In conversation between Ronnie, Kris and myself we wanted to develop a concept that would be effective, dramaturgically relevant to the piece and simple to execute.
Given Ronnie’s touring schedule we realized that creating a series of video messages to be sent in mysterious tweets to audiences preshow would be an optimal good way to proceed.
Once we were feeling strongly about the concept and approach we began designing the experience. The show presumes that audiences are invited to a secret underground meeting at a time when writing has been largely forgotten and is deemed illegal. So we decided to select a series of symbols as the main title graphic of each video. The symbols are visually intriguing but also dramaturgically relevant. They extend the concept that using symbols as means of communication would be an interesting way to appropriate written language and make it more difficult for the presumed “establishment” within the world of the show to catch on to the underground group’s communication.
The symbols also comment on contemporary visual and mimetic culture of using emojis and memes in text messages as means of communication. Each symbol was carefully selected to relate to the content in the video and its meaning.
This was an example of a relatively simple technical approach that successfully extends the storyworld beyond the walls of the theatre and the time of the event while leveraging familiar tool sets such as Social Media to engage audiences in novel new and interesting ways