Ryan Anderson dot ca

I think it goes without saying that the days of the web as a passive reception channel are pretty much gone. Thanks to better, cheaper technology, and more access to broadband, sites like YouTube and Flickr, as well as blogs, podcasts and social networks have created a profound change in the dynamics of web users. The web is now made up of both audience and actors. All the web’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

Recently, I’ve seen some discussion about whether the future of social media is in paid content or unpaid creations. Sites like Revver are paying podcasters a modest sum for their videos, and Break.com is offering bounties for the best videos uploaded to the site. The question is, will the future of web entertainment be the amateurs or the pros?

In my estimation, both will reveal themselves to be equally as important. This whole “BYO Content” thing is pretty new to just about everyone, so almost all of us are amateurs. Sure, some bloggers are professional journalists, some podcasters are experienced actors, and many Flickr members are professional photographers. The thing is, even the pros are amateurs in this arena.

Now, I’m guessing that the majority of my readers are by no means experts on the economics of professional theatre, but in a nutshell, it works like this. In order for a city to have a viable theatre “scene,” it needs three things: actors, audience and infrastructure. It’s not rocket science, really – you need people to be in plays, people to watch them, and a place to put them on. But all of these things need to exist in equilibrium, or things begin to become unbalanced, and the model doesn’t work. Lots of theatre space plus lots of actors in the absence of audience means sparse attendance. Lots of audience with little space means that the actors have no venue to perform to enough people. That means actors go elsewhere, and audiences forget about theatre.

The unbalanced equilibrium causes actors to migrate away from the city because they need to make a living. Audiences equal paycheques, so actors must go where the audiences are. This changes, however, when you start talking about community theatre.

Community theatre is another term for amateur theatre. It’s done for the love of acting, rehearsed after work and on weekends, put together by volunteers and watched by the community. Community theatre is often surprisingly good – and it’s good because of love and determination – you can feel that. But the thing about community theatre is even the best does not stand up to the quality of good professional theatre. Actors, designers and directors who have studied to make the craft their life’s work are, quite rightly, much better than even the most well-meaning amateurs. On occasion, a community production does stand up to similar levels, but this is a major feat, and certainly not the norm.

Community theatre will never be as entertaining, engaging and enthralling as professional theatre, but without it, the theatre scene could not exist. It serves a very important purpose in the cultural ecosystem, helping to build a jumping-off point for new performers, to develop audiences and to encourage the development of new infrastructure.

This will be the role of unpaid social media. To some degree, that’s the way it is now, but as our infrastructure, our actors and our audience continues to evolve, it will be come much more important. Technology will continue to make the creation of quality content even better, which will attract more actors, which will attract more audience. Once the audience is in equilibrium with actors and infrastructure, the model can grow.

It’s the community theatre actors of the Web who will grow the community, making it possible for some of them to make the leap to pro. Some already have, of course, but the pie will get bigger, and the content will get better. Their roles will be taken over by a new guard of Ze Franks and Ninjas, and the theatre of the web will continue to grow, to foster better and more creative content, making the web as an entertainment medium a much better place.