In Friday’s (12/2) USA Today, Kara Rose writes, “A growing number of theaters and performing groups across the country are setting aside ‘tweet seats,’ in-house seats for patrons to live-tweet during performances. … Major venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York City and The Kennedy Center in Washington have not tried Tweet seats and expect audience members not to access their phones during performances. ‘We make a pre-performance announcement asking patrons to turn off their … cellphones in order to keep the light and sound from distracting other patrons,’ said Patricia O’Kelly, a Kennedy Center spokeswoman. … The National Symphony Orchestra was one of the earliest orchestras to deliver real-time program notes via Twitter during its performance of Beethoven’s Sixth conducted by Emil de Cou at Virginia’s Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in July 2009. … The Indianapolis Symphony has also experimented with tweeting sections, adding social media to traditional modes, such as pre-concert lectures and program notes. … The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) began using tweet seats in September and Chris Pinelo, its vice president for communication, said it was successful based on hashtag traffic. ‘It was great to see how people were reacting to the orchestra, reacting to the conduct and, frankly, reacting to the insights happening backstage,’ he said.”
Posted December 2, 2011
