You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, He/She's from London/Texas, Hidden Room Theatre and Look Left Look right, March 5 - 13

Artists are intrigued by the possibilities of social media, a fascination that they share with commercial enterprises, institutions, marketing strategists and your old granny. In 2010-2011 the share of the U.S. over-55's on Facebook quadrupled to 9.5%, because of a more than nine-fold increase in the numbers, to just under 10 million creaky Facebook boomers.

It's no surprise that Austin with its happily volatile mixture of knowledge industries and creatives is exploring that fuzzy junction of social tech and art.

Beth Burns and collaborators at her Hidden Room Theatre, particularly the gifted actor and technological practitioner Robert Matney, have cobbled together with London's Look Left Look Right theatre an alluring trans-Atlantic theatre experiment. Adjusting themselves both to time zone differences and to the disynchronous switches to daylight savings time, the companies convene again this weekend on Saturday and Sunday for You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, etc. You can 't get a ticket, by the way, at least not in Austin, for all twenty-five places in the east Austin loft apartment are filled for the 3 p.m. sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Promoters had announced the venture for all four weekends in March but have for unspecified reasons curtailed to only two.

But you can join in directly, on-line, thanks to some crafty engineering via the Round House Theatre in London, venue for the UK participants. The theatre's live feed will feature both Skype video feeds as well as a edited and controlled Twitter feed of comments you and others generate using the tag #TexasLondon.

Austin principals in person and London principals in remote will engage SXSW media visitors tomorrow, Saturday, March 12, with a discussion of the experiment.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: You Wouldn't Know Him/Her, Taming of the Shrew tour, Hidden Room Theatre

Received directly, news from the Hidden Room, Austin, Texas:

The Hidden Room Theatre in Austin and London's Look Left Look Right are very proud to announce their original production You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London / You Wouldn't Know Him, He Lives In Texas. This highly innovative romantic comedy promises to "link London and Austin through love and the Internet."

You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London will turn audiences in the US and the UK into the friends and family of two lovers: one living in Austin, the other in London. Both actors and audience will be linked via video teleconferencing, interacting with one another to determine the future of the couple in question, as well as have a lot of fun together. The show will run Saturdays and Sundays, March 5th - 27th, at 2 p.m. in Austin and 8 p.m. in London. Upon reserving a seat, audience members will receive links to befriend the character couple through social media, and begin their introduction into this interactive world.

You Wouldn't Know Her, She Lives in London will also be represented at this year's SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas. The panel "Theatre Collaborations Via Skype: Turning Distance into Drama" is confirmed and scheduled for Saturday March 12th at 9:30am, and will be led by The Hidden Room Theatre and Look Left Look Right. This panel will also include a demonstration of the rehearsal process for "You Wouldn't Know Her" featuring the show's stars, London actress Molly Taylor and Austin actor Judd Farris.

Tour for 'Original Practices'

The Hidden Room is scheduling a tour of the Southwest for its The Taming of the Shrew, Original Practices, winding up in Los Angeles. Artistic Director Beth Burns has been giving sold-out workshops to actors on both improvisation and Shakespeare in London while working on this current production. She is planning to bring some of the Hidden Room's actors to the American Shakespeare Center for a staging session on Original Practices at the Blackfriars Conference in October 2011.

Partner company in London

Look Left Look Right is a documentary theatre company based in London. Their productions have won awards and sold out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Royal Court Theatre. Their current production Counted is touring "unusual political spaces" around the UK. Artistic Director Mimi Poskitt is currently interviewing people in the United States for an upcoming project which has yet to be announced formally.