This weekend, I saw some friends in a community theatre production (both friends’ names and the name of said production will be withheld to protect the innocent).
The show was okay, the venue was darling, my friends are pretty darn talented. As we watched community theatre in action, myself and my compatriots had a few observations about what makes good theatre into great theatre and what can be riveting about something happening onstage. Perhaps more importantly, we had some D.O.A. don’t do’s that I think the world at large could really benefit from understanding and taking into consideration.
The first thing to keep in mind (and this is particularly important when doing community or
Not all theatre can be this…
non-professional theatre) is that every individual should know his strengths and his weaknesses. If a show calls for something (say, a fight scene), that something should be executed to the best of the group’s ability. If there is someone in the group with an expertise (particularly an unexpected expertise), that individual owes it to the group to step up and say something. In return, the group owes it to the individual to respect his expertise. In other words: your fight will look awful if you don’t know how to fight. Or if you think you know how to fight. You have nothing to lose by discussing other ideas or approaches with those around you. No one will disrespect you if someone happens to come along and know a little thing that you don’t. What will make your show weaker is stubbornly clinging to the insistence that you know something. That will, definitively, poison what you have onstage. For this example, fighting safe is the top priority; but if you can fight well then for the non-denominational deity’s sake, fight well. I refuse to sit through another half-hearted, bumbling stage fight… especially when I know that someone in your cast has enough experience to actually make it look decent. Grow up, man up, and admit you don’t know everything.
Second: elegance is refusal. Your show will be cleaner, more professional, and more tolerable if your scene changes are less than ten seconds each. If you have a change that involves anything more involved, for the love of all things holy cut the scene change. Find some creative way to work around it. Chances are it’s costing you more money than it’s worth. Having your already antsy audience sit in darkness for an awkwardly long time is simply not worth the headache it will cause to your stage hands and the polite folks who are sitting through your production.
….Personally, I’m done being polite, but many people don’t have the same cavalier attitude about theatre as I do. I have paid good money to see your show, I expect to be entertained and/or moved, not sit and stew while you bumble around with something far too big and involved to be worth the time to move it. Cut. It.
…but it can be this.
Thing three: don’t expect me to be nice. I’m done being nice. I have to be nice all day all the time with my students, cohorts, and professors. I have to be nice via e-mail to my networking connections. I have to be nice to the random people I encounter at the library and/or coffee shop. As far as I can see it, I spend faaarrrrrr too much of my time being nice. Seeing theatre is something that I count as part of my job, but it’s also something that I do on my own personal time. As such, generally, I don’t feel the urge to censor myself when I’m giving feedback about a show that I was asked to go see. If you want me to see your show (and I understand if you don’t), I’m not going to smile and tell you how great you were if you didn’t earn it. I’m not going to laugh if it’s not funny. I’m not going to clap if it wasn’t worth the applause. I will give you an honest opinion; I will try to cushion the blow if I have something scathing to say and at least make it constructive criticism; I will (generally) refrain from bashing your show on the internet (…unless it really really deserved it… Harvard Revels, I’m looking at you). I will not go out of my way to be an evil jerk, but you get what you earn from me. Just because this is your hobby doesn’t mean I have to hang your macaroni pictures on my refrigerator and praise how them every time I want a beer.
Don’t worry, I expect the same of you when you come to see my show. If it’s not working, TELL ME. I don’t want to be out there doing something that I think is brilliant if it isn’t landing with an audience. I can’t see myself from the stage. You, the audience, are an important part of my experience as a theatre-maker. If you see something in performance that you think could make the performance stronger, of course I want to know about it.
In a creative process, giving and taking feedback is important. In a creative process that’s essentially art for art’s sake, it’s even more important. If the product is going to be a lump of raw talent held together by the spittle of one over-worked and over-egoed director, it simply won’t stick. It takes integrity to make a show into something worth seeing, and integrity comes from the strength of the whole. If you want to make art in your spare time (and it is a noble pursuit… and fulfilling when it works out), learn to be an active member of the community. If you can’t handle that, take up painting or sculpture. Theatre is a communal activity and only a strong community can make a strong show.
