Friday Arts Quotes

"A playwright is the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great." - Arthur Miller

"The primary function of a theatre is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent." - Robert Brustein

"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act." - Orson Welles

How Many are Too Few?

I was incredibly dissapointed this afternoon to receive a phone call from the Vancouver Playhouse informing me that the performance of Studies in Motion to which I had booked tickets was being cancelled due to lack of attendance.

The performance was scheduled for next Thursday afternoon and for me, a week day matinee is the ideal time to see a show. If I am in performances, I have my day times free and this coming week when I am off work I have booked in evening performances most nights of the week and squeeze in a matinee as well (of course they also tend to be more affordable - in this case a difference of about $15). At this point the Playhouse has refunded my ticket without any problem, but I am uncertain if I will be able to see the show now despite really wanting to. Am I willing to shell out the additional money to go to an evening show? Do I have an evening free to go? What about the closing Saturday matinee?

So I'm curious: how many people are too few to do a show for?

I can understand the need to have enough people to cover costs, but for any union house, you wouldn't be paying performers & stage management extra per show - 8 shows per week are written into the Equity contract. The only additional fees that would exist would be technicians who are paid hourly & any additional front of house and bar staff. There really must not have been many of us booked in for that matinee.

In a smaller theatre where there is no hourly staff, I've done shows for as few as four people. In a Fringe situation I can remember doing shows for two. Friends tell stories of doing a production of "Jack, or the Submission" for one elderly woman who at the end, when asked how the production was, said, "That was exhausting!" Reality is, in smaller theatres we can make those decisions and go on with the show.

Backstage during co-ops there are always the whispers of "if the house is smaller than the size of the cast we can cancel" but each time I've been in that situation, the cast has chosen to go on with the show: they've come this far, they don't want to turn back now. And I've had positive experiences in doing those smaller audience shows. There are people who have come up to the performers afterwards talking about how touched they were by the show. And we've been glad that we haven't cancelled.

What would it take for you to cancel a performance?

Friday Arts Quotes: Opening Night Edition

It's opening night for Holy Mo at Pacific Theatre, so in honor of that, this week's arts quotes are all about audience - the theatrical ingredient that gets added on opening.

"The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of having his work bought and appreciated during his life time; no wonder the pain was more than he could bear); the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work had been still-born. The reader, viewer, listener, usually grossly underestimates his importance. If a reader cannot create a book along with the writer, the book will never come to life....The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words. So there is no evading the fact that the artist yearns for "success," becuase that means that there has been a communication of the vision: that all the struggle has not been invalid." - Madeline L'Engle

"When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that." -David Mamet

"You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors & the audience - and each must give something." - Kenneth Haigh

Annoying Audience Poll

What audience traits irritate you most at the theatre?

• Cell phones ringing
• People unwrapping candy
• People talking/coughing
• Late-comers seated in the front row

View Results

The Gift of a Great Audience

Audiences can be fickle beasts. They laugh. They're silent. They cry. They clap. They sleep. They talk on their phones. They throw things at the actors. They leap to their feet with applause. They use their camera phones to take pictures. They spontaneously clap in the middle of a show. They are entirely unpredictable.

At their worst, I wish the from my post in the tech booth I had a paintball gun or watergun and the opportunity to take out the worst offenders (especially those that not only let their phones ring, but then proceed to answer them).

But at their best they make ME want to burst out in spontaneous applause.

Following tonight's performance of Jesus, My Boy we had a talk back. We do it once in the run of every show (and sometimes more often if the show has a more controversial subject matter), and we tend to get a really good turn out. Tonight about half of the audience stayed, and since we had a full house that means that one side of the theatre was full for the talk back.

Now I don't know if any of you have experience with theatre talk backs, but they tend to be pretty much the same every time. People mention how much they loved the show and then they ask the actors "How did you learn all those lines!" Sometimes they go further, but often you really have to prompt the audience to ask questions.

But tonight was different.

I don't know what it was about tonight, but the audience was extremely well educated about theatre and the questions just kept coming. I must have told them that I was only taking one more question four or five times. And the questions were smart:

Q: How did you guys integrate the music with the script? Did you just decided or did you figure it out as you went?

A: Artistic Director Ron Reed had the idea to add music to the script about three years ago and when director Sarah Rodgers signed on to do the show, Ron handed her the script and Sheree & Jeremy's CDs. She listened to them and read the script and sent them an e-mail with the songs she thought would work and where she thought they might go. On the first day of rehearsal at our first read Sheree & Jeremy played the songs in those places and most of them are in the same place (moved by a paragraph or so). But the process was organic - more songs were added (including a little Beatles!), tweaked, & one was even written especially for the show (though it moved around within the script three or four times).

Q: The title of the show is Jesus, My Boy, but you never refer to the child as Jesus or the mother as Mary: you just call them "the boy" and "the boy's mother." Do you know why that is?

A: I directed the audience member to take a look at a letter we received from the playwright, John Dowie, that was included at the back of the program which talks about the fact that the play has gone through a variety of names including "The Joseph Story" & most of the time goes by "The Gospel According to Joseph". And one of the reasons for that is by not naming "Mary" or "Jesus" it allows Joseph's story to be the story of one of a number of men at that time, who work as carpenters, & wonder whether or not those prophecies might have pointed to them. At the same time, as David pointed out, it brings even more wonder to the reality of the story of Jesus & this Joseph regardless of one's religious views.

Q:How do you find acting with the audience so close to you?

A (from David Adams): A play cannot happen without an audience, especially in a space like Pacific Theatre where the audience is so close. That's what makes theatre so special - every show is different based on how the audience responds. We are all breathing the same air together and it is a pleasure to do the show with a new audience each night.

But when an audience is that attuned to what is happening, it is a pleasure for me to bring the show to them each night!