Okay, I know my blog title is cute, but really Bombsite and Bomb magazine are the best things that have come into my life as young artist. The brash and honest interviews, the flowing language, it all melds together into a powerful collage of contemporary theatre analysis.
I was reading an article in which Richard Maxwell (who is a New York City experimental theatre director) interviews Federico León about his production of Las Multitudes in La Plata that had a cast of 120 people. During the interview Maxwell and León engage back and forth about different projects that they’ve worked on, how they’ve gotten to weave together etc, and I sit there in wonder about how I am able to see into the mind of two incredible artists, who, prior to this reading, I had a very basic understanding of. This leads me to my real topic: the power of the internet to us as creative artists.
In a previous post, Andy Weyenberg describes how at some point in all of our blogging and tweeting and talking, as artists we really need to get up and do the doing. I am in complete agreement, but I think it comes as a shock to me sometimes just how useful and amazing the theatre community has become about sharing our wealth of information with one another. Bombsite, Indie Theatre Now, and Inkblog all provide me a wealth of information regarding how different artists are approaching projects, where the subjects of art are turning, new trends in theatrical development that may be beginning to take place are emerging. For the first time in theatre history, I can watch a small non-profit make their artistic decisions simply by clicking buttons and having them appear in my newsfeed.
One could argue that this much time in front of a computer is, in reality, stiffing creative life and impulse and created seas of homogeneity in our society. Fine. I get that, I’ve heard that argument (usually via a computer) every year since I’ve had access to the internet. But what if it isn’t that easy? What if we stopped assuming that art COULDN’T happen behind a computer? I say this more to people my own age than theatre practitioners who have been able to see the tools become accessible to them. I myself have been skeptical of social networking having worth in the artists world. I want to impact people’s hearts and cores and how could I possibly do that through computers? Maybe we can’t. Maybe technology isn’t there yet (though if you watch HER we may be getting there soon and I won’t be single for Valentines day that year). But we have all these new connections and information available to us, I think that so much of our doing can be a cultivating of information so that the physical practice is even more highly informed than we ever could have imagined. I won’t argue that
The Greeks wrote of inherent human experiences, of the enormous spectrum of emotion and thought. But through utilizing everything at our disposal to investigate, how can we continue to develop theatre in a way that reflects the human experience in conjunction with the strides we are taking towards a new theatrical tomorrow?
Drama Lit Blog 2.0: BU School of Theatre 