I’ve written previously about process vs performance, specifically in relation to creating work with ‘community’ groups and in non-professional settings. That was a few years ago now, and as I wander into the world of the ‘professionals’, I can tell you this: I still love a process. (I’m using inverted commas as a lazy way of signalling that I have issues around these definitions, but I’m not ready to write a blog post about it yet. I’ll let that brew a little longer). I love finding the right game to spark a scene. I love dancing around rooms with actors, to music that’s louder than medically advised. I love starting with an idea or a concept and then working collaboratively to create the physical world and language of a play. I love using research to find accuracy and clarity in a production, to find specificity and detail. There’s a lot of love in there. No doubt. But the main thrust of creating something (in theatre anyway), is to share it. With an audience. So I’ve been doing some thinking about the nature of performance and audience, and what I’ve learnt from the last few shows that I’ve directed.
It’s a fascinating and faintly terrifying time, that liminal space in which a show you’ve spent so many weeks pouring over, tearing into, tweaking, snipping and colouring is relinquished to an audience for the first time. I’m interested to hear how other directors experience it, but, I’ve found that, when an audience file in for the first performance of a show, it’s in that moment that I realise I’ve really got no idea what we’ve got on our hands. I know some things: I know that we’ve put in the work, that we’ve gone through a creative process that has substance and direction, that we’ve created something of worth. If I’ve done my job, I know that the world of the play is cohesive, that it’s detailed and has corners, pace, and heart, but what I do not know is the exact way in which it will hit an audience until they’re there, in front of it. At the start of a creation process, I consider the gesture of the play and how I want it to effect an audience, but I don’t ever feel in control of the outcome. Probably, because I’m not.
I crafted the below thoughts on audience and performance as part of a notes session I was giving to a truly wonderful cast of second year acting students at Arts Ed. Working with an ensemble of fourteen, and an assistant from Birkbeck’s MA course, I directed ‘The Radicalisation of Bradley Manning’, which we shared with audiences last week. I thought I’d share those notes with my wider readership (my mother) now. P.S. reading it back, I am suddenly aware that I’ve spent too much of December listening to ‘Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen)’. It’s drenched in it. I know, and I’m not sorry.
Some thoughts on audience…
1) Your audience don’t owe you anything. This is a fresh audience, with fresh perspectives, who are coming at it from blank. I often find the first performances of a production the most fun, because there’s no precedent, no expectation; audiences come at it with an open heart. Then, by word of mouth, or reviews or social media, as a run goes on, especially if you’ve got a positive reaction, I find it can often become more challenging. Because the audience come in expecting to be impressed. Expectations can be a fucker. They make us hard and unbending. But we all have them. Audiences can be strange and unknown quantities. Don’t let it catch you out or worry you too much. Just stick to your task.
2) The audience don’t owe you a laugh on that bit, or to be moved on that bit… every audience member, and audience as their own little ensemble/community, will respond differently to your work, every single time. It’ll connect to some, it might not to others. And that’s ok. We’re all human beings wandering around with our own life experiences, with our attention caught by different things. All you can do is stay true to what we’ve created as a group, our intention and the world of our play.
3) You never know how someone is effected by something. I’ve sat through plays of mine where the audience hasn’t let out a single sound. I assumed they hated it. Then they’ve come out saying they were deeply moved. Humans are a strange breed of fish. This is especially true in the UK where we’re all emotionally constipated. Don’t assume your audience isn’t connecting to something because they’re not giving you the reaction you’re expecting (see, you have expectations too).
4) Don’t play for laughs, don’t play for a specific reaction at all, just know your intent with each moment and beat of the play, and be open to different ways that you might explore and play with it. Play the games we’ve embedded into the play, and play them with commitment and openness. Don’t think that because a delivery worked yesterday, it’ll work today. Don’t bake things in and leave them there. You cheat yourself and your audience of the magic of the live form. We’re not making a film or recording something so it stays the same way forever. For magical reasons I don’t totally understand, the audience know when you’re authentically creating something in the moment, there’s a liveness, an audacity and a charge to it. They also know when you’re copying or imitating someone else or something else you’ve done before. They’re dead clever. So don’t bake things in and leave them set. Keep on playing with them, alongside your intentions and the characters you’ve created. Fresh performances, every single time.
5) Everyone’s a director. Once you’ve made something and put it out there, suddenly everyone has an opinion, a thought about how it could be tweaked or shifted. I’m guilty of it. You probably are. Actually it’s a huge compliment because it means that audiences are engaged enough in your work to want to take ownership of it. However, you can’t take it all on. A lot of it is just taste, and that’s why art is so great, it hits everyone differently and makes everyone feel differently. But, if we create a play to please everyone, we create a play for no-one at all. If we’re not specific in our work, we’re beige. Beige belongs on the walls of your local library. Not in art. So, your job is to smile politely and then swiftly delete it from your memory or, even better, try some assertive communication and stop someone who’s giving you a note ‘I’m really pleased you’re so engaged in it, but I don’t think hearing specific feedback is going to serve me right now’. Or something similar, in your own words. Of course, if you’re interested in someone else’s opinion (and there are lots of interesting people, opinions and thoughts out there of great value), I’d advise taking it up after the run of a show. Because if we all take notes from different places, we’re no longer working cohesively on the same world and vision.
Trust me, you can’t please everyone.
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