March 3, 2005
160 Characters" Comedy Show Hits the Stage
Virgin Mobile in Australia is sponsoring a new SMS-based comedy show called 160characters, which stars the audience, a Virgin Mobile phone and six cast members, reports Mike Grenville for 160characters.org.
"The live comedy show relies on audience members using their mobile phones to send text messages to a lone Virgin Mobile phone placed on centre stage. After viewing the SMS texts, the show's six cast members have to improvise a comedy sketch to depict each of the messages.
Other performances where the audience sent text messages onstage:
-- Miss Mobile - It's a reflection on public/private relations by one Slovene performance artist and 40 audience members and their cell phones". The audience was asked to: bring a cell phone if you have one! The artist may ask you to call your friends and allow him to converse.
-- «Two Tracks and Text Me» - A play in Leeds, entitled «Two Tracks and Text Me», was a technological thriller where the cast sent each text messages onstage. (Got bad reviews)
-- Text The Dancer - The audience at a dance performance in London's Trafalgar Square were invited to direct the outcome live by Text Messaging.
-- SimpleTEXT: control the peformance with SMS - Participants submitted SMS which controled the audiovisual output of the performance.
-- Puccini's La Bohème - SMS encore - Perfomers of the English National Opera of Puccini's La Bohème in Trafalgar Square were persuaded to do an encore following the audience's vote by SMS on three arias. (Didn't happen though, they were rained out)
-- «Texterritory», an experimental interactive dance performance - Texterritory is a playground performance concept in which the audience had control over physical bodies (dancers and musicians) along with lighting, music and midi system at specific times in the performance... by sending instructions by SMS.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2005/03/007371.htm