According to Klout, I'm influential on the subject of robots. Snicker. I'm going to guess this is because I recently attended some shows at the Victoria Fringe Theatre Festival and did a bit of posting about Jayson MacDonald's play, 'Giant Invisible Robot'. I know you're going to hate that I check up on my Klout score, which is why I'm a little loathe to explain what Klout is.
Oh, very well then! Klout is an online reporting tool that measures people's level of influence online. Now, lower that eyebrow, and let's get on with it already.
For a long time I've wanted to write a post about theatre in the age of the Internet. You remember theatre? That's where you pay a lot of money to watch actors you might vaguely recognize perform a play your mother, or grandmother, recommended. Or, more likely, where one of your friends paid a lot of money to watch actors you've never heard of perform a play you might feign interest in, but in all likelihood you will never see. Ah yes, that theatre.
I don't think it's much of a stretch to suggest live theatre doesn't quite have the 'klout' it once did. And unlike other arts industries that are struggling to adapt in our changing times (music, film, and television for example), where live theatre is concerned, there's no need to go pointing a finger at the Internet. No, the demise of live theatre was written in the stars with the advent of talkies and black and white home television sets back in the olden days.
Which might explain why, relatively speaking, there is so little evidence of it's existence to be found on the World Wide Web. Oh yes, there is the odd review, a few theatre sites that might have a similar vibe to the site for your local museum, but really now, this is comparatively trivial gewgaw. Add to the mix my apparent expertise in the field of 'robots' and I'd suggest the fact of the matter is, theatre and the Internet just don't play well together. Excuse the pun.
So what gives? Why am I, a huge fan of the Interweb, forking over more money than I can realistically afford for theatre tickets? What's enticing me away from the wealth of entertainment and information I can access from the phone I carry around in my pocket to go sit in a theatre to experience a performance I can't look up on IMDB?
Plainly put, what lures me away is the promise of something unique. I know from personal experience, which truthfully may not be as limited as I've professed, that every show is, from production to production, and from night to night, different. Different in as many ways as the number of people who have contributed to the performance, and as many ways as there are seats in the house. Different depending on the weather and the time of year, and how much the lead actor did or did not drink at the bar the night before.
The result is a priceless kind of magic we get so little of in our binary world, and why, I might offer, live theatre is more worthwhile today than it ever has been before. Turn off your cell phone and go check it out.
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