I witnessed a Rebirth of a cultural icon
From Stage to Blockchain: Gogol Center’s Legacy Continues with NFTs and Global Community Engagement. Discover the unique story behind this historic theatre event and explore how NFTs are transforming audience engagement and the future of plays!
It takes a lot of talent and energy for theaters to make a mark in the 21st century society. One of the brightest examples of that was Gogol Center that gave us hundreds of plays, musicals and a number of new formats that gave the impression that theater was again capable of unleashing creative energy relevant to large audiences. When the theatre was closed in June 2022 that energy was dispersed across the whole world as its team members emigrated en masse. On Oct 31, 2023 the promise of it’s founder Kirill Serebrennikov that the Gogol Center will continue to live was fulfilled — the longest running play of Gogol Center, “ Regular story “, was premiered in Belgrade, Serbia.
One small yet very important supporting element of the premier was — an NFT distributed to the audience as a PoaP, for the memory of participating in this important cultural event. Since spring 2023 Unique Network has supported every event produced by DrugDrugu, an organization behind the premier and physical resurrection of the Gogol Center with the PoaP for participants. These NFTs served at first as a membership card for joining the community, and with each additional event the participant is getting a new NFT that increases her/his reputation within the community. At most of these events the Executive Producer of DrugDrugu Alexey Agranovich would go on stage to introduce it, and among other things would say:
“I have no idea how these NFTs work or what they are, but if you just point your phone camera to the QR code behind me you will get one, and it will mark you as an important member of our community, and it will give you some important privileges in our future events”. Depending on the event, between 10% and 50% of the audience of each event did so. So when the “Regular Story” play was first announced, the pre-sale of tickets was available only to the existing community members — owners of some of its NFTs. Tickets for the first 3 scheduled shows were sold out as soon as they went on sale, and NFT owners got the best seats and were able to witness a historic event. They will be able to say “I was there, and I have an NFT to prove it”.
These NFTs do not have monetary value. They are not commercial. They are a digital connection of its owner with the creative community that made the event, a digital tattoo to let them forever re-live the emotions she/he experienced at the event. Considering how powerful and current Serrebrennikov’s new edition of “Regular story” is, many of its viewers will want to have that tattoo.
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Originally published at https://unique.network on August 27, 2024.
