I'm curious. How do you read this blog? Do you click through a link on Twitter? On Facebook? Do you use Google Reader? Do you actually go to the matthewfreeman.blogspot.com webpage?
About Me
- Freeman
- 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.
8 comments:
Is it true that it is not possible to know how many people read your blog on a reader?
Not sure.
I pull up Jamespeak, and click through his blog roll to get to all the rest, cuz I like that his always opens up a new window for the others (the back button is so much slower than just clicking the X). But his roll is more and more out-dated. Then again, so is everyone else's. Doesn't it seem like far more theater blogs have ended than new ones have started? My heart goes out to anyone who can put in the work to churn out posts day-after-day, but I'm worried that the form has just about run its course.
As for me, I'm sure that the excitement of blogs has certainly given way to a larger social networking trend of which blogs are only a precursor. Twitter and Facebook and mobile devices have made blogs like this one a little less of a destination and a little more remote. Also, there's a sort of formlessness ... there's no timeline to personal blogs like this one, and no direct structure, like blogs on the Wall Street Journal or whatever. It can feel like I never shut up, and it can also feel like I must be closing up shop at any time.
That being said, I still enjoy reaching out to those that read the blog (I've got a lot of google reader followers, twitter followers, friends on Facebook, etc, etc) and I still enjoy updating, making jokes, putting my thoughts out there, and maintaining a presence in the conversation. As long as that's true, I'll be here. As a playwright, it's not easy to get on people's radar, and this blog has helped me to do that, without a doubt.
Stay tuned, though, for my new non-blog website. Because hey, it's about time.
RLewis: If Matt's right and Facebook and Twitter are taking the place of theatre blogs, that would be a bit of a shame, not least because Facebook and Twitter, by their very nature, tend more to brevity than they do to the longer writing about theatre that blogs can encourage. To me, also, the independent blog retains a presence outside of the corporate realms of Twitter and Facebook.
It's too early to be proclaiming the death of the blogosphere (or the print media, or the theatre, or what have you), I hope, as I wrote here the other day. On my blog, true, but there it is.
I subscribe to the RSS feed using Thunderbird.
I can't tweet or facebk at my day-gig, so theater blogs are how I amuse myself through the daily grind. Originally, I thought they might be a way to move the community forward (remember someone's plan to do one play at many theaters around the country at the same time?), but now I just appreciate anyone writing anything about indie theater.
Last season at the Grad' Ctr, Zinoman caught my ear at Cote's critic panel pretty much "proclaiming the death of the blogosphere". I doubt it will totally end, but his point was well-taken. Blogging day-after-day for free seems really hard to keep up, so it's no surprise if many peter out. All the rest own my deep gratitude.
I'm always suspicious of anyone announcing the "death" of anything (see: the death of theatre, for the past billion years); but I think there's a clear difference between what can seem like an orderly community, and a momentary confluence of events. I do still love the idea of one play premiered nationally, for example, but as I'm sure you know, the idea needs producers, not bloggers with day jobs and their own ambitions, to bring it to the world.
Anyway, I'm still very much alive, even if my blog isn't a 'sphere.
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