reason, as journalists, who
have arguably one of the most exciting and community-connected jobs on the
planet, to not utilized Twitter? - Anonymity, tech-crunch, or could it be as
egocentric as the cacophony described by Director of Specialized Journalism,
Roberto Suro? I know it was for
me.
"Does the sun orbit around the earth or does the earth orbit
around the sun?"
As long as members of the press do not respond to the public
in a way it is accessible right now, during a time of journalistic upheaval -
how will they ever gain followers in ways that are off the path of
convenience?
Twitter is a swooping mind-set that organizations and
individuals in the Arts and News grapple to define proper social utilization
and ethical work-place boundaries.
My hope is that these groups develop operations for connecting to their
audiences. After all, as Roberto
Suro said - it's not what the device can do, but what YOU do with the
device. We must be agents of change
in the reinvention of the profession.
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