Blogging

Came across another Drama blogger yesterday morning. Sandy, who's about to graduate, but has been spending most of the last month building sets for the MA Directors in the theatre, has one called Until Further Notice, which reads really well. In particular he's found a genuine voice for it, which made me wonder if Drama St. Mary's was perhaps still searching for the right tone?

We had lunch together and we talked a little of the notion of audience, who you write for, what you write for, what motivates you to write and the need for a personal touch (which perhaps is what's missing here thus far.) He got into blogging through his brother and has a much more sophisticated grasp of its social networking potential than I have at the moment. I suspect it's a useful tool, not just for publicity, but also to encourage a more immediate debate amongst the students about both the work of the department and the theatre world in general...

We used facebook on the Helios project to pass information, rehearsal schedules, jpegs, evaluations etc. to each other and I'm looking to use blogs as a form of portfolio next year, perhaps piloting with the Drama in the Community students. If students found their voice and their audience early in the module it might help take some pressure off at the end of term. I know several grades were compromised by last minutism this year, with portfolios being knocked out in the last 48 hours, rather than developing organically over time. Would blogs that layered and commented on each other be better?