"Four legs good, two legs bad!"

Briarcliff High School is using social media technology developed in the computer science classroom to enhance its fall drama production of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

"With so much talk in the press and media these days about the way social media is used to facilitate and provoke political debate, we wanted to examine ways that political information revealed in the story might be shared with audience during the live event," said Ian Driver, the director.

Students brainstormed ideas and came up with suggestions including short televised news bulletins and tweets shared with the audience during the performance. Working with both Ms. Jamie Mandel's film students and Mr. John Fasano's Computer Science students at BHS, the production team has developed film clips and computer code that allows for both these activities to take place during the live theatrical performance. Thanks to the work of BHS students Russel Kleiner, Kyle Johnson and Sam Brown, the audience will be invited by email prior to the show to sign up for text alerts during the performance, and then will receive text messages from characters onstage during the performance as they were themselves engaged in the action on stage.

Evening performances: Friday November 17th and Saturday November 18th at 7:30pm. Matinees: Saturday November 18th and Sunday November 19th at 2:30pm. Buy tickets online at showtix4u.com or via phone @ 866-967-8167. A limited number of tickets may be available at the door. All seats, all shows $15.