25 Nov Guest Blog | USA Artists of Choice visit Twitter HQ
Earlier this month our USA Artists of Choice were invited to the Twitter offices in New York to attend a Twitter and Periscope workshop. Learning skills, tips and tricks on how to showcase their skills socially to a global audience; Musical Theater recipient Joseph Varca tells us what happened.
This summer The Village of Vale, a new musical I co-created with John McGrew and Jonathan Karpinos, received the incredible honor of being selected as a Kevin Spacey Foundation Artist of Choice. Among some of the amazing opportunities this has afforded us, one of my favorites so far has been taking part in a workshop at the Twitter offices here in New York.
I did not disclose to the foundation that I am not personally on Twitter.
I don’t have a Facebook account either. I’m on LinkedIn in spirit only. I have an Instagram account and the last picture I took and posted was 6 months ago. Despite that, I have to admit I was genuinely excited to find myself in a plush reception area in Manhattan waiting to officially meet Twitter and Periscope.
It’s hard to remember that Twitter is only 9 years old. Their main office in Manhattan offers the sort of amenities that to hungry artists like myself might appear more like a utopian dreamscape. Which is to say: a cafe on every floor, a fully staffed basement bar, and never-ending free yoga, and I’m sure that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Usually that’s where I start taking teeny tiny steps backwards guessing there’s a catch somewhere and that it’s all too good too be true.
Honestly, I had always been intimidated by Twitter, hence my tweeting silence, but after we sat down with Maryam Mujica, Manager for Twitter’s Public Policy, I began to not only become excited about what makes Twitter work so well for artists but also wonder: what took me so long?
Twitter is a humming, constant cacophony of voices spanning a staggering multitude of niches, churning out 6,000 tweets a second, 350,000 a minute, 500 million a day. It has allowed connections to stream instantaneously between people across cultures without boundaries. It has been a rally point for causes, a platform for revolutions and a provider of free speech to those that have none. And that was what I previously found intimidating about Twitter. It’s massive. Trust me I love to perform to an audience, but magnify any stage I’ve ever been on by a million and you won’t even get close to how big Twitter’s audience is.
Ms. Mujica, who generously offered us her time and consul, suggested a perspective I had not considered: what makes Twitter so powerful is not it’s size or scope but how we engage with it. To think small. If my desire is to create meaningful content and connections, I should start by engaging our community and stop thinking of each post as a product.
For many artists, myself included, the process of creating is often the most exciting part and the least discussed or witnessed. That’s when I realized I am missing a huge opportunity to invite an audience into the creative process, and how exciting this idea is. Twitter and Periscope can be places to try ideas out, to test a proof, to share progress on a project, where we don’t have to work in a vacuum and wait for feedback. They are both unique stages where the audience is as diverse and widespread as any artist could wish for. I’m excited to share our process and to engage and expand our audience by sharing this crazy journey of creating The Village of Vale, and future projects.
I realize it’s as if I’ve been hiding in the bathroom at a pretty incredible party for the last 9 years, but I’m definitely on the dance floor when it comes to Periscope. I am fascinated by it. It’s only 5 months old but it’s potential feels titanic. It’s punchy and smart and I think it has the legs to further disrupt traditional media barriers by offering a free channel to anyone who has a device, a signal and a story. It’s truly thrilling to think about storytelling possibilities with this new media device.
As a company, John, Jonathan and I made our first venture on Periscope this fall to live stream a workshop showing of the Village of Vale with excerpts from the show and new scenes and music as part of the Midd PlayLab at Middlebury College. It allowed us to reach out, to share our process and project not just with our community, but also to anyone surfing the globe. The feedback was exciting, engaging with viewers from around the world was electrifying. Even in its nascent stages it has the mark of a compelling frontier about it, especially for the possibility of experiencing living, immediate art.
So, I’m ready to play a little catch up.
You can follow us on Periscope @josephvarca, @johnmcgroove and you can find us on Twitter @villageofvale. I’m super excited to connect with you, and thanks in no small part to KSF, Twitter and Ms. Mujica for opening my eyes to the possibilities.