Opinion

Love and the Art of the Webwright:

A Theatrical Model for Web Sites

There's nothing like the rush of love. It turns the mundane into a series of significant moments to be played in the mind (and body) over and over again. After the initial gaga period of a new relationship, realities about the beloved begin to peek through and demand compromise or acceptance, requiring effort and focus. If the heat of passion can endure these realities, a commitment may form that engenders loyalty so that passion deepens. Surpassing these obstacles and challenges allows the relationship to endure.

Oh the dramas of love. Can these dramas be included as part of Web site design? Yes, they can.

The theatrical model offers webwrights insights into maximizing the interactivity of a Web site by using the elements of drama. One of the goals of live theater is to create significant moments to be played and replayed in the minds of the audience. Like the moment a lover first connects with the beloved, when the lights go down, the audience senses their world is about to change. Good live theater seduces audiences into the world of the play presented. Unlike the movies, theater reaches into the personal and creates a visceral reaction. The shared experience of an audience reinforces these reactions, especially when the audience shares their feelings or opinions. Like love, the effort expended in the act of watching a play comes from a commitment to the experience. This deepens the experience, even though a play only demands a few hours of attention. Like love, a play can produce a lifetime relationship with that particular experience.

What makes for a successful production of a play? Techniques can be learned, but ultimately it is the artistic vision and the synergy of creative collaboration that makes for success. Unlike in love, artistic vision, dynamic leadership and good casting can create that chemistry. The root generating all of this is the playwright.

Enter the webwright who applies some of the techniques and artistry of the playwright. Given the interactive and real-time (actual or assimilated) elements of the medium, when visitors of a Web site experience success and/or satisfaction, they may also be seduced into the loyalty and commitment of a relationship.

Actors spend years learning how to make performances look easy, natural and spontaneous. Excellent scripts and performances transport audiences into another state of being that provides a greater frame of reference and a sense of belonging. Aren't these the goals of art, entertainment and other cultural activities? Directors, producers, designers and actors rely upon the work of the playwright to seduce audiences into sharing their world. The webwright, like the playwright, serves as a bridge between the backend and the presentation of Web sites.

In a mundane world filled with work, responsibility and uncertainty, significant moments - or sigmos - serve to satisfy and give meaning to life. Love is a many splendored thing, but these moments of meaning are fleeting. Some sigmos infuse joy or ecstasy; others are disturbing or filled with fear. Whether a sigmo invokes the satisfaction of lust, memories of dread, rage or any other emotion - whether they are shared and acknowledged by others or remain personal - they become signposts along the road of life.

For the most part, sigmos require the presence of other people to serve as an audience, witnesses or even participants. Sigmos demand vulnerability to up the stakes, thus making the risk of the moment worthwhile. Love is fraught with risk and sigmos, both positive and negative. A court of law offers many sigmos, although more often unpleasant ones. Simply awaiting the moment of action when making a left-hand turn in a busy intersection can invoke a sigmo. In this case, the satisfaction and memory of completing the turn and returning to anonymity is short-lived because the risk was minimal. Accepting an award for a hard-earned achievement may offer the recipient a longer-living sigmo. Sigmos occur when people reach beyond their sense of safety, expose their soft belly of vulnerability to others and are somehow rewarded for it.

Any and all creative endeavors seek to create and recreate sigmos. Sigmos lock into memory so that during the time in between one sigmo and another, conclusions are drawn, correlations are determined and meaning is made. This is not new knowledge for those in advertising or promotion. They rely on triggering a treasured memory or fantasy with which to associate their product or service so that the product or service and the memory or fantasy become inseparable. The result is successful branding.

As in advertising or promotion, the source of the sigmo can become as prominent as the sigmo itself, engendering loyalty and commitment. Could the theater artist, the Web site developer or the underwriters of either ask for more? The power of notoriety is a short hop, skip and jump to branding or other ways of assuring ongoing support and rushing revenue streams.

In the next issue, we'll explore how these concepts derived from the theater can be applied to a real Web site. Learning how to create sigmos for the visitors of our own Web sites can lead to satisfying online business relationships. Pretty soon we'll all be webwrights!

Z. Sharon Glantz has written and produced educational plays for three Washington State departments, Puget Sound Power & Light, Washington Mutual Savings Bank, two departments of City of Seattle, and other corporations and government agencies. Her play Tarot for Fools received a public reading at Astrology et al in Wallingford on July 22, 2001. She is currently experimenting with a variety of projects at Konnexxus, as well as working on her second novel and a workbook on Tarot Journaling, on which she is currently teaching classes at Astrology Et Al.