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Matthew Freeman is a Brooklyn based playwright with a BFA from Emerson College. His plays include THE DEATH OF KING ARTHUR, REASONS FOR MOVING, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE AMERICANS, THE WHITE SWALLOW, AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR, THE MOST WONDERFUL LOVE, WHEN IS A CLOCK, GLEE CLUB, THAT OLD SOFT SHOE and BRANDYWINE DISTILLERY FIRE. He served as Assistant Producer and Senior Writer for the live webcast from Times Square on New Year's Eve 2010-2012. As a freelance writer, he has contributed to Gamespy, Premiere, Complex Magazine, Maxim Online, and MTV Magazine. His plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc., New York Theatre Experience, and Samuel French.

Friday, February 24, 2006

Is it just me...

Or have playwrights seemingly no idea how to dramatize the internet? And not just playwrights... movies also fail entirely. The minute something on film or on the stage depends on someone typing or getting something over e-mail, my eyes glaze over.

Something about this mode of communication and thought and information just doesn't seem to like to be observed. And even though technology is an increasingly central part of our lives, cell phones, pagers, beepers, Google, blogging, sending e-mails, web browsing...they seem utterly bloodless on the stage. Worse, they seem false to me. As if they are almost arbitrarily included in some plays in order to nod to the fact that they exist, as if they are this unavoidable thing you MUST acknowledge, even though they seemingly lack any sense of poetry.

Just thought I'd put that out there. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree...
Seen the play closer ? or the dying gaul...

ha ha...

Dan said...

Plays that take place -- or are thematically engaged in -- the world of the internet have always been...let's say a challenge...for me to watch. To me, there's great obstacles in making what happens in cyberspace dramatic and theatrical. Depictions of people at their computers that come within a stone's throw of realism are going to end up with a lot of characters sitting around. Theatrical portrayals of a virtual world are very often interesting, but they don't quite capture the duality of the experience: the user as a Warlock or Superhero and the user at home eating Hostess cupcakes and poking the spacebar.

Lucas Krech said...

Berkeley Rep's staging of 'Closer' about four years ago did a brilliant job of two characters interacting via the internet.

But at a style level, the internet acts as a kind of social dream space. A community hallucination in which the rule and roles of everyday life do not necessarily apply. I think there is great potential in productions that engage technology. The possibilities are almost limitless it seems.

Pulling it off may be a seperate question . . .

kirabug said...

I'm looking at this from a technical angle...

I have the same problem with comics - and I've seen a number of others struggle with it as well. When two people are interacting, you can draw them in profile, seeing how both react at the same time. But how do you draw the focus of the interaction between human and computer? You can't draw the person's face and the computer's screen at the same time (without throwing away all concept of perspective, anyway) -- and in theater it must be that much worse, because there's no way to cheat perspective.

I saw a play years and years ago called "Love Letters", where the actors sit side-by-side or facing each other reading the script as if they were reading each others' letters. At least then it's as if the conversations are almost between the two, instead of separated by weeks of mail. Most comic artists handle the problem similarly. But that only really works for interactive sections of the 'net.

For non-interactive bits, like surfing Google, comic artists almost always just show the back of the computer and the face of the person surfing, reading the screen. And multiplayer role-playing games are usually depicted by the game characters themselves, embracing the idea of a submersive gaming environment.

Dunno, it's a challenge, at any rate.

Devilvet said...

I think it comes down to action.

Internet "action" is an abstraction.

We are typing, and in an abstract sense we are accomplishing something, but it is not inherently "active".

I'm a software trainer and I'm always surprised at how people become "exhausted" when they think they have too many clicks in order to complete a task. "It's too much work"

It's click, come on, it wasn't even an expenditure of 5 calories. But, it is perceived as "action".

Anonymous said...

A theatre artist from San Juan named Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya has a really interesting solution to making the act of typing text performative...

He memorizes a block of spoken text so that he can recite it automatically, then he types similar text that is projected simultaneously. However, the text on the screen diverges from the spoken text here and there, sometimes in minor ways and sometimes entirely.

The tension in waiting for the moments of divergence along with the textual/subtextual nature of the divergence itself create an amazing and unique experience, really engaging.

Anonymous said...

Todd Barry had a great show about his appearance on Conan. After one appearance, the Conan discussion group raked him over the coals. He wrote a one man show about it. Aside from being hysterically funny, he was able to integrate using a computer, overhead slides, and the structure of internet discussions into a highly effective theatrical presentation. It is possible to make it work, but it's very difficult.

Anonymous said...

I saw this play in -- maybe 1994 or 1995? at HERE where Elyse Singer did this show about Courtney Love and Carolyn Baeumler played her. They did a pretty good job of dramatizing CL's participation in chats about herself...