YouTube

I think the sudden emergence and skyrocketing popularity of YouTube has greatly affected not only the theatre world, but also the film world to a certain degree. Not only does it allow people to “perform” anywhere, doing pretty much anything, and then, with very little difficulty, post the video themselves for anyone to see. It has become a huge perpetuator of the short attention span that audiences have now-a-days, thanks to the constantly changing and continually revamped technological world we live in. American life has become centered on instant gratification and a quick fix to all problems. So what better than a website where you can practically instantly post your own video and instantly see the number of views you get from it? And how many short videos are there on YouTube that show you how to do any number of things?

            This ability YouTube provides the public of creating and posting videos of themselves for the masses also plays into the narcissistic mindset that seems prevalent today. That often the greatest connection people have is to the devices that record these videos for them. Communication has almost become a three-way street, with technology acting as the mediator.

            YouTube may be spreading the narcissistic, instant gratification-seeking attitude of the 21^st Century, but this is not to say that it doesn’t also have plenty of positive affects. YouTube has become a fantastic and cheap way for artists to share their work and receive feedback from other artists and a wide-ranging audience from around the country and around the world. It allows for young or inexperienced filmmakers to try their hand at getting their work out to the masses in an affordable way. It has also become a great teaching asset. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video worth?

            The answer to the second question is a bit more elusive and something that I have been thinking quite a bit about lately.  I feel as though a new form of guerrilla theatre is needed, but not in the style that Davis talks about. Let’s call it “infiltrating” theatre. Getting the 21^st Century audiences’ attention is a tall order. Collectively, we are obsessed with spectacle and technology, but I also think nothing has changed in the fact that what everyone responds to the strongest is a sense of truth. So perhaps, the 21^st Century theatre must start with finding a way in, a crack in the defenses of the audience, because once you’ve captured the audience’s attention, it is so much easier for them to accept your truth.  The idea that came to my head is an example (more of a skeleton) of what I mean by “infiltrating” theatre. I would be interested to see the response to a show that at its core had a particular truth prevalent to audiences today; it would start with an episodic form that appeals to the short attention span, and these bursts of action would be propelled by technology, a spectacle of some sort, whether it be through lighting, projection, sound, etc. However, as the show goes on, these exciting, spectacular episodes would slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, get longer and less technologically driven. So that by the end of the show (let’s say a 90 minute show at tops), everything has been stripped away except the truth that was there all along.  This could be represented in any number of ways, perhaps a single actor standing on a bare stage under minimal lights.

            That is just a bare-bone structure that I think would be interesting to explore, and it would be exciting to mix mediums so that it was not simply a text-driven show with spectacle around it, but that the mediums of text, movement, dance, music, spectacle, etc. were all inter-woven, leaving the still moment at the end more powerful.