Media Socially

As you have probably noticed by now, I like social media. I feel that it has a great power to connect and reveal, as well as make the too-distant world a smaller and more interesting place.

Since I have the vast fortune of being in a position that allows me to craft and mold young, impressionable minds, I utilize this belief within my classroom. One of my favorite assignments in my acting class (and, based on previous experience, one of my students’ favorite assignment as well) is a character analysis assignment I give them focused upon social media. And because I think social media makes the world a better place, I’m going to take the time to share this with you so that you can be jealous that your acting teacher never assigned it, or (perhaps) use it for your acting classes (…if you do, please credit me).

I execute this assignment after I have already had the students choose monologues and read their plays. After a few more traditional character development exercises, I give them a chance to sit for ten minutes in class and create a social media feed from the perspective of their character depicting the events of their play. They are free to use any social media they prefer (twitter, instagram, facebook, etc.), and they are encouraged to develop this in as much detail as possible using the strengths of that platform (personal details via facebook, creating twitter handles, hashtags, etc.). Importantly: they are not required to actually develop the feed, just create some notes about it. This assignment can be done on a piece of paper, or on a computer. I have students sit with their notebooks and draw pictures, I have others who actually generate a twitter handle on the fly and form a feed that way.

Then, I give them a take-home portion. For five points of extra credit on their midterm, they are given the option to participate in this assignment:

Midterm Extra Credit Assignment: Social Media 

We can learn a great deal from what a person choses to share about himself via a public forum; especially when that person is experiencing a life-changing event.

Create a twitter account for your character. The handle should be either akin to the character’s name, or something the character himself would use. Set up an appropriate profile picture, header picture, and header text. Now use that account to tweet in the persona of your character.

You must update the feed several times a week over the course of the next few weeks; at least five tweets a week, but more is encouraged; until your final midterm monologue presentation. Updates should be in character and reference events in the play, other characters in the play, etc. You may comment upon actual goings-on in the real-world news if you feel that it is/would be valid and important to your character.

The richer your feed, the more points you will be awarded. To enrich your feed, include: links, retweets, pictures, hash tags, begin to follow people, etc.

For a few example feeds see: @HomerJSimpson (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons), @Broslife (Barney Stinson, How I Met your Mother), @KurtHummelGLEE (Kurt Hummel, Glee).

If you choose to participate in this assignment you must: Follow me on twitter from your new account (@drosvally). Once I follow you back, you will be able to send me a DM from the twitter handle with your (real) name and a note that you will be participating in this assignment. To send a DM, go to your page (twitter.com/[yourhandle]) and click on the envelope icon underneath your header picture. Click “new message”.

Since the midterm is coming up quick, the window for this assignment is small. If you intend to participate, you must declare that to me AND begin tweeting by WHATEVER DATE.

I, once again, can’t wait to see what my students come up with. I’m sure it will be both amusing and amazing.

Bent

Last night, I finally had a chance to drop by and see the critically acclaimed production that I worked on with Zeitgeist stage. Bent is a show about what happens to humanity when humanity is killed. On a literal level, it’s about gay men during the holocaust.

It was a tough show to work on. We did one very long fight call to get through the myriad of violence which the actors had to portray onstage (several beatings, several murders of various types, lots of body-dragging, you get the idea). After rehearsal, I came home a bit of a wreck and in need of some emotional after-care. I was pretty sure that I was going to hate the show (in a way that only excellent theatre about provocative issues can make you hate it).

I was mostly correct. While sitting in the audience last night, I got to witness human reactions to the visceral physical and psychological trauma being depicted onstage. Many folks left at intermission because they simply couldn’t bear to see anymore. I felt bad for them, but understood; it’s difficult to get through a show like this. It’s not pleasant to watch, it’s not pleasant to experience, but these are the kinds of atrocities that we, as a society, need to be reminded of in order to grow as human beings. There was, clearly, no end but one for the show’s protagonist and I could understand the need to leave the theatre before that end occurred.

Needless to say, the performances and direction are top-notch. Zeitgeist is a company that’s supremely aware of the old Shakespearean axiom that you need to make an audience love your characters before they die horribly. Moments of levity were interspersed with the horrors we witnessed in order to allow space for air. In terms of dramatic structure, this kind of relief makes the tortures that much more painful (and that much more real). Humor allows us to connect with characters as people and so is an extremely effective device in high tragedy (and I have no other words for what this play is really about).

The actors are all incredibly strong. The couple next to me was pretty seriously pondering the prospect of attacking the Nazi guards as they walked through the aisle on vigilant watch. In a show like this, it can often be more difficult to portray the antagonist than the protagonist. While the audience is already inclined to be sympathetic towards those who are being oppressed, embodying a personification of true evil in this modern world can be extremely taxing to the soul.

You don’t have a lot of time left to catch Bent (they’ll be at the Boston Center for the Arts through October 11th…. That’s next week, folks!). I highly recommend a trip over; and not just because I worked on the show.