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Comment by Simon Harris on July 22, 2009 at 4:33

Hi Gary,

I'm pointing out that the real excitement in the discussions here, so far, is all about the kind of work that - to put it bluntly - my mum wouldn't like.


Is it possible for you to explain a little about the kind of work your mum might like? You can leave your mum out of it, if you want.

Comment by Gary Owen on July 22, 2009 at 2:44

Actually, the guys doing the speech bubble thing were really smart and the interaction with the audience was a lot of fun. I probably just didn't do them justice in my description.

No, I'm sure it was a lot of fun. And I didn't mean to say the guys doing the speech bubble things were smarmy 24 year olds - I posited that rather extreme take simply to make the point that the intrusion of a mediated edit into live proceedings is not unproblematically a good thing. Whereas the impression one tends to get in the arts - and one certainly gets in this community - is that adding digital always equals better.

I agree that the audience who wants to watch a show is always to be respected.

I'm absolutely sure you do. But - and this is an observation, more than a complaint (because I don't know who I'd be complaining to) - no-one here seeems very excited about the people who just want to watch a show. I certainly don't want to close off discussions about different ways to engage the audience. I'm saying that I feel the discussions in this community are closed off. I'm pointing out that the real excitement in the discussions here, so far, is all about the kind of work that - to put it bluntly - my mum wouldn't like. I think theatre in Wales has failed to connect in the past because it's been theatre for theatre enthusiasts, rather than for the nation. And while I realise the dialogue here doesn't represent the thought-through opinion of NTW, it begins to worry me that so much of the buzz on these boards is around work that seems fairly aggressively upstream, as opposed to mainstream.

Comment by National Theatre Wales on July 21, 2009 at 12:06

Actually, the guys doing the speech bubble thing were really smart and the interaction with the audience was a lot of fun. I probably just didn't do them justice in my description. Have a look at their work online I think we have a lot to learn from their engaging, interactive, funny and ultimately very theatrical way of bringing the audience experience alive.

Gary. I agree that the audience who wants to watch a show is always to be respected. The audience is the heart of theatre for me. What was uninteresting for me wasn't the idea of the audience, but the re-introduction of the same old objections into a debate that was trying to be about something else. To ask who our audience is, what they want of it, how they make theatre happen, is always interesting; but to close off discussions about different ways to engage the audience by saying that some people won't like it is, perhaps, less interesting than the alternative.

Comment by Alex Fleetwood on July 20, 2009 at 23:43

Wow - that sounds incredibly oppressive and censorious. You ask a legitmate question, and a smarmy twenty-four year old on his third trust-funded start-up gets to decide that you are laughable. So much for the anarchic, democratising world of digital media.

Isn't that an equally oppressive response? The danger with so many of these conversations is that they tend to polarise into an either/or debate - either we have the sacred space for theatre in which people can pay attention, or we have a cacophony of post-modern chatter. I'm really interested in getting past these positions and exploring the middle ground in a bit more detail. What is the relationship between the performance, the conversation, the technology, the distribution, the attention of the physical audience, the attention of the virtual audience? Can we say that any one meaningfully affects the other? What impact does the choice of performance have - is it easier, say to create live conversation around a big spectacle than an intimate two-hander? How can we use different kinds of technology to capture a performance for the virtual audience in such a way that enhances the experience for the virtual audience?

Those are questions I'm interested in, for sure.

Comment by Gary Owen on July 19, 2009 at 22:37

'What about people who just want to watch a show' 'how do we guarantee quality'... Not sure they are very interesting questions, and we quickly move on to discuss what is interesting\

No, it may not be interesting to think about people who just want to watch a show, when we have all these glittery new toys to play with. But those people are still there. And they pay their taxes, and our wages.

If you ask something or send a message that can be identified, a speech bubble may appear above your head onscreen with a witty shortened version of your comment (eg a person who asks about artists' employment gets a speeech bubble saying 'How Do I Get Paid?/ A nice live mash-up of the conversation.

Wow - that sounds incredibly oppressive and censorious. You ask a legitmate question, and a smarmy twenty-four year old on his third trust-funded start-up gets to decide that you are laughable. So much for the anarchic, democratising world of digital media.

Comment by David Vivian Hughes on July 18, 2009 at 11:31

Love the format of the event. Imagine translating this to a play or a gig of some kind...the audience could choose what happens next in the plot...or even dictate how things developed. Hell they could even play bit-parts.

Comment by Peter Cox MBE on July 17, 2009 at 20:00

Hi Jon

I think the NTW site has already offered great opportunities for members to begin and pursue conversation. I have never met most of the other writers in the Writers Group, for example, although I will have been aware of, or seen, their work. The debates and exchanges we've had already though certainly count as conversation in my book. Kind of like a lively dinner party with no washing up!

Comment by Deborah Powell on July 17, 2009 at 14:24

Don't worry John, the dictionary is with you on this - definition of conversation is ... 'an informal interchange of thoughts, information. The ability to talk socially with others' ... no mention of numbers here!
The great thing about digital apps is that they give us a new means to relate & share - a new conversational mode and even a new language of expression. Its been said 'change your language and you change your thoughts' & that pretty much sums up what the digital opportunity for the arts is to me.

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