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Chatroom

William Collins is a depressed teenager recovering from and regularly goes online to chatrooms. Script Supervisor KRISS LANDIN. It was first performed at The New Theatre, Dublin, as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival 2000. Her only human contact is with a Young Man who sits in an adjacent control room operating the cameras that keep her under constant surveillance and listening to the stories she invents about the outside world.

Retrieved 11 May 2010. Somehow, he the day. It was written for Corcadorca Theatre Company and first performed by the company at the Granary Theatre, Cork, on 30 March 1995 previews from 27 March.

Chatroom - The group is torn between those who want to help and those who see this as a chance to create a martyr for the teenage population. Best Musical Theater Album 2013.

Thoughts on Chatroom, a play by Enda Walsh directed by Tracy Holsinger Chatroom, directed by Tracy Holsinger and produced by Mind Adventures Theatre Company, was a refreshing departure from banal productions that usually feature in Colombo. Dealing with suicide and online communication, the script by Enda Walsh, an Irish playwright, explores the understanding of and responses to depression, suicide and ultimately, human relationships of six teenagers brought together in Internet chat rooms. The regrettable and never to be repeated, I hope, projection of commercial advertisements before the commencement of the play aside, Chatroom was, as is to be expected from Tracy Holsinger, excellent theatre and personally, a deeply fulfilling return to her directorial style after 3 Star K at the Wendt in 2003. Exploring for the past couple of years the representation of suicides in the mainstream print media in Sri Lanka, I found the play to be a very interesting take on the issue and our responses to it. Chatroom, as the moniker suggests, approaches suicides through the lens of Internet chat rooms — places where with relative ease, anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can engage with topics and issues as diverse and perverse as the human imagination. Escape through death is a leitmotif in the production. Jim, played by Brandon Ingram, actively seeks it. Laura, played by Tehani Chitty, found it and yet returned to a life. Chat room patrons may never know, meet or see the face of their greatest detractors, or indeed, their closest friends. Coincidentally, a recent article in the New York Times explores the phenomenon of intolerance and hate speech online flaming through the emerging field of social neuroscience — looking into what goes on in our brains when negotiating largely anonymous, online communications and the relationships built thereupon. Consider an experiment, reported in 2002 in The Journal of Language and Social Psychology, in which pairs of college students — strangers — were put in separate booths to get to know each other better by exchanging messages in a simulated online chat room. While coming and going into the lab, the students were well behaved. But the experimenter was stunned to see the messages many of the students sent. About 20 percent of the e-mail conversations immediately became outrageously lewd or simply rude. Regrettably however, in largely sticking to stereotypes, the production did not fully explore the ways in which online communications can subvert and change our perception of identity and belonging. The characters, for the most exceedingly self-centred, never really grew to appreciate the viewpoints of each other. Perhaps indicative of a dominant aspect of the medium of a chat room itself, it does not however, represent the chiaroscuro of emotions and rich textures of many relationships online. Each of the characters attempt to mirror a certain dimension, or character, of a typical chat room — William for instance with his twisted logic and opinionated self-indulgence, Laura with her quiet resolution and Jim, searching for belonging. Chat rooms however are more than the sum of each of these characters. Simplifying thus the range of human interaction online, we are never fully satiated as to whether Chatroom is a distillation of what transpires in chat rooms, or whether it is in fact, far removed from reality. Also unsatisfactory was the denouement. It is almost as if the playwright, through Jim, wanted to proselytize life over death, and drill in the message that suicide is terrible and unnecessary. These remain minor annoyances in a production otherwise extremely fulfilling. The cast, for many of whom this was their first mainstream theatre production after school, delivered overall above average performances. Tehani and Arun, playing Laura and William respectively, clearly stood out for what were finely played performances of two characters, very different from each other, central to the leitmotifs and the action of the play. Arun was brilliant in a sublime rendering of an opinionated young prick with scant regard for the trauma of others save for his own, twisted enjoyment. Ruvin, playing Jack, was again not entirely comfortable with his character, playing it with varying degrees of alacrity in the production I saw Friday night. Emily, played by Subha, I am told by her mother, was essentially herself in the play! Returning to the issue of commercial sponsorship, the history of theatre is such that it has always relied on rich benefactors or commercial sponsorship for the promotion of art, but when mercenary foundations are objectionably projected into the stage itself, it invariably colours our appreciation of the creation. The point is simply that financial support for a good production is can be better appreciated without having to project it in the faces of an audience. This of course is a larger discussion that I think serious directors such as Tracy should take up with a broader audience with a view to creating a foundation for artistes to produce their works that is not wholly reliant on the largesse of commercial enterprise. I came into Chatroom expecting it to be a play aimed very much at a teenage audience, with necessarily, a light treatment of social concerns. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the contrary — that it was a transcendent dramatic exploration of some of the most pressing issues online and in the real world today. Clearly, producing Chatroom would not have been a piece of cake either, but we are happy that it was so well baked and served. Having tasted it, we can only want more. Top 4 media owners account for around 75% audience.