An Aria In 140 Characters

Technology has always influenced art. Mathematical advances enabled Renaissance painters to experiment with perspective. In the early days of the record, nearly all popular songs were around three minutes long—just what one side of a record had room for. And the introduction of sound in the movies changed the nature of cinematic storytelling.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how cell phones and the internet have changed the way theatre is done—how casting gossip spreads through message boards like wildfire, and how people can blog about a show in previews during intermission. But how will this technology change the way shows are written?

In Japan, cell phones are upending the book industry, as keitai shosetsu—cell phone novels—have become wildly popular. Their authors are usually young women in their late teens and early twenties, rapidly tapping stories of love and its complications on their cell phones during long commutes. Told in short sentences and slang, cell phone novels are light on plot and character development, but that hasn’t discouraged millions of girls and young women from devouring each installment—or from snapping up hardcover versions of the novels that have been published.

Keitai shosetsu seem only natural to me. A novel is a text-based medium, after all, and it’s one where such experimentations in form aren’t uncommon. But I am curious about how such a thing would translate to theatre, where you can’t replicate exactly what you type into your phone; where words disappear as soon as they’re uttered, instead of being preserved on the page for the reader to go back to.

The Royal Opera House in London will deal with these issues at its performance of the first Twitter opera. In hopes of making opera more accessible to the public, the Royal Opera House has invited people to contribute to an opera libretto written entirely on its Twitter page. Two currently unannounced singers will perform excerpts from the completed work.

I think that’s a fascinating idea, and it’s a great way to use technology to get audiences directly involved—and to work against the belief that opera belongs fully in the past. I also like the concept of a 140 character limit on each entry. Especially for first-time writers, restrictions can be more helpful than confining; with only 140 characters to work with at a time, every word and piece of punctuation becomes a deliberate choice. That’s why I love writing lyrics. With song structure, rhyme scheme, and scansion a few of the elements governing a lyric, I have to really think about what I’m trying to say. I’m a much more disciplined writer because of that.

Regardless of how successful this Twitter opera is, I find it heartening that an institution like the Royal Opera House is willing to embrace technology in this way—even if it’s just a publicity stunt. I think there’s a lot for writers and artists to gain from the different writing structures and formats of social networking sites, text and instant messages, blogs, and message boards. And I think everyone can gain from trying to write a pivotal plot point within the limitations of a Twitter update.