Jacob Coakley

Theatre’s an ancient art, but technology stops for no art form (or magazine).

Have you been to www.stage-directions.com recently? Go ahead, check it out, I’ll wait.

Cool, right? It’s totally new. We announced it in an ad last month, but I wanted to call some more attention to it because I’m incredibly proud of it. The pages look better, it’s easier to find previous issues and articles, there are RSS feeds available for every section of the website (and magazine), and we’ve made commenting and sharing the stories easier and quicker, too. You can login with your Facebook (or many other ID’s) to let us know your thoughts on all our stories. Easier to chat with us, and less passwords for you to remember. That's a good thing.

That’s not all we’ve been up to—we’ve just welcomed five new bloggers to www.TheatreFace.com. They’re online now sharing their experience and stories in everything from acting, directing, building and producing. Between them and the live chats, contests, discussions, photos, and everything else available on www.TheatreFace.com, there’s something happening there all the time.

Plus—have you seen those funky little square UPC-code-looking things by stories? Do you know those link to extra content online for each story? You can use your mobile device to go right to those stories, or, if you want, you can go to the URL listed next to it. Regardless—when you see those codes, that’s your cue that there’s even more content for you online. We’ve been running a contest using those QR codes for the past few months to enter readers into a drawing for an iPod Shuffle—now we’re pleased to announce that Jim Brumbach has won! Of course, you’re all winners when you click on the extra content. (Come on, you knew I had to say something cheesy like that…)

Lastly, I don’t know if you noticed it, but we added a new slogan to our front cover: “The Art and Technology of Theatre.” It’s the same slogan that appears on our website, and we think it’s a great distillation of what it is, exactly, we’re trying to do here. Stage Directions has been, and will continue to be, your best source for learning about how to create better theatre. Well, that also applies to creating a better magazine. We’ve spent the last year implementing all these online initiatives to make sure that we can give you our great stories and information in the best way possible, exactly how you want it, wherever you want it—in print, online, on your phone, or, for that matter, whatever super-cool high-tech device comes along next. So check ‘em all out, and know that wherever you want to reach us, we’ll be there.