CityLife

Twittering theatre: The lowdown

ALL THE RAGE: Twittering

THE web service Twitter, despite a massive upsurge in usage following endorsements from celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, divides people sharply between those who use it constantly and those who cannot understand why anyone would want to share the details of their lives with others or read about what strangers on the other side of the world are having for dinner.

Many of those in the first category were once very firmly in the second.

But what is Twitter and is it of any use? The Twitter service is the most popular platform for ‘micro-blogging’, where users are given up to 140 characters to answer the question, “what are you doing?”.

While some people take this question literally and document every dull detail of their lives, most post information, links, news, jokes or opinions that they think others may be interested in.

Many celebrities – those who don’t just get their publicity people to put out short, banal statements for them – interact regularly with their fans on Twitter, even taking the time to answer messages from their followers.

Recently, Stephen Fry kept us up-to-date on his filming schedule for Last Chance To See and even Twittered while stuck in a lift, Eddie Izzard told us about filming for Day of the Triffids and The Sun reported with glee that Alan Davies let slip about receiving a new script for Jonathan Creek, while Jonathan Ross likes to send embarrassing pictures of his pets and celebrity friends.

Many companies and organisations are using Twitter to update customers, members or supporters and answer questions from them, and this is where theatres and theatre companies are starting to get in on the Twitter act.

As with many corporate Twitterers, some are chatty and try to engage their followers in a dialogue, whereas others merely post headlines and links to news items.

Some Manchester theatres that have actively entered the Twitterverse are Bury Met (themet), Library Theatre (librarytheatre) and Oldham Coliseum (OldhamColiseum) who all provide news, event information and backstage gossip.

Pyramid and Parr Hall

Warrington’s Pyramid and Parr Hall (pyramidparrhall) has a little-used account, as has Bolton Octagon’s Activ8 education department (activ8octagon).

You can also keep up-to-date with this year’s Manchester International Festival (MIF09) on its active and chatty Twitter page, plus actor David Slack keeps everyone advised about the 24:7 Theatre Festival (247theatre) that he co-directs. North West Theatre (nwtheatre) posts links to news and reviews about local productions from time to time.

For national theatre news, entertainment industry newspaper The Stage (thestage) posts regular links to its news stories and reviews and The Telegraph has a page (TelegraphTheatr) dedicated to its own theatre news and reviews.

If you are planning a theatre trip to London, West End Updates (WestEndUpdates) has a very active page with gossip, live quizzes, special offers and news and West End Theatre (westend_theatre) lists ticket discounts, plus leading national theatre companies The National Theatre (NationalTheatre), The Royal Shakespeare Company (TheRSC) and The Royal Court (royalcourt) post regular updates.

If you enter “twitter.com/” followed by the user’s account name in your browser’s address box you can see their latest updates, but if you sign up as a member you can click the “follow” button on each page and have their latest messages listed – along with your own updates if you choose to post any – on your own Twitter home page.

You can also access your feed and post messages using many different software packages for Macs, PCs, mobile phones and other devices and list your latest messages on your own web page or blog.

On the surface, micro-blogging seems like a pointless waste of time to many people, but Twitter is only the platform and its usefulness depends on what people do with it, and, like anything else on the internet, once you find your way through the mass of useless, unreliable or just boring chatter you can get real up-to-the-minute information about the things that really interest you.