After 2 weeks totally wrapped in management BySide and in the campaign “ You got it. “, I go back to the Blog not to talk about the campaign (at least for now) but to talk about theater!
Yesterday, taking advantage of a (rare) moment of decompression in which I tried to have some “quality time” with the family, by indication of friends, also parents, I went to the Teatro do Campo Alegre see the play Infantil “ The mystery of the visit “.
Although the initial idea was to “decompress” (and have done so), the piece was pleasantly surprising because it was a kind of narrative that I have tried to “breath” (my way of not saying “obsessed”) in recent months: ARGs – Alternative Reality Gaming, which I call “nonlinear narratives”.
Before I talk about the play, I begin by explaining that an ARG it is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements to tell a story that can be affected by the participants' ideas and actions.
Meaning... The World as Stage!
About the play: a girl loses an earring during her last visit to the theater. To help solve the mystery of the missing earring is called a detective who will rebuild, with the help of the child audience, every step of the girl's visit. Having this mystery as a backdrop, the play not only takes place on stage but throughout all the areas that are part of the Theatre. From the backstage to the stage, going through the dressing rooms, workshops and regie, subpalco and web, and taking advantage to tell theatre stories, from Jean Racine to the great Sarah Bernhardt and why the phrase “a lot of shit!”, from the giants of the “Travels of Gulliver” to the ghost of the theater, the play counts on the total “involvement” of all the little ones, block and pencil in hand, taking notes from all the “tracks” that help them to unravel the “mystery of the visit”.
In fact, the play fulfills the objective of a backstage study visit to the theater but... counting on the “involvement” and attention of the public!
Interestingly, at a time of “decompression” I end up returning to the theme that has been almost obsessively enthusiastic over the last few months: non-Linear Narratives (okay, ARGs!).
I am of the opinion that ARGs are much more than something “giro” or “hype”. I only see them as a natural kind of communication. A genre that anticipates the moment when the division between online and offline ceases to make sense and where the user or consumer becomes treated with the respect it deserves; as an intelligent interlocutor; as an interlocutor who deserves, as proof of this same intelligence, to be challenged and involved in the stories that communication and advertising tell; as an interlocutor who ceases to be only “spector” and also becomes an actor, screenwriter, producer and director. And... with the world as a stage!
P.S.: I will in future return to this theme several times! After BySide’s participation in the “ Help James”, first ARG Portuguese (total credits for Fullsix), we are involved in more projects that I will return to later...
==References== And because advertising to the Theatre is not advertising, anyone who has the opportunity to take the little ones to “know” the theater:*
Teatro do Campo Alegre, R. das Estrelas, Porto T. 226063017
17-18 May (Saturday at 16h and 21h30, Sunday at 16h) and 1-2 July (Third and Wednesday at 10h30 and 15h). Tickets from 5 to 7.5€.