Sure, we do the pre-theatre announcements, usually done in a funny way, (Rock of Ages says it “it makes you look like a douchebag.”) I’m just not convinced that the “Please take this moment to shut off your cell phones” is enough for audiences. We need to do more. Check cell phones in the lobby? Or get the community together for an ad campaign!

Buy some television commercials, Do a live social etiquette lesson on ustream.tv, create videos and throw them up on YouTube. We can get the Ad Council and the FCC in on this. We need a public message that is funny and will stick. (Sure, there are more important things like Teen Dating Violence Protection and quitting smoking, but cell phone abuse is out of control, right?)

I think it would be great if we did a video series of regular life incidents where the cell phone is involved and throw in one of our theatre celebrities.

Scene 1: A family is enjoying a lovely conversation over a beautiful dining room table. Amidst light-hearted chatter, a cell phone goes off. Everyone is looking at the eldest kid who answers it. Kid says “Oh hey Bra, yeah, no, it’s fine, I can chat.”  Mom looks at Dad, Sister looks at younger sister. Then they all turn to brother. They know what’s about to happen. BOOM! Patti Lupone BUSTS in. She screams, “Who do you think you are? This is a dinner table. Everyone at this table has respect except for YOU. Get ‘em out of here (then an usher comes in, all dressed up, escorts the douchey kid out of the house.) Then, Patti sings “Here she is boys! Tell the world! Heaaaaz Patti!” Cue ad message.

Scene 2: A crowded, quiet subway. Next stop, Broadway/Lafayette. A super cute girl walks on and gets a call. She gets service! She picks it up and snorts and laughs “Omygod, I know, O-M-G-W-T-F, I knah! Omygod, I hate her! I knah! I knah!” Everyone on the subway gets quiet…you hear a rattling of the car; There’s a roar coming, but, it’s not the train. From the sea of passengers barges through a very angry Hugh Jackman. He grabs the cell phone and crushes it with his hands. He gazes at the shell-shocked girl. All he says is “You’re annoying everyone on the train.” Then runs out, Wolverine style.

What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions of ad ideas for this theatre cell phone problem? Leave your ideas in the comment sections below.

It’s really fascinating to watch the rapid-fire evolution of social media that is happening all around us. Mark’s fellow commentator Pete Cashmore from mashable.com referred to something called the Gartner Hype Cycle, which describes the rise and fall of technology applications and led to some interesting discussion during the segment.

To me, it’s like living in a real-time time lapse photo. “Now they’re twittering . . . now you’re lame because you’re not . . . now you’re twittering . . . now they’re not . . . now you’re lame because you are . . . now they’re fill-in-the-blanking . . . ” You get the idea. And that whole cycle happens in about a month. Mayflies have a longer life expectancy.

What struck me most , though, was Mark’s observation that Twitter is fundamentally  antithetical to what he does at The Critical Condition, which is  devoted to criticism of popular culture. In his blog, Mark offers thoughtful analysis of everything from music to movies to advertising to books, and he does a terrific job of making the links between all of those things and the larger society that they are not only all products of, but that they are  producing. That can’t be accomplished in 140 characters.

But he does use Twitter to point followers to whatever conversation he’s facilitating on any given day, and that, to me, is the best use of a micro blog. Not as an end unto itself, but as  a means to an end, whether that’s highlighting an ongoing interaction or sowing a seed for a future interaction.

And that’s kind of a relief.  Fragmented thoughts that aren’t anchored to  more complete exchanges feel chaotic to me, like a radio that is picking up two different stations simultaneously. Discrete tweets leave me bemused, but looking at the Twitter application in a larger context shows me its place our cultural conversation. And that’s good (for me), because Twitter—or whatever the next big thing turns out to be—is here to stay.

Another reason I’m reluctant to jump onto this particular band wagon is a sort of vestigial suspicion I have about people knowing too much about me and my business. It all just seems a little big-brothery to me. I think it’s the pseudo-privacy of the medium: You know you’re communicating with your Twitter followers, however many they may be, but the experience is still solitary, like whispering into a microphone that is broadcasting to the world. You don’t really know how many people are tuning in, and probably more importantly, who they are. Just skeeves me out a little.

BUT! I am fascinated by the fact that Twitter is changing how business is done. Check out this NY Times article about the ways that companies are “listening” to customers to not only learn about their preferences, but also to tap into the nuances of the marketplace.

I’m just more than a little ambivalent about Starbucks, Whole Foods and Amazon sniffing around my virtual self to find out how I take my coffee, buy my groceries and read my books.

Fela! (5 total: Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Choreographer for Bill T. Jones, Outanding Lead Actor for Sahr, Outstanding Scenic Design AND Costume Design for Marina Draghici)

Vineyard Theatre: Outstanding Musical for This Beautiful City, Outstanding Scenic Design for James Schuette, Wig Out!

Woohoo, way to go!!

I caught this article on TIME.com entitled “Congress’s New Love Affair with Twitter.” Pete Hoekstra (Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/PeteHoekstra) has almost 3,000 followers on Twitter. He is the representative for Michigan’s 2nd district in the US House of Representative’s. He  Twitter’s often to let his followers know what he is thinking and doing.

The article mentions, since Obama’s (amazing) social networking outreach during the election, many politicians have jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites. Some crtics of this worry about security issues. Hoeskra twitter constantly on his last trip to Iraq sparking concerns that he may be giving away location or any other sensitive information.

Politicians taking on activities normally reserved for their children or grandchildren brings up some interesting issue that national security officials have never had to deal with before. How do you stop politicians from twittering? Also, if 70 year old congressmen and senators are representing themselves (even though the pages, interns or secretaries are the one’s actually dealing with the networks) will it turn the younger generation off? I mean, how many high school students would want to be Facebook friends with their grandparents?

The play received critical acclaim in its NYC premiere last year, many kudos going to Meital Dohan, who you might remember as a feisty—and ferociously sexy—rabbinical scholar on Showtime’s Weeds.  John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco on The Sopranos) also stars.

Take a look at the graphic identity we created for the show. To my mind, it does just what good show art should do: captures the emotional essence of the piece in a visually arresting, yet enigmatic way.  The play is a tasty little chunk of psycho-love-drama, depicting two people who love each other in a brutally tender way, odd as that sounds. Their bond is painful to the touch; it hurts as much as it heals them.   And though the piece is sometimes painful to watch, it’s also an intimate look at a couple trying to love each other in the only way they know how.

First up was The Cripple of Inishmaan a co-production of Druid Theatre Company and Atlantic Theater Company. If you’re familiar with Martin McDonagh’s work (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lieutenant of Inishmore,  The Lonesome West, A Skull in Connemara and The Pillowman on stage; In Bruges and Six Shooter on film), you know that despite his often grim (and frequently grisly) subject matter, he is, no kidding, one of the funniest playwrights working today. And Cripple is vintage McDonagh. The dialogue is crisp, the jokes are rapier sharp and, under Gerry Hynes’s direction at Atlantic, the cast is sublime.

A few days later we caught Enter Laughing at The York Theatre Company, which had an initial run in early fall and is being reprised through March 8. This musical, with a book by Joseph Stein and music and lyrics by Stan Daniels, is based on the play by Joseph Stein from the novel by Carl Reiner, is a classic screwball comedy, made for laughs and unashamedly played for laughs.

What struck me on both occasions is how truly wonderful the Off Broadway experience can be, particularly at a skillfully produced and performed comedy. It’s really something to sit in the dark, laughing and hearing everyone around you laughing at the same thing. The sound and energy just buoy you, and it’s extraordinary to feel the energy cascading back and forth between performers and audience, each propelling the other. Movies, even really funny ones, just can’t deliver the same punch, can they?

That’s what Charles Dickens wrote about money and budgeting in David Copperfield. Simplistic, but true. Unfortunately, as we know, theatre and arts organizations of all kinds are contemplating a pretty miserable forecast for this year, and next, and . . .  oh, who can say when it will end?

Necessity being mother of fundraising, people are starting to get creative about using the power of the internet to expand on the usual (and ubiquitous) year-end appeal. AMC client, Terry Greiss, Executive Director of the Irondale Center, created a video appeal in an effort to shore up their faltering finances, blasted it,  posted it on Youtube and uploaded it to their website. The campaign got picked up by the Daily News and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which we’re all hoping will  help get the word out and the dollars in.

In other news, the Times ran an article the other day on the bigger (BIGGER!) picture in arts funding, i.e. the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill, which includes a $50 million supplement for the N.E.A. to distribute directly to nonprofit arts organizations and also through state and local arts agencies. No way is this enough (is there ever enough?), but at least it offers a ray of hope that the arts will reclaim some part of the national agenda. Lord knows, they’ve been absent from the national political stage (except as a punching bag) for far too long.