Dear @Resident Theatre Company or @Individual Show:

You know I love you and so I’m sorry to do this impersonally. But we have to talk. I know it’s hard to hear those words, because they always lead to the same thing. And to be perfectly honest, this time, it’s not me, it is you.

When we started this relationship on Twitter, it was filled with the blush of first love. For the first time, you could talk to me and I could talk to you. You would know my innermost theatergoing thoughts and I would always know what you were up to, where I might see you, how I could learn more about all of the great things you’re doing. Those were heady days back in 2009, made all the more exciting by the fact that we didn’t have to be exclusive to each other; we were part of something bigger than ourselves, freed from the usual strictures that society and technology had placed upon us.

But instead of growing together, I’m feeling let down by you.

There’s a group of you that’s very shy. While that’s enticing at first, I don’t know why you’re in this game if I never hear from you. Sure, you may read about me, but I don’t know what’s going on in your world. At some point, you just have to get past your uncertainty and meet me halfway. I can’t take the silence, the lurking.

On the other hand, more of you are unbelievably self-obsessed. I understood there would be inevitable narcissism, so I don’t resent that. In fact, I want to read articles about you; I want to know when you’re on TV, on radio, on blogs – that’s why I got into this. That allowed me to break up with Google and its random, sometimes meaningless flings in search of a single shred of information. With you and Twitter (and Facebook and perhaps even Google+), I could keep abreast of what’s going on at each stage of your life, while remaining open to others.

But now you just keep flaunting others at me. You retweet this stray person who liked your show and that nameless egg-head who liked your performance; every night between 10 and 11 pm, or first thing in the morning when you rise, it’s the same thing. You’re cool, you’re mind-blowing, I’ve got to run and see what you’re doing. It’s boring. And let me let you in on a little secret: I know you’re being selective and if I feel like it, I can find all of those negative tweets you never seem to mention. How do you feel about that, huh? The same goes for reviews, and while I appreciate the opportunity to read thoughtful, in-depth appraisals of your work, I can go back to my ex, Google News, and find all of the reviews as well, not just the cosmetically chosen ones that play up your best features. You’re not fooling anyone.

Plus, let’s face it, I know you’re a person behind a façade. You shield yourself with a company name or show name. But I sussed out a long time ago there’s not a whole company pushing the buttons, just one person. Just like me. You need to remember that too, because I find it hard to believe that your façade is out drinking with friends – it’s just not that mobile. And surely you’re not so gauche as to root for particular sports teams under a broad pseudonym, at the risk of sharing stuff that some of us really don’t want to know.

So I have to ask myself, should I keep following you if our relationship is so unrewarding? Not to throw others in your face, but Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company tantalized me with messages about its audiences’ deepest fantasies during their run of In The Next Room. Next to Normal snuggled up to me (and a million others) by letting me contribute to a new song related to the show. The New Victory is letting me assemble a video of things we have to look forward to together, with our kids (how can you forget the kids) and displaying them for all the world to see on YouTube. 2amtheatre constantly offers me something both attractive and profound to chew on. A few of you have even dropped the curtain that often separates us and I can hear directly what your leader is thinking, like the newbie Robert Falls of the Goodman or Kwami Kwei Armah of Centerstage. For my part, when you let slip an interesting bit of insight into what makes you tick, or even what simply interests you, I retweet you with abandon, sometimes four, five, six times in an hour. It’s tiring, but worth it.

This thing we’re in – it’s called social media. It can’t be one sided and you can’t constantly remind me that all you really care about is filling your seats. That’s awfully crude and while it may be good for you, it’s unsatisfying to me.  I want more of you, but all facets of you. Don’t reduce what we have to a transaction-based thing, like I was someone to whom you merely want to advertise your wares. It makes me feel cheap.

Oh, wait. No, stop. Don’t cry. I hate that.

You say you can change? I’m willing to give you another chance. Calm down – I won’t drop you, even though I can do it anytime with the merest press of my finger. I’m sorry, that was cruel.

So I’ll hear more from you? You’ll give me real insight, not just blurbs (not that I don’t enjoy a good blurbing every so often)? I won’t have to endure the clutter of your various partners telling me how wonderful you are every night? O.K. then, so we’ll stay mutual followers. I really want this to work, for you, me and our thousands of partners.

You’re blushing. Now that’s endearing. Come here and let me give you a digital hug.

Love,

@hesherman

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

All of meme. Meme, myself and I. Auntie Meme. Do, re, meme, fa, so, la, ti do. I meme of Jeannie.

I could go on. And on. For hours.

I won’t.

One of the more interesting entertainments to arise from the spread of social media is the propagation of memes, perhaps more commonly known as hashtag games, in which someone suggests a theme or topic on Twitter upon which people spin sometimes endless variations, spreading far beyond the circle of the person who began it.  ‘Meme” itself is not a new-fangled internet word, although it has entered the popular lexicon only recently; the Merriam-Webster Dictionary dates its coinage to only 1976. I rather like the definition given by Dictionary.com, which mixes both culture and science: “a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.”

Last week I wrote about the collaborative nature of Twitter, suggesting that we were collectively writing a script of modern life. It is surely an absurdist script, with characters who come and go without warning, constant footnotes to the text (links), and we choose what portion of the dialogue we wish to see or engage with (by following or blocking). Well if the totality of Twitter is the ultimate “devised work,” then memes are its laugh lines.

Memes allow everyone to be their own Groucho, their own Stephen Wright, or even their own Oscar Wilde, if they aspire to be truly great. They can even be their own Milton Berle (for you young ‘uns, an early TV comic often accused of pilfering jokes), since in the elaborate Venn diagram of Twitter, your followers may not have a significant intersection with meme aficionados, and you can claim ownership of good lines with relative impunity.

Just as I enjoy my role in the multi-faceted online play that is Twitter, I adore the idea that Twitter gives voice to closet Neil Simons everywhere. No sooner do we see an appealing hashtag than we throw ourselves into the writer’s room of almost any sitcom you can name, even the fictional writers room of 30 Rock, itself dreamed up and punched up in a real-world writers room, like some Russian nesting doll. We work to one-up each other. We can all be the class clown, except there is no one to silence us except our own self-imposed censor or waning creativity. Quite remarkably, those that play seem to offer only positive reinforcement, namely the prized “re-tweet”, the greatest honor is when that retweet comes from a great comic mind like meme master Michael McKean (of Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind fame). Our bad jokes are buried and forgotten, but our good ones live on in the timelines of others.

I like the idea of memes as passing on our genes, since our desire when we engage in this word play is to insure the propagation of the idea, so that its comic DNA is passed from reader to reader. The bravest among us even try to be patient zero, proffering the idea, the appropriate hashtag and a few choice examples to get things rolling. In the past few weeks, I undertook to start two memes, the mildly successful #theatreinhell, which sought ideas for the worst possible theatrical offerings with which one might be punished for eternity, and #broadwayhurricane, puns on plays and musicals to accompany the arrival of storm Irene, which took off like a shot and was zinging around the internet more than 24 hours after I started it.

Yes, I take some small pride in “going viral,” even if most of the participants had no idea who established the game. I was the progenitor of laughter for some people, even long after the idea had gone beyond my active participation. In each case, the jokes were read alone, but everyone who saw them or contributed to them were united as an audience, making rapid connections in ways that only the internet can.

I’m not suggesting that memes have anywhere near the importance of, say, the manner in which news travels instantly and internationally via social media these days. As I said earlier, these are merely our one-liners, our word-play, our absurdist thoughts expressed and disseminated digitally, scattered across a much larger script of our interests and obsessions. There is something Darwinian in the way the best succeed as others fall on deaf ears (or perhaps blind eye is the more apt metaphor), but in the gentlest sense.

Is it utter frivolity? Perhaps. But the creative minds of the Reduced Shakespeare Company (@reduced) turned to Twitter last week to “crowdsource” a joke for their newest opus (I endeavored to help, rather obsessively). Perhaps since the internet makes it impossible for shows to go out of town in order to be out of critical scrutiny, the new alternative might instead be to test ideas via social media, in plain sight. Yes, it may spoil the joke for a handful, and risk having some stolen by the Uncle Milties who troll our timelines, but how wonderful to invite collaborators we don’t even know into the creation of work we hope they might ultimately attend and enjoy.

As the arts look for ways to engage their audiences, they rarely use humor. Even when we promote comic work, we tend to take ourselves too seriously, yet memes prove how humor can spread. It’s something we would all do well to take notice of, and perhaps begin to employ. Tweet humor, and the world laughs with you, and becomes your friend or follower. Tweet dully, and you tweet alone.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website

You don’t know me.

You may think you do. After all, if you read my blog, follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, ask me a question on Quora, join my circles on Google+, you know a number of things about me. You certainly know of my devotion to theatre, my love of film, my enthusiasm for social media and my predilection for jokes and puns. You may have watched or listened to me on the podcasts I did while with the American Theatre Wing. We may have exchanged messages of varying lengths on these topics, you may have been kind enough to thank me for some of what I have done. But for the majority of you reading this, you haven’t met me and don’t truly know me.

I have a wife, but do you know her name? How many siblings do I have? Who are my closest friends? What are my political views? What are the jobs I wanted but didn’t get? Which are the employers who wanted me, but to whom I said no? Who did I date before marrying? Was my heart ever broken? What experiences have resulted in my most profound sense of loss?

Mind you, I’m not taunting anyone, nor am I trying to discount what we have together. If you if are research inclined (or stalkerish), you can find the answers to many of these questions online (in some cases, with photos, for your amusement). My point is about – like most of what I share – social media and theatre.

I have about 3100 Twitter followers and about 550 Facebook friends (hello, everyone). I have no idea how many people have watched me on “Working in the Theatre,” listened to me on “Downstage Center,” or god help me, watched me in a judicial role on Cupcake Wars.  But as a result, most of you know the me I want you to see, the me I want to be. I am in control in a way I am not in face-to-face human interaction; there are many deleted tweets and blog passages that were in danger of going too far.

Social media offers us a particular opportunity to be the best version of ourselves, if we choose to use it for such a purpose. As someone who has always retained a sense of awkwardness in certain social situations (even though it may not be apparent), social media affords me the chance to say only what I want to say when I want to say it. I can edit it as necessary and, if I’m quick enough, even delete it before it really gets out. It gives me the means to gather an ever-widening circle of people with common interests, with whom I can talk, joke, or debate, if I choose to do so. And I can withdraw whenever I wish, to the insecurity of real life, ironically enough.

I have said more than once that I was drawn to theatre in high school because, while I wasn’t shy, I thrived on the experience of being in plays since I always knew what to say next. Someone else had worked out the conversation and all I needed to do was deliver the lines and if I did so with what passed for 17-year-old skill, I could achieve the desired result, particularly laughter, which is my drug of choice. As I grew older, and genuine talent was required, I stepped aside, seeking a life in which I could be of service to those who wrote the words and music, spoke and sang the lines, who could produce the desired effect.

Social media has given us all the opportunity to be on stage. What is Twitter but an ongoing play where brief thoughts must be translated to words? Isn’t it an extended improv exercise, or a perpetual, immersiveSleep No More (with much more talk but without all the running and sweating)? Aren’t blogs our monologues, rarely spoken aloud in our own voice? Perhaps they are our inner monologues, depending upon our topic, and how much we choose to share.

I often read comments from people pondering, discussing, hoping that social media and theatre will converge in a manner which produces a whole new experience, for artists and audience alike. But I think that social media is theatre already, a set of artificial worlds which we choose to enter or not. It is not cute like SimCity, it is not as visceral as L.A. Noire, it doesn’t burn calories like Wii Sports. We can choose anonymity, pseudonyms and avatars behind which to hide, but that defeats the purpose. It is a world much like our own, although we can banish those we find objectionable, by blocking or unfriending them.

To join, enjoy and benefit from the never-ending story playing out in social media, we must be some simulacrum of ourselves, always in the moment, always open to whoever may join the scene. By joining, we brand ourselves as exhibitionists, putting ourselves into the spotlight for others to enjoy or judge. But we are part of a team writing a script, billions of words every second, and though we know there are countless scenes playing out elsewhere, we are always in our own, or choosing which to observe. And it’s all being saved on hard drives around the world, perhaps to be played out again someday.

The quote under my high school yearbook photo was apt then, as the star of high school plays, and remains apt today, as a figure of minor recognition in a certain field. It is drawn from Kurt Vonnegut’s novelMother Night, the story of an American spy whose true identity is never revealed, and so he lives in hiding, reviled as a Nazi sympathizer. “We are what we pretend to be,” wrote Vonnegut’s protagonist. “So we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

My name is @hesherman. What’s yours? Let’s play.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website

The inquiries, mostly via Twitter, are cordial, casual and polite. “Let us know what you think,” they ask, in response to my mentioning what show I’ll be seeing later that day. “I loved it,” they say, “Hope u do 2.”

Until three weeks ago, I had a standard answer to these conversational inquiries about Broadway shows. I would say that given my role at the American Theatre Wing and The Tony Awards, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to voice my opinions one way or another. People respected that, and often seemed sheepish about having asked. I’m sorry if I undermined the very point of social media by refusing a reply, by being anti-social.

Now I have no cover, so to speak. But I’ve decided, at least for now, to maintain my policy in a general sense. I have been known to send effusive tweets over Off-Broadway or regional work that isn’t in Tony contention and I’ll still do so, while saying little about Broadway work, since I retain a Tony vote. You might ask whether pointing out what I go to see isn’t waving a red cape if I’m staying mum about my ultimate opinion; that’s a fair charge, but I do it mostly so those who have come to know me online will not think me solely a Broadway baby and develop a sense of the range – and limits – of what I see.

Keeping one’s opinion to one’s self is hardly the operative ethos of Internet intercourse. Indeed, many see the Internet as the perfect medium for broadcasting their opinions on a wide variety of subjects, whether or not they have any educated basis for such opinions.  Despite that cavil, I have often applauded the means by which the Internet has afforded every individual a broadcast voice, via Twitter, Facebook or countless other applications.

Too often I’ve seen this populist medium used as the platform for virulent versions of what professional critics do in the conventional media: declaring a show worthy or unworthy, attacking artists for offenses current or past, saying whatever comes to mind because there’s no editor or editorial standard to which they must adhere. More than once I’ve likened social media to the early days of broadcasting, and that’s still true, but in so many cases it also resembles the Wild West, with its language closer to Deadwood than to Oklahoma!.

We all know that strong, highly opinionated voices get attention and that is proven daily in the polarized messaging that passes for political conversation.  This cannot be the language for the arts. I worry that in trying to make a name for oneself in the online media circus, people seek to be as provocative, as snarky, as incendiary as they can be in order to stand out from the crowd, generating more page views, more retweets, more +1’s than the next commentator. While they may in fact do so from a place of passion about the art of the theatre, their actions, their writing, serve it poorly, since their negative hyperventilations serve only to promote or define themselves, rather than prove of benefit to anyone involved in the making of art.

Now don’t misunderstand me – I am not anti-critic, whether old media or new. I admire and maintain cordial relationships with a number of fairly prominent critics, and enjoy their insights regardless of whether I agree with them or not; I bridle only at those who seem to take pleasure in their pans. Unfortunately, it is those latter critics who the newly enfranchised prefer to emulate.

So, some might say, why don’t I use the internet to become the critic I hope all should aspire to be? There are several reasons, but one is perhaps the most important: conflict of interest. I have been working professionally in theatre for some 30 years, and so it is relatively rare that I see a production where I do not know some artist (in some cases many artists) involved in the production. For me to take on the role of critic now (even though I did so in my collegiate years) would create an impossible dilemma: either I risk offending people who I admire, enjoy and even love (since no one’s work is always impeccable), or I would have to lie to readers, making the point of my taking on a critic’s mantle completely hypocritical.

God knows, I have opinions. Most people can tell that within minutes of meeting me, and certainly those who know me have heard my thoughts about the many shows I see, often at length. But what I say in relative private is measured for each individual who hears it; I rarely dissemble, but I do omit. Social media simply doesn’t afford that degree of narrowcasting and personalization.

I am happy to engage in discussion and debate about theatrical topics, and Twitter and blogging have afforded me that opportunity, far beyond the circles in which I travel here in New York. I’m pleased to enthuse about remarkable aspects of works I see, without necessarily offering a blanket opinion, for broad public consumption. I’m most pleased when I can add a few obscure facts or personal reminiscences to discussions of theatrical work that I spot in the endless stream of online opining.

But what did I think of this show or that? Is my thumb up or down? Unless I’m enthusiastic and the show lesser known, I’ll remain silent or nibble around its edges only, as contrary as that is to my nature. I will not be a cheerleader who loves indiscriminately, but if I cannot say anything nice, as my mother taught me, I will not say anything at all. Readers can read into that silence as they wish. Theatre doesn’t need more people saying what’s wrong with it. I’d rather be someone who reinforces all of the things that are so, so right.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

As a result of fairly assiduous Twitter use, I have a very respectable score on Klout. However, now that Klout is about to start factoring in FourSquare activity, I have begun “checking in” these past few days, though I registered at least a year ago and find it somewhat juvenile (Badges? I don’t need no stinking badges). I am one of the select 10 million (an oxymoron to be sure) who has secured a Google+ account, however thus far I have made but a single post, comparing the coming Facebook/Google+ wars to the VHS/Beta wars of some two decades ago. I make only the occasional Facebook post, but at least I no longer restrict my friends to those I met in school. I keep up on LinkedIn, but only connect to people with whom I have genuinely worked, to maintain the integrity of the platform. My PeerIndex score is lousy, due I believe, to a tech error (reported, unresolved) that leaves out the vast majority of my Twitter activity. I’ve largely given up on Quora, because the questions being posed in the areas where I have some expertise are predominantly: a) subjective, b) silly and c) reminiscent of the Monty Python “How To Do It” sketch which offered simple instructions on things like how to be a gynecologist. I captured one of the free Spotify accounts earlier this week due to a car company promotion (I already forget the brand, and I don’t own or intend to buy a car anyway), although I have listened to only a single song.

Enough?

Let me also remind you that these are all personal accounts, as I’m in a job transition. So all of the above is either building my personal brand, providing fun as I decompress from a series of stressful jobs, or completely wasting time that I could be using more productively.

If this is what I’m facing, I can’t help but wonder how arts organizations are wading through the developing, churning world of social media, since every week seems to produce a new site or app designed to revolutionize how we relate to each other, be it as individuals, businesses & patrons, artists & audiences, and so on.

Traditionally, arts organizations haven’t been early technological adopters, largely because of a lack of internal expertise and the high cost of entry. I am old enough to remember Hartford Stage’s first fax machine (a wonder), first computer network (so much better than electric typewriters), first Mac and desktop publishing software (which we discovered didn’t actually design things for us) and first computerized ticketing system (somebody else’s headache, but terrific). But that technological adoption, in the latter half of the 1980s (e-mail became a standard while I was at Goodspeed Musicals), seems slow by the standards of today.

One significant factor in today’s more rapid adoption is that of cost. The most prevalent tools of communication at the moment, many name-checked above, are free. If you’ve got a computer and internet access (and for real convenience, a smartphone as well), you’ve pretty much got what your organization needs to jump into the fray.

But the challenge is deciding whether to do so or when to do so. Certainly if a promising new service appears that requires you to secure your company’s name from squatters (remember the domain name rush that characterized the spread of the internet itself?), it should be done right away. But beyond that, there needs to be a certain amount of wait and see.

If your organization has an in-house IT department (now the norm at large not-for-profits), there are probably one or more technologically savvy individuals forever lobbying every department about a new tool that can make their work more efficient, from the newest in collaborative CAD programs to online donation systems. Development, marketing and p.r. departments are watching social media in particular, both to give the organization an edge and to show the public that the organization has an edge.

But it has generally been acknowledged that just as freedom isn’t free, neither is social media. The cost is one of time and brainpower: does the organization have someone on staff who has the conceptual and technical savvy to figure out how to best use the cascading platforms? Can the organization afford to give over a portion of the time of an existing staffer to that pursuit, or to hire someone to focus exclusively on this area? Is the cost-value equation favorable for being active and meaningful on multiple platforms? What is the ultimate goal for the organization?

I am hardly the first person to pose these questions. Indeed, my Twitter feed is bombarded by advice — and solicitations to pay for advice — on how to best utilize these resources. In fact, I’m pretty stunned by the number of people who proclaim themselves as social media experts or gurus, in a field that is, in terms of widespread awareness and usage, maybe six or seven years old. I’m not being dismissive of true experts and explorers, as I’ve spoken with some very shrewd folks, but just as companies paid a fortune for their first websites because the practice of building them was so new, I fear the ratio of people with true insight to those who merely post a lot on Facebook poses risks for less sophisticated groups who feel they may be missing an important trend.

So I want to offer a single piece of pragmatic advice about adopting a new platform or, as the once dominant MySpace has shown, when to abandon one. That advice is to analyze, in a full organizational survey, why you’re doing it. What do you hope to achieve? Can the platform conceivably do what you want? Has it reached a tipping point where more than just first-adopters are playing with it?

As an aside, I should say that in most cases, the leaders of large organizations are ill-equipped to make these decisions, because they haven’t the time to understand these new forms of media themselves. They know how to search on Google, they can click on the link for a funny YouTube video, they may have a personal Facebook page, but their jobs don’t afford them the time to delve deeply into these areas. Indeed, I fear that many of them feel they are above it; at a recent LORT conference, I did a show of hands survey of managers asking how many knew their organizations were using social media, and how many had their own presence. Many hands appeared for the first question, but few remained up after the second. Yet these platforms are not just “for the kids,” and they certainly shouldn’t be relegated to intern-level responsibility, as is so often the case. This will change over time, as succeeding generations will take social media as simply the norm, not innovation.

Social media, like it or not, is transforming how people relate to each other, to the businesses they frequent and the organizations where they participate and which they may support. It is ignored at its own peril, but it is also embraced, if not with danger, then with caution.

While adopting a child is significantly more profound on many lives, adoption of social media platforms demands some marginally equivalent level of self-scrutiny and awareness. Otherwise, your organization will find itself making errors in public perception and in allocation of resources. And as we’re learning again and again, we post, tweet and share at our own risk. If a twitter revolution can ostensibly bring down a dictator, think what could happen if you use it wrong – or it turns on you, like an ungrateful child.

P.S. Those who found this essay online probably find it to be obvious, or old news, precisely because you’re far enough into the social world to be ahead of the thinking herein. But perhaps you have some discussion to provoke within your organization, or someone to persuade. Maybe this can help.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.

It’s a great word. “Embargo.” It seems to come from a different age, or a world in which brinksmanship over major issues comes into play. Oil embargo. Trade embargo. But it’s alive, if not exactly well, in the relationship between the media and those that they cover.

In the past 36 hours, there have been some very interesting comments on Twitter via #2amt about “embargoing” reviews of arts events. The primary participants have been Trey Graham of NPR, Peter Marks of The Washington Post, Alli Houseworth from Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Nella Vera of The Public Theater. As a “recovering” publicist, I’ve lobbed in a few thoughts as well, but I though the issue was worth more than a few 140 character salvos.

In brief summary: there has been a longstanding “gentleman’s agreement” (pardon my patronymic) between arts groups and the media that cover them that while productions may be seen by the press in advance of the official opening at designated performances, reviews will be embargoed for release until that official opening occurs. This has been in place for some time, although it is not theatrical tradition from days of yore – it is something that has been in place in the U.S. for not more than 50 years and is, I believe, an even more recent phenomenon in England.

Social media has upended this polite détente (as has, perhaps, Spider-Man, but for this discussion, let’s declare that an anomaly and move past it), since we now have personal media platforms that allow any audience member to broadcast their own opinions immediately upon exiting a theatre, if not during the performance itself. So the major media, with more traditional roots, finds itself either days or weeks behind in reporting on a cultural event while the court of public opinion renders verdicts left and right, or they have to report on that very public opinion before issuing their own.

Marks has commented that he is precluded from tweeting his opinions in advance of his review appearing; Frank Rizzo of The Hartford Courant was tweeting his thoughts on a show at the Williamstown Theatre Festival the very night he saw it, although in that case it was the press opening. There’s obviously no industry-wide practice and every outlet is formulating its own approach.

I should make clear that none of these journalists are sneaking into preview performances to which they’re not invited. They are respecting whatever preview period the company or producers have requested; they just chafe against having to wait, either out of professional courtesy to an externally imposed release date or an internal policy which dictates adherence to the print date.

I also need to state my belief that the performing arts do not truly come alive until they’re before an audience, and I believe that artists should have a reasonable amount of time to work on their creations in front of an audience (yes, a paying audience appropriately advised as to the show’s inchoate form) before opinions are rendered. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like have certainly made it impossible to completely manage such a protected environment and that’s just a reality of our world; to rail against it is foolish and unproductive. The question is whether major media (old or new), with its vast reach, should play by the old rules, or adopt the “embargoes be damned” attitude that the public has unknowingly employed.

For arts groups, one rationale for the embargo has been to achieve a “roadblock” effect with their reviews – a great many come out on the same day, having a better chance of achieving traction in the public’s mind. But as members of the press will often say, they are not marketing arms for the arts, but reporters or writers of opinion, so why must they adhere to a marketing or press plan? Frankly, so long as journalists don’t start writing about works of art before they are acknowledged to be complete, this practice may have to fall under the weight of the populist-driven social media.

As for tweeting a mini-opinion in advance of a full review, I have to say I don’t think that serves anyone. If the public, as some posit, want only bite-sized chunks of information, then critics are playing into their hands and hastening their own demise. After all, if you know a review is pro or con, will you necessarily look for a more nuanced appraisal a day or two later? Will the craft of reviewing at long last be reduced, in all arts, to the thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach popularized by Siskel and Ebert? Does anyone want reviews to be nothing but capsules, star ratings or a little man and his chair?

I must confess to puzzlement about how much the traditional media is approaching social media. Instead of using it to deepen its own coverage, since website space is less dear than newsprint, and the reach unfettered by geography and logistics, some papers undermine their own print versions in their race to populate a Twitter feed. The New York Times, inexplicably, shares virtually all of their Sunday arts coverage through Twitter two or three days before the Sunday paper is out, rendering the section old news by the time it appears fully online or (yes, I’m old) on my doorstep.

I will say I’m intrigued by critics like Marks or the prolific Terry Teachout, who will actively engage with their readers on social media, breaking down the ivory tower mentality cherished by critics only a generation ago. The idea that critics will interact with individuals, and perhaps artists, in a public forum, is tremendously exciting to me, and may well be the best thing to happen to artist/critic relations in many years. Indeed, might early tweets result in critics getting feedback and perspective before their final verdict is rendered?

As for the embargo: I think it has begun to crumble and that erosion will only accelerate as every single person who cares to becomes their own media mogul and true stars of the medium begin to achieve influence akin to that afforded by old media. I say, as long as the artists’ work is done, let’s be happy that the press is so eager to cover us. But I caution the press not to be so eager to adopt the new paradigm that they undermine themselves, leading to ever-briefer, ever-more-marginalized assessments of artists’ work.

This post originally appeared on the 2amtheatre website.