(a draft originally written July 2023)
Watched a performance of Matilda this weekend.
This was such an old-school experience.
We were told turn off all phones, not take any photographs or record any video, and most people complied.
It gave the whole affair a very non-digital feeling.
Though this wasn't the intention of the performance, the experience was the polar opposite of experiencing short clips through an infinite scrolling feed.
I wonder if this is what we need more of now.
At a time when theater is historically low, something like it could allow people to have a space to have an old-school human experience, and counteract the "hyper-online-digital-media" that is experienced by way of TikTok/Instagram/whatever, where it's always a bit murky who (or what) is controlling the narrative of what you see.
It felt like a bit of a new "offline counterculture"