Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Just a Question

If I'm not mistaken, MySpace was created to allow bands to publicize their music. Could a similar site be set up for theatre?

3 comments:

Travis Bedard said...

Mr. Walters,

You cannot.

Theater's transcendent quality is it's immediacy, which doesn't translate to any sort of archiving, which would be necessary for such a vehicle.

Scott Walters said...

Well, transcendent qualities aside (after all, music is better live than recorded, too, for that matter), MySpace is primarily a marketing site for fans to gather. Why not theatre?

Anonymous said...

I like the idea. About five years ago, I started wondering why theater wasn't using video clips on the Internet to market itself more. Turned out (which probably won't surprise many people here) that it was mainly a matter of contractual restrictions, and beyond that a question of money, rather than any question of technology. I suppose those are still the reasons why this isn't happening much.

I seem to recall finding a Chicago theater site that'd show you a clip for some of the bigger shows there. I don't know whether New York is doing even that much, but I haven't tried to find out lately. In principle, though, I believe it's possible.

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