From the Executive Director
Laughter in a Wired World
By Teresa Eyring
It's a beautiful, sunny, low-humidity day, and I am trying to avoid my BlackBerry. In fact, I've hidden it from myself and hope that I will succeed in bringing on the forced amnesia that will be required to keep myself from finding it. The good news is that this device has run out of power—making it, well, powerless over me. And I really don't know where I left the charger this time, so that should take care of that. At least for a while.
I'm also pledging not to check Facebook or Twitter, or to try to e-mail new photos to my Tumblr blog. In the waning days of summer, I just want to enjoy the breeze and the sun and the scent of late summer blooms. Maybe reflect on home economics. Or finish a funny book.
Ah! Wiredness. I was an early adopter, I admit, and I've waxed philosophical about the ways in which FB has replaced the lost sense of neighborhood and the grocery-store-bump factor, the way it's facilitated knowledge of your friend's business and your friends' friends' business. I believe it even stands in (better than e-mail does) for the olden days of elaborate letter-writing. This week, I sent a short video of myself to the Colombian director Manuel Viveros, congratulating him in Spanish for a festival he was about to launch in Buenaventura. I made the vid in my office in five minutes one afternoon, five minutes before he needed it. I sent it via Flip Video's software. And an hour later, I received a FB message from Viveros declaring, "Thank you so much, I LOVEEEE YOU!!!!!" Those congratulatory telegrams of yesteryear must've felt like horribly delayed gratification.
But today I am feeling some early adopter's remorse. Just three-and-a-half years ago, I was living in a house in Minneapolis where my computer was in a basement office. I'd check e-mail periodically, maybe write a memo for a board meeting if I was working from home. However, when I came upstairs, there was nothing more technological to deal with than the telephone, the toaster and the TV—which I didn't watch so much. The BlackBerry I acquired when I came to TCG makes it possible to stay in minute-to-minute communication with my staff and to view my schedule's changes as they are made. All very helpful. And now my home computer is always a few steps away in my New York apartment. (The BlackBerry usually is, too, except that I'm not sure where it is right this minute—thank you, temporary amnesia.)
In just three years, I've become like the millions of Americans and others worldwide who have connected themselves to the new social media as though it were a big fat IV. We need to keep those status updates dripping into our virtual veins.
The landline we don't marvel over so much anymore, even though its arrival was far more earth-shattering than the advent of the Internet. And in 100 years, the technology for accomplishing interpersonal communication will have most likely have evolved into a single chip inserted in the brain that approximates telepathy, obviating the need for anything resembling a smartphone. Then again, who am I to say? Human beings are not great predictors of anything, really.
Today's access to a constant flow of information may or may not have enhanced my ability to think, or to be a better citizen, or to do my job well. But it has done certain things, for sure. It has brought me closer to people I wouldn't otherwise be in touch with so easily, a development that I cherish. It has made me aware of specific events and realities worldwide that would never come to my attention via the mainstream media. And it has also made me crave those non-multi-tasker, single-focus opportunities: to spend time in a theatre or a movie house, or in the grass by the river with a book—with my BlackBerry chained to a fence a couple of miles down the path.
So this brings me to my own personal conclusion: that liveness is the ballast in the virtual boat that is being built as we sail it. We can all find each other and everything we need to know online. But people still want to be together. In June, we had the largest attendance ever at a TCG convening, even though times are hard and budgets are tight. Hundreds of conference attendees signed on to Conference 2.0 and got to know each other in advance—but they still wanted to eventually be in the same place physically. To shake hands and to make deals and to laugh. And to pound down a few glasses of mead together.
History says that one of theatre's main seeds was planted in Athens in 550 B.C. And so in a manner of speaking, this issue of American Theatre introduces the 2,560th theatre season for humankind. And it focuses on comedy, to boot! Audience numbers will be great for some of this season's projects and not so great for others. Social media will continue in our lives, in all the ways that it enhances and detracts. The poor economy will be what it is. But as you move forward into this year, remember that you, too, can make the choice to lose your devices once in a while. And take time out to laugh!
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