Why Use New Media?

How can new media technologies be so important when drama is about people in a room? This article by C&T’s Producer Rob Lines first appeared in Theatre Education News.

True story: I’m wandering round Bucharest and I’m thirsty. There’s a guy on the street selling bottles of Coke. I wander off with my purchase, but the vendor comes chasing after me shouting and gesturing wildly. A small crowd forms whilst I fail miserably to understand what on earth is going on. It transpires that in Romania you’re expected to down your drink there and then – I’d only bought the contents, but the bottle was his.

Which only goes to show how easy it is to fall foul of local customs – we’ve all been there. Sadly, humiliation and the risk of ridicule aren’t limited to the world of travel, and no arena offers more opportunity for faux-pas and embarrassment than new technology.

Imagine that the brave new world of technology is a land. It’s a land in which few of us were born. We go there regularly, and have had to learn some of the language, protocols and customs. Worryingly, the language of this land seems to mutate and enlarge almost every day. We’ve learned some social etiquette, but have had to do so on the hoof, because no-one anywhere can agree and define exactly what it is. Worst of all, go away for too long, and you soon can’t even follow the simplest conversation.

Fortunately, the locals were born there, and have grown up speaking the language from the cradle. Amused by our attempts to communicate, they often wait patiently for us to catch up, though some are actively hostile and taunt our attempts to fit in. It’s digital natives versus digital immigrants.

Digital immigrants are used to the post arriving once a day – low speed snail-mail – while natives expect their inbox to regularly update at the twitch of a mouse-click. Immigrants watch TV that tells them what happens next, but natives want to participate in the story and affect the outcome. Immigrants love a story with a beginning, middle and end, whilst natives want to custom-assemble their own narrative. Immigrants learn by passively listening – natives learn by actively collaborating.

This distinction, between those ill-at-ease with new technology and those who don’t even see it as new at all, is familiar to all of us. And whilst I haven’t said it yet, you can guess who the natives are. Every parent knows that their teenage children will fathom the complexities of the latest gadget with an almost supernatural speed, without even reading the manual. For those of us born too early, the whole situation requires some strength of character – it’s a predicament that will only get worse…

So, if new technologies, and the social revolutions they have fostered, are so fundamental to the lives of young people, how come in school ICT is still an add-on? How is it that we see people (laudably) trying to inject ICT into subjects conceived decades ago? Why is it often a separate subject at school, and when it is combined with another subject, the resulting cocktail is often gaudily coloured, but ultimately unsatisfying?

At C&T, we believe the answer is in conceiving projects that embrace media technologies from the start – projects which could not possibly work without it. ICT becomes a necessary ingredient, rather than a cherry on the top.

Traditional theatre people often ask us why we include ICT in our work. Sometimes I tell them the long version, which you’ve just had. But sometimes I turn it round and pose a simpler question: “Why did you leave it out?”