Things That I Love III: Social Media (After Susan G. Komen)

On January 31st, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would halt grants to Planned Parenthood.

I know this because on the 31st my Facebook page was saturated with the news. In the next three days links to news, criticism, petitions, clever photos, and other calls to action poured in. It seemed every day dozens more friends had signed on to register their disapproval.

By February 3rd, Komen had caved, issuing an apology and a new statement that Planned Parenthood would be eligible for grants from the foundation.

I love Planned Parenthood. Those who know me know that I feel like Planned Parenthood helped me at a time when I was having a lot of health issues and was too poor to pay for any of it. I was frustrated, scared, and didn't know what to do. I feel like I owe Planned Parenthood a lot. I feel like they sort of saved me.

But that's not what I want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about the various political agendas that motivated Komen's decision and then its reversal. You have mine now, if you're curious, but that's not the point.

The point is that after just three days after the initial announcement, Susan G. Komen backed off after a "deluge of outrage online."

It is amazing and inspiring that so many people were able to organize so quickly and affect real change in the world.

Stories like these remind me why I am so passionate and curious about social media - why I keep reading about it and think about it and talking about it and experimenting with it. I imagine without social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, this is how the whole Komen thing would have went down:

-On January 31st, Susan G. Komen announces its decision. Maybe I read about it in the New York Times, but let's face it: probably not. I really only skim everything that's not the theater section.

-Later that week, somebody says to me, "Hey, did you hear Susan G. Komen pulled its funding from Parenthood?" I say, "WHAT?!? That's BS. I'm not buying any more of that pink crap."

-October, breast cancer awareness month, comes around eight months later and I buy some pink crap.

Instead:

-Someone posted the news and I shared it.
-Someone commented in protest and I liked it.
-Someone gave a link to a petition and I signed it.

And three days later, the decision was reversed.

Since the moment of its inception, it has struck me what a wildly powerful tool social media is; it has the potential to connect and organize massive groups of people on a scale that has never, ever been possible before.

Actually, it wasn't at the inception of social media that I got so excited. I actually remember the moment. It was that group - do you remember it? - that upstart kid who started a group on Facebook about seven years ago called, "For Every Member of This Group I Will Donate A Dollar To Darfur." This was before you could post a link, way before you could share somebody else's status - it might have even been before the newsfeed. But somehow, this kid's page went viral and, if he was true to his word, relief in Darfur got a ton of money.

And it occurred to me: my god, look at all these people, all these 250,000 members (yes, that was viral back in the day) who have come together so easily to do real good for the people of Darfur just because it was as simple as clicking a button.

How many other millions of people, in how many other ways, can technology like this unite? The potential was - and still is - limitless and unprecedented.

Of course, as anyone who's been on social media for more than five minutes knows, it's really not as simple as a click of a button. I know from experience that it's about as difficult to make something go viral as it is easy. This Planned Parenthood scandal raced across the internet - as did the protests agains the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills earlier in the month, and both campaigns were met with incredible success. But for every SOPA, how many other dozens of good and necessary causes, organizations and people that deserve our attention fall through the cracks?

The first thing I did after realizing social media's potential was to form a group that would be dedicated to seeing plays that were written, directed or produced by women on a regular basis to support female artists with our pocketbooks as well as just with advocacy. Six people joined. It never really got off the ground.

Meanwhile, seven years later, Works by Women is a group that is using another social tool, Meetup.com, to do exactly what I had attempted with much greater success.

It takes a strange mix of expertise, charisma, dedication and luck to use social media well. I want to discover what that mix is and make it work for me. That's why I love social media.

Rose in Harlem

Look up and just a little to the left. Unless you’re reading this from an RSS feed (in which case, hey, thanks for adding me) you’re going to see a little picture of a yellow rose winding out of a city window. This icon is my avatar for both my blog and my Twitter feed. I love this icon. Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think I would ever want to change it.

The picture itself was snapped by me back in 2006. My roommate (one of four of us, squeezed into a little apartment up on 145th) had brought the plant back from work one day, a heavy, green, sickly thing. She told us it was a rose “bush,” although from the wilted sight of it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. She was determined to nurse the tiny plant back to health; I predicted it would finish dying by the end of the week. But my roommate was gentle and attentive: she pruned back its dying leaves, repotted it, gave it food and water and what little light our alley-facing kitchen could afford. Within a few months it became a sturdy stalk, waxy, thorny and altogether definitely resembling the plant from which roses grow. Still, despite its metamorphosis, I could not have been more surprised the day I saw a little yellow bud appear on the stalk, a bud which proceeded to bloom, expand, and wind itself across our window.

The image of a little yellow rose bud blooming against all odds has been a powerful symbol for the life I persevered toward in New York. It is to me, a sign of hope – the possibility of life, of beauty, even through the smog and sulfur of that impossible city. The visible proof of what enough care and dedication can do.

When I started thinking about my move back to Albuquerque, I thought briefly about retiring the icon, wondering if the “rose in Harlem,” image really made sense anymore. But its depiction of hope and my wish to find and nurture beauty even in unlikely places still held true. So, so far, it’s stayed.

There’s another reason, though, that I chose to let a picture of a rose represent me online. I’ve always liked the idea that my face is more or less invisible to the general virtual public. When I first started working as a director in New York City, I found that my biggest handicap when it came to finding work was my youth. Not my inexperience, my youth. People didn’t even want to talk to me. They didn’t want to get to know me long enough to find out how inexperienced I was. My face told them all they needed to know. I went through a phase where I made a deliberate effort to “dress like a 30-year-old,” (whatever that meant) under the wisdom that one should dress for the job she wants, not the job she has. People ten years older than me were getting the jobs I wanted, I thought logically, so I should dress ten years older than I am.

That was a long time ago; I was barely past 20 then, now I’m nearing 30 for real. But I still have a very young face, and a very soft, girlish look. When I started talking to other artists online, I sort of relished the idea that I would be judged solely for my ideas and not for the way I look. Nobody would be able to say to me, “You’re too young, too cutesy, too blonde to contribute to this conversation.”

But I’m not in New York anymore, nor desperately seeking theater work. I’m looking for new kinds of work now. I want to find the community; I want to find and nurture the beautiful local arts, business, and culture we have here. And I’d like to write, really. I’d like to turn this blogging, which I’ve enjoyed so much, into something more.

And I’m new here. Maybe it’s a good idea to put a face to a name. That way, I might see somebody on the street or at a party and they’ll say, “Hey, I know you. You’ve got that amazing blog I’ve been reading. Here, have a job.”

…

It will happen exactly like that.

In any case, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a help or a hindrance to have my face a tiny bit obscured. And I’m wondering if it’s worth it to part with my beloved rose.

What do you think? Are you ever judged, correctly or incorrectly, on the way that you look? Have you ever hidden your face (or put it everywhere) as a strategic move?

The Benefits of Twitter, Part 1

Last night, after seeing his wonderful show in the Philly Fringe, I went out for a drink with my friend Ben along with the rest of the cast and crew.

 "What's going on?" he asked me.  "I feel like most of our conversations these days are through Twitter."

"Most of my conversations in general are through Twitter," I joked. 

He laughed.  "I think that might say something about you you don't want to be said." 

"Twitter completely opened up my theater world," I said to him without hesitation, embarrassment, or hyperbole.  My friend Sarah, who was sitting with us, thought about it for a second.  "It's true," she said.  "It kind of did."

Ben is not the only person to have given me a hard time about using Twitter.  It seems like the (first) world is divided pretty squarely into people who are really into Twitter and people who are really not into Twitter.  "Ugh," my sisters scoffed when I went home for Christmas last December after I signed on to check my feed.  "I CANNOT BELIEVE you are on TWITTER." 

"It's for networking purposes ONLY!" I defended.

Although I've gotten increasingly more social in tone over the past year, my Twitter account was and remains specifically a tool to broaden and deepen my community as a theater artist.  It's worked surprisingly, spectacularly well.  Go ahead, challenge me on it.  I will sing my love of Twitter to the rafters every. damn. time.

It's a bit reductive to say, "it's not what you know, it's who you know" about making theater in New York, but you learn pretty quickly that it's damn near impossible to do without a strong and supportive network of people whom you can draw on for resources. Finding actors, designers and technicians, getting connected to rehearsal and performance space, borrowing props and costumes,  securing financial support, simply seeking experience and advice, finding a person or company to produce your project, or evening finding the project ITSELF - none of this can get done without a group of people who like you or your work and are invested in your success.

Five years ago, as a cripplingly shy girl who found it difficult just to tell a stranger I enjoyed their show without my heart sort of leaping into my throat, building such a community was difficult.  I sucked it up, bit the bullet, pressed on and eventually got a lot more adept at socializing with strangers, but networking has never been my strong suit.  I've always been looking for new ways to make connections, get involved, and my foray into the theatrical interwebs started as just that - another idea. 

"I've been thinking about starting a blog," I said to a friend off-handedly.  "I think it might, you know, widen my community.  I'm thinking it would be a good way to talk to people I wouldn't normally meet.  And I write a lot better than I speak.  I'm way more articulate."  Plus, I had been moderately aware of the community since the marketing director at Women's Project had asked during me my internship to compile a list of New York theater bloggers for a "grassroots campaign."  I knew for a fact that there were a lot of interesting playwrights and producers writing worth reading and talking to.  As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized it was a really, really good idea.

So I did it.  Right away, I started feeling the benefits.  I found I really loved learning about arts, culture, politics and current events through the lenses of people who worked and thought and created like me.  I found dozens of exciting and engaging blogs like Parabasis, CultureFuture, On Theater and Politics, Jamespeak, and of course, 2AM Theatre.  I also found that it kept me thoughtful and engaged and gave me a sense of creative purpose to write on a regular basis.

Except nobody was really reading my blog, except my dad, who to this day I believe remains its biggest fan.  I emailed a friend of mine who had a very successful blog and asked her how to get people to read it.  She emailed me a pretty awesome list of things to do (which, with her permission, maybe I'll post if anybody's interested?) the most salient of which seemed to be Join Twitter.

I resisted.  I did not DO Twitter, I did not UNDERSTAND Twitter, I did not LIKE Twitter.  But saw her reasoning and opened an account.  It took me a long, long time to figure it out.  I remember messaging a friend of mine who was already an avid Twitter-user in extreme frustration, "Can you PLEASE explain to me how a hashtag works???"

I remember I agonized about my first tweet.  What the hell was I supposed to say?  What did I have to say that was important enough or interesting enough to "tweet" it? 

I later realized that the answer to that question is nothing, which is at once the beauty and the terror of the 140-character limit.  Every once in a while, something really profound or worthwhile can emerge, but generally speaking, there is very little one can say in 140 characters that is of any substance whatsoever, or that makes any sense on its own, as an isolated piece of information.  The result, on the negative side, is that Twitter becomes a dumping ground for all manner of inanity that would best remain unsaid.

The cool part of it, though, is that it creates this culture, this environment of not having to think too hard about what you have to say, and all of these random ideas, responses, jokes, and revelations all get released into this big communal cloud of stream-of-consciousness. The worth lies not in the singular but in the collective.  It's not about any one specific person, or one specific tweet, it's about easy, dynamic exchange of thoughts as they appear and are shared publicly.  It becomes about the conversation.

I became immediately obsessed and in love with that conversation.  I followed my favorite blog, 2amt, to the concurrent dialogue on Twitter, even though I had absolutely no clue what a hashtag conversation meant.  The idea of an engaging and supportive community conducted digitally across time and space has never been so fully realized as it has been by 2amt.  I was welcomed with open virtual arms for the simple and undiscriminating reason that I was smart enough to learn to type the characters #2amt before I pressed the button that said "Tweet." 

Through 2amt I met more and more people, and my virtual community began to both expand and deepen.  The experience made me realize that there was a whole facet of this whole "networking" thing that I hadn't understood and had been sorely missing these five years that I've spent in New York: a network that is not just a source of knowledge and support, but a source inspiration.  A group of people whose ideas excite you, and whose questions challenge you.  A group that gets you constantly thinking about the work that you really want to do, because you're constantly seeing and hearing about the kind of work that you really want to do.  It's not enough, I realized, to have a support base of people who want you to do your work, you need to have a support base who make you want to do your work.  These people, these challenging, engaging, inspiring people, I found on Twitter, of all places.

"I'm Really Into Curation Lately."

I once heard this spoken by one of the members of the Women's Project labs (forgive me, I can't remember who). I was just out of college at that time, and happened to be lucky enough to briefly be in the same room with these people, these talented women on the rise within the profession, sharing some incredible ideas about theater. And when whoever it was that said, "I'm really into curation lately," I thought, Like a museum? What on earth does that have to do with theater? I don't get it. Hilariouly, five years later (I guess I have a slow learning curve), I am finding myself more and more compelled to say the exact same thing.

Not to belabor a play that I saw, at this point, almost a month ago, but I realized there's something else I wanted to say about The Shaggs. Something happened during the intermission which caught my attention: one of the women in the group seated in the row in front of me looked up The Shaggs on her iPhone, and managed to find a YouTube video which see then passed around to her friends. They all took turns listening to the band through her headphones saying, "Oh yes, they're pretty awful."

I actually tweeted about this when I saw it (YES, I tweeted at intermission, another phenomenon that's somewhat relevant within the context of this conversation); it struck me as interesting for a number of reasons.

The first is this: I was acutely aware of the lack of historical context provided by the theater about the band. No dramaturgical note, no time-line, nothing whatsoever printed about the family, the actual facts of their story, or any information about what happened before or after the events we saw on stage. There was such a dearth of contextual support, I HAD to assume it was a deliberate choice.

But was it a wise one? Or, more importantly, a feasible one? Look at me, for example: the only reason I was SEEING the show at all was because I had heard about the "true story" and my interest was piqued. And program note or no program note, nothing could stop me from returning home and Googling "The Shaggs" until my curiosity was sated. But, I'll grant you, there is a big difference between finding out the true story after you leave the theater and having the information while you watch. Happily for the creative team of The Shaggs (if this was indeed their desire), I don't own a smartphone. Unhappily for them, I'm in a dwindling minority. Now look at the group in front of me that night: you couldn't have stopped them from accessing that information, and what's more, these people were on the departing side of middle-age, not a particulary hip or cutting-edge demographic. Which is to say, you can't stop MOST of your audience from accessing information about your show, right in the middle of it. This is especially true for historical fiction and "based on a true-story"-style tales, but continues to be relevant for any kind of story. You audience can now be looking up information about the play, the playwright, the theater, previous productions, reviews, you name it, at any given moment. And if we can't stop our audience from accessing this information, shouldn't we embrace it? What if we tried to curate their experience and incorporate it into the larger experience of seeing the play?

That notion becomes Interesting Idea Number Two, and that's what really excites me. How fun would it be to sift through your program as you restlessly wait for the play to begin and instead of useless reviews of nearby restaurants, there were QR Codes or links to articles, pictures, videos or even music that relates to the show you're about to see?

And what if we could use this new technology to link the production to other related art? Paintings, songs, poems, short films, photographs, all somehow inspired by or related to the show itself, transforming it into a multidisciplinary experience.

I had a similar idea a few years back, although without the technological bent. I wanted to do a production of The Little Foxes and - well, I never quite worked out why and for whom I wanted to do the show, which is why it was never fully realized so I'll withhold the details, as they don't quite make sense. But, sufficed to say, I wanted to do The Little Foxes in a site-specific location, by and for members of a specific community. I wanted to involve the community in the show itself as actors, designers and collaborators, but I also wanted to extend beyond the play itself, encouraging the community to respond to the play through writing, pictures and other various multimedia which would be available for the audience to experience on-site both during the show, and on its own later.

And even though I couldn't figure out how to make it work for The Little Foxes, I'm still keen on this sort of curated community experience. Now I'm thinking of it in relationship to another, well, let's not call it an idea, but an inkling of an idea I'm excited to explore with another director I met in the LCT Lab this month. I'm very drawn to the possibility of using that kind of curated experience to bring a community together, and, through various disciplines, bring texture and dimension to an issue or idea that affects that community in a measurable way.

So that's what I'm thinking about right now. Is all of that cryptic enough for you? Unfortunately, I can't really elaborate, as beyond that the details are hazy even for myself. Anyway, after seeing The Shaggs, it makes me wonder if this idea that I've already been tossing around in my head could move to a whole new level with the inclusion of smartphone technology.

Or the technology it could totally detract from it, I don't know. What do you think?