How could Shakespeare get Internet Social?

Recently I’ve been working with Mark Ball, Head of Events and Exhibitions at the Royal Shakespeare Company, on a research project he’s undertaking as part of the Clore Leadership Program, the proposed title of which is “The influence of social networking and on-line collaboration on the production and distribution of the performing arts.” After our initial chat I offered to crowdsource the issues and get some feedback but was stumped by the scope of the thing, especially as this pretty much encompasses most of what I do at the moment. So this post is as much a brainstorming exercise for me as anything and I really welcome your comments, either here on on your own blogs.

First off, have a read of Mark’s research proposal. Done that? Good.

What immediately struck me was the disconnect between organisations that are supposed to be, for want of a better word, guardians of culture and the environments in which cultural activities are now taking place. There’s a big emphasis on initiatives that “take art to the people” (Birmingham Opera being a great example) but people are increasingly socializing and engaging with each other in online environments. How does a medium-to-large organisation with a long history and relatively inflexible systems adapt to this without losing what makes it special?

The RSC turns out to be a great example to play with, possibly too good as not every organisation is globally recognised as the modern-day agent of the father of English literature, but it’s nice to start with something tangible and see if the lessons can be applied elsewhere.

My first port of call was to fire up YouTube and see what was on there. YouTube is many things but I find it particularly useful for getting a sense of how people are connecting with culture both through their own performance and by mixing it up and making it their own. Here’s a small sample of what we found.

The King Is Dead – a student writes a rap based on the story of Hamlet to the tune of Nas’ Hip Hop Is Dead. He then took the Kenneth Branagh 1996 movie version and created a music video with Branagh lip-syncing the rap.

Sonnet #38 – Urgelt appears to be a poet and philosopher with a fantastic beard. Here he reads a sonnet “to cheer up a friend who was feeling down.”

As you’d expect there’s a lot of To Be Or Not To Be on t’Tube. This one I liked a lot, for obvious reasons:

Finding myself in a sea of TBONTB I figured I’d do an experiment. I’ve done a bit of video editing on my Mac but am by no means an expert. I probably have the same level of experience as anyone else out there. Could I do a mashup in an evening using all this stuff? Three hours later (most of which was spent waiting for the video to encode and upload after the edit) I had this:

From big budget Hollywood to fixed webcam to animation to musical adaptation and so on, this is a mere snapshot of how people are engaging with The Bard. And even the copyright infringing excerpts are engagement as they’re being shared by people who at the very least are saying “I like this and want to show you it in the context of my online life.” They’ve taken ownership of Shakespeare in the same way one might wear a t-shirt bought at the RSC shop.

So how can the RSC connect with this rich sea of activity around their brand? The personal performances are fine – the source material is way out of copyright – but what about our rapping Hamlet? Should the RSC be acknowledging his “theft” of Colombia Picture’s intellectual property?

That’s up for the RSC to decide, of course, but I think there are a few ways they can deal with this productively. The first is to simply be aware of it by tracking Shakespeare related activity on the web. Simple strategies like tracking the Shakespeare tag on YouTube and spreading the best ones around the company along with things like Google Blog Search, though as they stand these are blunt tools for the enormity of material out there and their use would need a bit of refining. The point, though, is how this awareness of the ways people are engaging with the works can affect the way the RSC thinks about its audience. Large organisations tend to operate in a bubble of excellence, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it does make bringing new ideas and ways of thinking into the mix rather tricky. Making this, to coin a phrase, audience generated content part of the process of understanding the audience could be interesting.

Another strategy would be to acknowledge the work out there, either directly or by creating a “firewall” between the official RSC stance and the online producers. For example, set up blog run by RSC staff members from across the spectrum (producers, directors, actors, educators, etc) that highlights the best of the web as they see it. This doesn’t have to be part of the RSC website or even be branded as an RSC project but the people running it would have a tacit authority. I wouldn’t like to speculate on the effects of this but if an RSC director were to give a constructive critical review of a reading found on YouTube that would certainly be interesting and might help raise the game.

The natural progression of this would be to actively engage with the community out there. So far I’ve mainly been talking about videos but I’m sure there are loads of forums and mailing lists out there full of Shakespeare fanatics. This post where blogger Nicky Getgood stumbled across a Yeats discussion group is quite illuminating. There are people out there who might not be Shakespeare professionals but whose knowledge, especially when approached collectively, is enormous. The RSC could benefit enormously from engaging with them I’m sure.

I’ll no doubt blog more about this as there are many ideas buzzing around my head and I’ve already rambled too long but Mark and I would seriously value your input, either in the comments here or directly by email.