Social Media Theater Curtain Will Rise March 1

Three words you maybe never thought you’d hear together: Social Media Theater. At a glance, you might not even be sure what it means.

Here’s an idea that could either be very good… or very lame. The next few weeks will tell.

Certainly, the impulse is a good one. From the Reorbit Social Media Theater website:

Expanding social media into artful artifice, our intent is to reengage audience interest in theater & literature through emerging new media technology and experiences. We are asking writers to write for free, however any proceeds we may be able to generate in the future will go into furthering this mission or be fairly distributed to authors for any writing we may republish.

A Samuel Beckett quote on the website sounds very much like a mission statement: “To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”

In real world terms, however, what does that even mean? From a press release:

Reorbit is a cutting-edge project that merges historical figures and modern technology to create a new set of online plays. Writing in real-time, the characters use Twitter as a channel for interacting with a wider audience online. What would Kafka say in 140 characters? What would a modern-day Sylvia Plath tweet about? Social media will play a role in an actual real-time written performance of a character.

The first characters to go live include Emperor Norton, Sylvia Plath, Keith Moon and Charles Bukowski. Reorbit is also extending the audience of other projects: Arthur Miller will be re-imagined in conjunction with a production of one of his plays, and a contemporary novelist's main character will continue her dialogue with the audience.

Several Twitter-fed flash fiction plays are set to begin March 1st. You can choose which to follow here.