Friday, October 11, 2002

Electronic Books Have a Supporting Role in a Play at Ball State U. By SCOTT CARLSON Theater has always had an interactive element, but at Ball State University, a faculty director and student performers are carrying that interaction into the digital age. The theater department there has made e-books an integral part of its latest production. More than half of the audience members get the e-books when they file through the door to see Blood Relations, a play about Lizzie Borden, who was famously acquitted of the ax murders of her father and stepmother more than a century ago. During the show, audience members can tap around on the e-books to see digitized historical photos of the Bordens and the crime scene, and to read commentary especially written for this production. (Not all audience members receive e-books because there are not enough to go around.) The play recounts Lizzie Borden's life, but with a feminist twist, leaving some ambiguity about her culpability in the 1892 slayings. At the end, the audience members use the e-books to submit a verdict on her guilt. As they leave, they get a business card with the address of a Web site where they can find all of the information that was on the e-books, a list of hyperlinks related to the Borden murders, and a tally of their verdicts. Michael M. O'Hara, an assistant professor who teaches theater history at Ball State, saw the play and was impressed with the use of e-books in the production. "I could see a day when you download a program onto a little PDA," or personal digital assistant, he says. However, he confirms that there is a digital divide between the generations in using, and approving of, the e-books. Younger students, he says, are accustomed to multitasking and interacting with digital technology. Because younger people are generally averse to theater, using e-books "to successfully appeal to them is a worthy goal," he says. To some older theatergoers, however, the e-books and the video amounted to heresy. "I spoke to several older audience members" -- Mr. O'Hara's colleagues or their spouses -- "all of whom were a little surprised when I didn't agree with them that all this technology was a bad thing." The use of the e-books is part of Ball State's iCommunications program, which strives to incorporate interactive technologies in new ways in various disciplines. The program is supported by a $20-million grant from the Lilly Endowment. Rodger Smith, an assistant professor of theater at Ball State, is both the director of the play and the assistant director of the university's iCommunications program. While he was promoting the use of technology among his colleagues, he began to wonder if he could use e-books in his next play. "I thought, Can I use technology to enhance a live performance -- not so much aesthetically, but can I make it a richer experience for the audience? In particular, can I make it a richer experience for the 19-year-old student?" He says that, at first, his actors had doubts about whether the e-books could work as a part of the production. They worried that the audience would pay more attention to the gizmos than to the action on the stage. Mr. Smith says that audience members, especially younger ones, do get diverted by the e-books. "I saw students sitting and looking at the e-books, not because they were bored, but because they saw something of interest in the play but they didn't understand it," Mr. Smith says. "So they turned to the e-books for commentary and background information. They integrated the e-books into the performance of the play itself." Since the first few runs, he says, the actors have come to accept the e-books as part of the performance. "If you want to talk about the older theatergoing elitists -- if you'll excuse my obvious prejudice -- then, yeah, it's distracting for them," Mr. Smith says. "If you want to talk about the 19-year-old student that I produced the play for, they found the e-books absolutely glorious. They love them." Mr. Smith says his attention to younger theatergoers and to the technology is an effort to make theater attractive to the Game Boy generation. "Theater has been losing its audience, to a great degree," he says. "My question was, How do I bring audiences back? The answer is, By making them comfortable, by not being elitist, by offering them what's around them. And what's around young students today is technology." The e-books aren't the only nontraditional technology used in the production of Blood Relations; Mr. Smith has also set up video monitors alongside the stage, and is using cameras to project live images from the play onto them. He points out that up until the early part of this century, theater had always incorporated the latest technologies in its productions: raised stages, mechanical pulley systems, gas lights, and electric lamps, to name a few innovations. But when movies and television arrived, a technological divide began to emerge between theater and film productions. "The accessibility of digital technologies brings back the possibility that theater could once again do things with new technology," he says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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