Peeking Behind the Digital Curtains

Shakespearean Performance Institutions, Social Media, and Access

Abstract

Cluster: Shakespearean / Social Media Identities

As social media have become integral to the marketing practices of Shakespeare theaters and festivals, these and other digital technologies serve as the means for providing audiences with greater access to institutions' work with Shakespeare and performance. While they create new avenues for audiences to engage with institutions and their work, they also seem to signal a shift to a time of open access, in which audiences can interact with theaters and festivals like never before. However, rather than throwing open the gates and making all of theaters' and festivals' work available to online audiences, these claims to open access are more complex. To understand how access is changing, our definitions of access need to account for not only institutions and audiences, but also the technologies they are using to engage with one another. Institutions that incorporate social media into their marketing practices have to account for how the affordances and limitations of specific technologies, as well as their common user practices, reshape institution-audience interactions, destabilizing the level of control institutions maintain over their online content. This article argues that access should be thought of not in binary terms (open and closed), but rather as a spectrum influenced by institutions, audiences, and technologies alike. Ultimately, I contend that scholars need to consider issues of access further as new technologies and new methods for institution-audience interactions continue to be developed and integrated into Shakespeare theaters' and festivals' online audience outreach.