Theatre News

Twitters Move In to Bury St Edmunds

The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds may be all of 200 years old, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not up with the times – and social media in particular. It held a sneak preview of the current in-house production of Dangerous Corner on 9 March specifically for tweeters and bloggers.

Those of us who dread the display of mobile phones in any theatre’s auditorium need not worry. This was a marketing exercise, but it’s one which has proved so successful that there are plans to repeat it. The direct effect on the box office has also proved positive. On 24 March there is to be a special Twestival (Suffolk’s own Digital Day) session in the theatre’s Greene Room and, on 4 April, a Tweetconference in connexion with Hull Truck’s April in Paris.

Chris Grady, the theatre’s head of external relations, comments that: “We are really enjoying exploring the potential of this new way to communicate with a new audience. There is nothing better than finding you’ve written the perfect tweet (exactly 140 characters) which sums up the message you are trying to get across.

“As we meet other experts in the field, it is great to see how the essence of live arts, the “in the moment” visceral experience of theatre, works well with the immediacy of the tweet. There is then time to ponder the overall experience of a play or a discussion in a blog. And it’s a medium which travels fast, and wide, and to unexpected places”.