I’ve been doing a lot more theatre stuff this last year and the biggest challenge by far is breaking out of the standard social media show pack. The poster, the first day of rehearsals, the first night bow, the reviews and the bland cast Q&A.

Every theatre does it. And that’s because every show follows the same logic, people do often quite like the standard rollout of content, and everything’s moving so fast it’s hard to find time and energy to do anything else. And to be fair, audiences do need to know the show exists, what people think about it and what it’s all about.

Broadway/West End are better at comedy skits and using their cast, places like the National Theatre do incredible BTS content but the majority of theatres are placing the social media responsibility on already overstretched marketing managers who don’t have the time to break out of the tried-and-tested mould.

I don’t have a solution yet (tbh it’s a mixture of extra staff, budget and institutional confidence) but I’m thinking of ways of still achieving the basics of the show rollout while finding a way of twisting and subverting it.

Content of this week

• Another classic of ‘film the popular stuff on your tours’

• This isn’t really anything stellar format-wise, I’m just jealous that someone got to walk David Bryne around Manchester Museum.

• Sam Raimi here talking about the basics of story structure, and the importance of not being overwhelmed by trying to make something perfect.

• If you’ve got the time to dress up as paintings to explore art history while also wandering around Little Venice then please fill your boots.

The bullet point bit

• This article puts into words what a lot of us already know: we should build museum, heritage sites and gallery visits around what people are there to do, not what we want to say. Sometimes they intersect. And that applies to social media too.

• The Bodleian’s websites have been having a wobble recently, and Bodley’s own Librarian popped into this thread on Bluesky to finger (don’t be filthy) the culprit: AI scrapers. Another nice case study of a leader being on social media too.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I downloaded and finished Esoteric Ebb in about three days. If you liked Disco Elysium, read Terry Pratchett and love deep worldbuilding then you should get it. I love a game that is actually fun to play, is funny, but also makes you question deep time, politics, masculinity and the ethics of a goblin genocide.

🐕 Keith

Here he is (yearning for my fish and chips)