Theater Company Uses Facebook and MySpace to Promote Philly Fringe Shows

PHILADELPHIA, PA -- At the 2008 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, ETC Theater will be performing their original musical Dramamine High.  The play is one of hundreds that will be performed by fledgling artists, only this piece has a cast of eleven area high school students.   Working with so many young people poses numerous challenges for director Emily Cardin.  The greatest of which is schedule conflicts.  Every one of these Philadelphia area high schoolers have activities, trips and family obligations throughout the summer.  Emily has scheduled rehearsals around eleven teenagers worlds, and often times has to jump in and play the part of an absent actor.  
Yet, with all of the headaches involved with putting such a show together, the teens bring some unique advantages as well.  One of the biggest things that they bring to the table is their social networks.   

All eleven teens utilize Facebook or MySpace and the word of Dramamine High is spreading.  Tickets are selling rapidly thanks to MySpace and Facebook.  Facebook is a social networking  The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some American colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.  MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.

ETC Founder and playwright, Todd Cardin stated that ticket sales is not the only thing that the young cast's communication habits are changing.  In addition to Facebook and MySpace, the word is spreading other ways.  Teenagers tend to communicate often through text messaging and AIM instant messaging.  Any script changes, rehearsal changes and important updates are sent through email, text messaging and private and public messages on Facebook.  The original musical about High School life is really being shaped and molded by it's young cast.

ETC Brings back Dramamine High to the 2008 Philadlephia Live Arts and Fringe Festival.  This is a musical about a high school musical, but it isn't High School Musical...This musical comedy is as obsessed with teen clichés as it is hip and entertaining. The Drama Club learns that there will be no school musical unless they can recruit the in-crowd to take the stage. Worlds collide when the jocks, nerds, stoners, cheerleaders, snobs and dweebs get together.

The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe was originally founded in 1997 as the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Today, the Live Arts Festival is a series of selected cutting edge, boundary breaking performing arts events, created by some of the most renowned contemporary artists from our region and around the world. The Philly Fringe is a collective home for self produced artists bringing their work to audiences in every conceivable form in traditional and non-traditional venues, using new artistic forms and established ones, breaking rules or refining them. The 12th annual Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, which runs from August 29 - September 13, 2008, will showcase a diverse and innovative program of performing arts from renowned international artists to acclaimed and up-and-coming U.S. and Philadelphia voices. Past international artists have hailed from as far away as the Congo, Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Belgium and Norway. Top contemporary artists from New York and Philadelphia will present World Premiere dance, theater, music, performance art and multimedia productions, making the Live Arts Festival a true international festival.

Dramamine HIgh is directed by Emily Cardin, music, book and lyrics by Todd Cardin.   It stars high schoolers, Esther Cardin, Elizabeth Cardin, Emily Deller, Paul Valente, Victoria Burdo, Anthony Morrione, Kevin Kozeniewski, Stephanie Albert, Emily Poche, Chris Monaco and Jackie VanLoan.  The cast is joined by ETC favorite Mike Ridgeway and Philly theatre great Denis Shubin.

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