2011 World Theatre Day Meme

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Contributed by Rebecca Coleman

Three years ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine on Twitter, and we were talking about World Theatre Day. Here in Vancouver, our local Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Association has been organizing World Theatre Day celebrations for the past 9 years, and I help them out by doing the publciity.

A theatre artist from Chicago popped into our conversation. "What's World Theatre Day?" he asked. We were shocked. We'd been doing this for a while, so we were pretty astounded that there were theatre artists out there that had never heard of WTD.

I had just started blogging, so I started wondering if we could create a blog that would have two purposes: to tell the world about WTD, and to aslo act as a hub where theatre artists from all over the world could connect with other Theatre artist on March 27 and share their celebrations with one another.

The World Theatre Day Blog was born. Facilitated by a virtual team from all over the world, this will be our third year.

Each year, we come up with a meme for WTD.

In case you're not familiar with what a meme is, Wikipedia defines Meme as (meem, rhyming with “cream”), a relatively newly coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The concept comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information.



In 2009, our meme was a photo of our feet standing on our favorite theatre books.

In 2010, our meme was a video entitled “Why I Love the Theatre”

In 2011, our meme is This is My Theatre

• Download and print out the World Theatre Day 2011 avatar/logo, and take it to your local theatre.
• Take a photo of yourself holding the logo, or with it somewhere in the shot, somewhere at your theatre. Upload the photo here and include a brief description of your theatre, and where it is located.
• Your theatre can be anywhere: a building, a church, a parking garage, a park—because theatre can be created anywhere! We look forward to your most creative entries!
  
  

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Rebecca Coleman has been a freelance theatre publicist in Canada since 2001, working for companies like Touchstone, Ruby Slippers Theatre, Capilano University’s Theatre Department, Presentation House, Radix, and Leaky Heaven Circus. An actor, writer and producer, she is also very passionate about helping artists to be better businesspeople. Since 2007, she has become increasingly interested in using social media to market the arts, and writes about the subject frequently on her blog, The Art of the Business. She has written an e-book called Guide to Getting Started With Social Media for Artists and Arts Organizations, which helps newbies create a marketing plan using social networking as a tool.
Twitter: @rebeccacoleman
FB: theartofthebiz
website: www.rebeccacoleman.ca


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