"City of Strangers"

As previous posts on this blog have noted, the decision to set Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company in today’s world has specific and interesting dramaturgical consequences for our production. Our central character, Bobby, is turning thirty-five, and most of his friends are around his same age. What does this tell us about who they are?

Bobby and his friends spent most of their childhood and teen years in the 1990s – a decade of relative peace and prosperity. Just as they hit early adulthood, 9/11 happened and upended our world. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began when Bobby and his friends were in college. Not long after they finished college, the Great Recession hit. The children from an era of peace and prosperity entered young adulthood in a world of fear and insecurity.

And where do we turn for comfort in times of uncertainty? We turn to relationships, of course. Relationships provide stability, they provide reassurance, they provide, well – company. But just as Bobby and his friends found themselves in a world where they needed the comfort of relationships more than ever, our world of relationships was upended by rapid changes in how we interact with each other. Text messaging started to take off when Bobby was about seventeen and really exploded when he was nineteen. The iPhone was introduced when Bobby was twenty-four. Facebook overtook MySpace as America’s most popular social media site when Bobby was twenty-six. Tinder was launched when he was twenty-nine. These developments were all intended to bring us together, and they do have the potential to help us stay connected, but with FOMO, trolls, and ghosting they also contribute to anxiety, depersonalization, and a sense of isolation. Even when one has 1043 “friends.” We touch our phones more than we touch each other. What does this say about us? Has social media turned us into a city of strangers?

Perhaps they have. The very people who were instrumental in the social media revolution have themselves begun sounding the alarm. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, tells Bill Snyder of Stanford, "The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.” Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, in a conversation with Ezra Klein, expresses his concerns about the outrage loop that social media creates: “When you open up the blue Facebook icon, you’re activating the AI, which tries to figure out the perfect thing it can show you that’ll engage you. It doesn’t have any intelligence, except figuring out what gets the most clicks. The outrage stuff gets the most clicks, so it puts that at the top.” And The Guardian notes that Nir Eyal, tech entrepreneur and educator and author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, concedes that he had a device installed in his home that shuts off the Internet at a certain time each day – presumably to help him avoid the very addiction that he has taught others to create. (An interesting side note about all three of these tech luminaries – they are all in the same general age range as Bobby and his friends.)

What are some of the specific negative effects of excessive use of social media? It turns out that the more we use social media, the more isolated we end up feeling. In one study of people in the 19- to 32-year-old age range, reported on by NPR, those who visited social media platforms 58 or more times per week (or about eight times per day) were three times more likely to feel socially isolated than those who visit such platforms only nine times per week (or a little more than once a day). Brian Primack of the University of Pittsburg, the lead author of the study, has also demonstrated through his research with L.Y. Lin that there is a connection between social media use and depression. Research by Holly Shakya of UCSD has shown that general feelings of well-being are negatively affected by heavy social media use, as well. And when it comes to dating and relationships, the Tinder Effect - the tendency of dating apps like Tinder to warp our perceptions of romantic reality - has been described by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London, this way: “it is nomophobia, Facebook-porn and Candy Crush Saga all in one.” Is that any way to start a lasting, intimate partnership?

What can we do about all of this? Tech is part of the fabric of our lives. Yes, it’s harmful, but it also has the power to create social movements and positive change (not to mention enabling us to keep in touch with lifelong friends who live hundreds or thousands of miles away). How can we avoid the addictive properties of our media and use them effectively in our lives?

Tristan Harris, at least, is doing more than just sounding an alarm about the potential negative effects of the tech revolution on our lives. He is working on answers. He has formed a movement to counter the negative effects, to help us all learn how to use technology effectively without being sucked into its potential to dominate our lives. You can check out this movement, Time Well Spent, to find out more. The Take Control page on the website provides simple, useful tools for minimizing the distractions of tech that can be so damaging to our brains and our relationships. Perhaps the steps suggested there can help us all to begin leaving tech addiction behind us and moving closer together once again.

Sources:

Center for Humane Technology. 2018, www.humanetech.com

Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. "The Tinder Effect: Psychology of Dating in the Technosexual Era." The Guardian, 17 Jan. 2014, 

https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/jan/17/tinder-dating-psychology-technosexual

Harris, John. “Take it from the Insiders: Silicon Valley is Eating Your Soul.” The Guardian, 1 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/01/silicon-valley-eating-soul-google-facebook-tech 

Hobson, Katherine. “Feeling Lonely? Too Much Time on Social Media May Be Why.” NPR, 6 Mar. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/06/518362255/feeling-lonely-too-much-time-on-social-media-may-be-why 

Klein, Ezra. "How Technology is Designed to Bring out the Worst in Us." Vox, 19 Feb. 2018, 
https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/2/19/17020310/tristan-harris-facebook-twitter-humane-tech-time

Lin, L.Y., et al. "Association between Social Media Use and Depression Among U.S. Adults," Depression and Anxiety, vol. 33, no. 4, April 2016, pp. 323-331. Abstract. PubMed, doi: 10.1002/da.22466.

Shakya, H.B., and N.A. Christakis. "Association of Facebook Use with Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study," American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 185, no. 3, 1 Feb. 2017, pp. 203-211. Abstract. PubMed, doi:10.1093/aje/kww189.

Snyder, Bill. "Chamath Palihapitiya: Why Failing Fast Fails." Stanford Graduate School of Business, 12 Dec. 2017,
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/chamath-palihapitiya-why-failing-fast-fails

"WE ARE THE GENERATION GAP!"

source: Stollen and Wolf

Toward the end of Company, Bobby’s friend Joanne (a bit older, and perhaps a bit more cynical), tells him, “Do you know that we are suddenly at an age where we find ourselves too young for the old people and too old for the young ones. We’re nowhere. I think we better drink to us. To us – the generation gap. WE ARE THE GENERATION GAP!”

In our production, set today in 2018, this line takes on a special resonance. Bobby, Joanne, and most of Bobby’s friends actually do fall precisely into a generation gap. Too old to be from Gen X, too young to be Millennials, they are sometimes referred to as Xennials (others refer to this group as The Oregon Trail Generation, a reference to a video game series that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s). Born roughly between 1977 and 1983 (some demographers extend the years to 1985), they experienced an analog childhood and a digital adulthood.

Marleen Stollen and Gisela Wolf, both Xennials, describe the experience this way: “As children we played outdoors, engaged in games we made ourselves, a long time before the advent of gaming consoles. We made macramé bracelets for our friends and wrote each other postcards.” And Anna Garvey, another Xennial, shares these reflections on what childhood was like for her and her peers: “We used pay-phones; we showed up at each other’s houses without warning; we often spoke to our friends’ parents before we got to speak to them; and we had to wait at least an hour to see any photos we’d taken.” As they progressed through their teen years and into early adulthood, their personal development kept pace with the growth of technology and the internet (See the Feb. 11 blog post, “Anyway, you’re thirty-five” for a timeline).

Stollen and Wolf reflect on one of the outcomes of having been born at this singular time: “We use social media like we were born to do it. But we can remember a life without them.” That recollection of a life without social media may be nostalgic at times, bittersweet at others. Garvey looks back on it with a sense of relief: “We [she and her peers] frequently discuss how insanely glad we are that we escaped the middle school, high school and college years before social media took over and made an already challenging life stage exponentially more hellish. We all talked crazy amounts of shit about each other, took pictures of ourselves and our friends doing shockingly inappropriate things and spread rumors like it was our jobs, but we just never had to worry about any of it ending up in a place where everyone and their moms (literally) could see it a hot second after it happened.” Garvey and her friends clearly rejoice in a life before social media.

As much as we love our smartphones, they can be a tyrannical force in our lives. More on the push/pull, love/hate relationship with technology in the next blog post!

Click here for a quiz from The Guardian to see if you qualify as an Xennial.

Sources

"Are You a Xennial? Take the Quiz," The Guardian, 26 June 2017, 
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/27/are-you-a-xennial-take-the-quiz

Garvey, Anna. "The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech," Social Media Week, 21 April, 2015, https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/oregon-trail-generation/

Grosvenor, Emily. "Going West: The World of Live-Action, Competitive Oregon Trail," The Atlantic, 25 Sept. 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/the-true-story-of-real-life-oregon-trail/380730/

Stollen, Marleen, and Gisela Wolf. "There's a Term for People Born in the Early 80's Who Don't Feel Like a Millennial or a Gen Xer," Business Insider, 10 Jan. 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/people-born-between-gen-x-millennials-xennials-2017-11

"Anyway, you're thirty-five"

In the opening scene of Company as Bobby’s friends prepare for his surprise birthday party, Joanne messages him: “Anyway, you’re thirty-five. Who wants to celebrate being that old?”

Today’s thirty-five year-olds, including Bobby and his peers, have lived through major shifts in technology, world events, and the shape of relationships. Here are some significant milestones Bobby and his friends have lived through.

1983 – Bobby is born. Ronald Reagan, the first divorced person to serve as U.S. president, is in office. The Cold War, which the U.S. had been pulling back from for over a decade, heats back up. The first stand-alone Mario Brothers game is released. If you want to play it, you go to an arcade. Apple releases the Lisa, the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface. 

source: extremetech

          

1989 – Bobby turns six years old. The Berlin Wall falls. The first Gameboy comes out, putting the arcade in the hands of a lone player for the first time. It is the 10^th anniversary of the Sony Walkman, and the device receives a major upgrade to bring the hardware up to speed with high-end home cassette decks. Intel introduces the first 486 processor, which doubles the performance speed of personal computers.

source: Kevin Eikenberry  

1993 – Bobby turns ten years old. Apple introduces the Newton, an early PDA that has features that will define handheld computers for decades. Intel introduces its first Pentium microprocessor, significantly improving the ability to include graphics and music as part of the personal computer experience.

1996 – Bobby turns thirteen years old. Palm introduces the first Palm Pilot, which revolutionized handheld computing devices.

Source: Wikipedia

1998 – Bobby turns fifteen years old. President Bill Clinton tells the nation in January, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” In September, the Starr Report is released. It includes excerpts from Monica Lewinsky’s sworn testimony detailing her sexual encounters with the President, prompting a nationwide discussion of, among other things, whether watching the evening news is suitable for young viewers.

1999 – Bobby turns sixteen years old. There is global fear that computers will crash worldwide at midnight on New Year’s Eve due to a problem referred to as the Y2K bug.

2000 – Bobby turns seventeen years old. George W. Bush is elected President of the United States in one of the only presidential elections in U.S. history where the results were contested. The first camera phone is introduced, and within a year most new phones have cameras.

Source: Wikipedia

2001 – Bobby turns eighteen years old. Hijacked airliners destroy the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York. Another airliner slams into the Pentagon. A fourth plane, probably with the intended target of the White House or the U.S. Capitol building, crashes in a field in Pennsylvania. 

source: fema

The War on Terror begins with the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The first Apple Stores open, Microsoft releases its first Xbox, and Apple releases iTunes and the iPod.

2003 – Bobby turns twenty years old. The U.S. invades Iraq and topples the regime of Saddam Hussein. MySpace is founded; while not the first social networking site, it takes off fast and ushers in the widespread use of social media.

2004 – Bobby turns twenty-one years old. Facebook is launched with the original intent of being a networking site exclusively for university students.

2006 – Bobby turns twenty-three years old. The verb, “to Google” is added to dictionaries. Nintendo’s Wii is launched, bringing a new level of interactivity to the gaming experience. Twitter is launched.

2007 – Bobby turns twenty-four years old. The Amazon Kindle is released, revolutionizing how readers access and interact with books. The Apple iPhone is released, introducing the era of the smartphone.

source: bgr

2008 – Bobby turns twenty-five years old. Caused largely by volatility in the mortgage lending industry, the Great Recession strikes. Unemployment doubles, and recent college graduates are among those most affected. Barack Obama is elected the first African-American President of the United States.

2009 – Bobby turns twenty-six years old. Facebook overtakes MySpace to become the most widely-used social media site among users in the United States. “Unfriend” is the New Oxford American Dictionary’s word of the year.

2010 – Bobby turns twenty-seven years old. Angry Birds is the best-selling mobile game; there will eventually be over 2 billion downloads of the game and its sequels. Apple introduces the iPad, extending the iPhone’s revolution of user/device interaction.

source: everyipad

2011 – Bobby turns twenty-eight years old. Siri is introduced; your phone is now your friend. Snapchat is launched.

2012 – Bobby turns twenty-nine years old. Facebook acquires Instagram, shoring up its corporate domination of social media. Tinder is launched.

2014 – Bobby turns thirty-one years old. The Gamergate scandal unfolds, exposing serious and pervasive misogyny in the gaming industry.

2015 – Bobby turns thirty-two years old. Apple Watch is released, bringing users into constant contact with the Apple environment.

source: i-carercase

2016 – Bobby turns thirty-three years old. Subscribers to Facebook Messenger top 1 billion. The spread of fake news on social media is believed to have an impact on the U.S. presidential election, in which Donald Trump, a real estate developer and reality television personality, defeats Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State and the first woman nominated for president by a major political party in the United States. The divorce rate in the U.S. hits a thirty-five-year low.

2017 – Bobby turns thirty-four years old. iPhone X is released. It includes Face ID technology, allowing the user to unlock the phone just by looking at it (the technology also raises privacy concerns). Now, your phone can see you. The #MeToo movement spreads virally on social media, igniting a national and worldwide conversation about sexual assault and harassment.

2018 – Bobby turns thirty-five years old. Augmented reality, which promises to create a bridge between the physical and digital worlds, is expected to be one of the top tech trends this year.

Additional references

Glen, Devon. "The History of Social Media from 1978-2012," AdWeek, 16 Feb. 2012, http://www.adweek.com/digital/the-history-of-social-media-from-1978-2012-infographic/

“Timeline of Computer History.” Computer History Museum, 2018, www.computerhistory.org/timeline/ 

"Side by Side"

Stephen Sondheim revolutionized the American musical theater form. He was schooled in the mid-Twentieth Century classic Broadway form by Oscar Hammerstein II, who was simultaneously a surrogate father, teacher, and mentor to Sondheim beginning in Stephen’s youth and continuing into his early career as a lyricist and composer. Success as the lyricist for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) led to A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), for which Sondheim wrote both the lyrics and the music.

Company (1970) and Follies (1971) mark the dividing line between Sondheim’s early work and his more mature and revolutionary style. Richard Corliss describes the shift in Sondheim’s work this way:

Traditionally, Broadway songwriters angled their numbers at least partly towards the non-Broadway listener; a show ran longer if some hit songs could be extracted. But Sondheim didn't care about writing hits; his lyrics were meant totally as the expression of the characters singing them, and his melodies were composed to suit the time the characters lived in. Thus the 1970 Company, a contemporary ensemble piece about married couples and one single man, took its cue from Burt Bacharach's angular songs and off-kilter tempos. . . . The mature Sondheim, from then on [referencing both Company and Follies], didn't write songs; he wrote scores. His melodies, borrowing more from serious modern music than from the pop idiom, were meant to challenge the ear, not soothe it.

Lyrics as character study and music that challenges the audience became the hallmarks of Sondheim’s work, and the impact of this shift on other artists can be seen from Evita through Rent and on up to Hamilton.

It seems as though challenging the audience is something that Sondheim relishes. Reflecting on Company and its initial reception during the 1970 Broadway run, Sondheim shared the following in conversation with Charles Osgood: “There was a certain amount of bafflement. Not so much resistance, but bafflement. It was a new animal, and the trouble was it was fun to see so they couldn’t just hate it, you see, so there was a sort of mixed feeling, a pull and push.” I find it intriguing that the show itself depicts that same phenomenon – mixed feelings, the pull and the push – as being central to relationships. If Sondheim was right about how the audience reacted to the show (and if similar reactions recur with today’s spectators), then what’s happening with the audience mirrors what’s occurring onstage between the characters.

 Challenging audiences, creating character studies, crafting intricate scores – these are all part of Sondheim’s legacy. His influence today remains large, as evidenced by these reflections on Sondheim from Lin-Manual Miranda: “He is musical theater’s greatest lyricist, full stop. The days of competition with other musical theater songwriters are done: We now talk about his work the way we talk about Shakespeare or Dickens or Picasso — a master of his form, both invisible within his work and everywhere at once.” Miranda and Sondheim shared a conversation just this past October (yes, Sondheim is still around – he’ll celebrate his 88^th birthday just a few days after our production closes in March). An exchange in their conversation that caught my eye and that I think could serve as inspiration for all of the artists working on our production has to do with collaboration, danger, and uncertainty. Although they are talking specifically about the writing process, I think their words have relevance for us as creative artists in all aspects of our collaboration:

Miranda: What makes a good collaborator?

Sondheim: I like writing with people who make me want to write. And you know, they’re hard to find. I don’t mean for me. I mean for anybody. It’s a marriage, and you want to find somebody who —

Miranda: You’re gonna show up naked sometimes.

Sondheim: You’ve got to have somebody who’ll surprise you and, you know, it’s the old lesson, you’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself.

Miranda: Talk a bit about that danger and uncertainty.

Sondheim: Well, because it stimulates you to do things you haven’t done before. The whole thing is if you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says. And that’s death.

So, let’s surprise ourselves. Let’s embrace the danger and the uncertainty. Let’s keep it alive!

Sources and additional resources:

Corliss, Richard. “Why Broadway Hates Stephen Sondheim.” Time, 12 June 2010, http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1996260,00.html

Miranda, Lin-Manuel. “Stephen Sondheim, Theater’s Greatest Lyricist.” The New York Times Style Magazine, 16 Oct. 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-magazine/lin-manuel-miranda-stephen-sondheim.html?_r=0

Sondheim, Stephen. Interview by Charles Osgood. CBS This Sunday Morning, 22 Oct. 1995,
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNVKbOOA7Mw

D.A. Pennebaker's doc on making of Original Cast Album

Sondheim interview on the songwriting process from The PBS NewsHour