How many people does it take to play an audience?

This past weekend something strange and awesome happened here in the Twin Cities called sunshine and “unseasonably” warm temperatures.

I know – ugh, weather. Hear me out.

Sunday was a glorious day! Typically we do not see 65-degree temps and sun in early March. Consequently, no one wanted to be inside a theater. That’s, however, where I was.

And what I experienced wasn’t as strange as it was saddening.

On stage was a group of very talented actors who are well-liked and well-respected and often in-demand. They were doing a staged reading of a new play, a script that could best be described as a work in progress. Nevertheless, they had poured everything they had into it to make it work and bring it across the room to the audience. And that’s where the problem was.

The audience. There was me, who had directed this staged reading and its previous workshops; there was the playwright, and there were two SO’s of two cast members. Two people. Two. I guess if we were to count the stage manager in the booth and the producer who stood in the back, we would actually outnumber the cast!

I wasn’t a producer on this project. I had no significant knowledge of what had or hadn’t been done to get the word out. The previous couple evenings had small audiences, but this….this was…

This feels like failure. The producer didn’t want to be convinced to simply cancel, even though everyone was certain that the two audience members wouldn’t have minded. Generally if the audience is outnumbered by the cast everyone usually feels that it’s better to just call it a day. No matter how good or wonderful or interesting anything might be that should happen in the performance or reading the fact is that the only thing that each and every person in the room is thinking is along the lines of “There are two people in the audience….“

That’s what I was thinking. And I was the director – it was some of my work they were watching. It felt a bit…disappointing.

Every laugh, every giggle, every sigh, every shift in one’s seat, is expanded exponentially in opposite proportion to the house population.

The vast amount of talent on stage felt to me like it was being wasted. Yet each one of them did their work to the fullest. Not a single person “phoned in” a single moment. I give them kudos for going out there and playing for those two boyfriends the way they would have for dozens of strangers.

At least it was a gorgeous, sunny Spring day when we all emerged.

Winnipeg, and then some

Well, it’s been read, and no one died. Except for the those in the play itself, but that was to be expected.

Overall, I’m very pleased with how the reading went. For the most part, it moved along fine. We discovered there may be some confusion over Winnipeg, or perhaps the word Winnipeg was heard a bit too often. It kind of became a bit silly really, as I myself have never been. To Winnipeg, that is. These things are easily fixed.

There are places where the words and the sentences, not to mention the sentence structure itself, and this is often material that’s original source stuff anyway, was a bit cumbersome and long winded, that is the words, to say out loud, and, it was, to be rather frank, difficult, plus a bit hard to replicate, even when trying.

As I just did. And not successfully.

The ambience of the written word, and the mere scent of its power, were also at times….overwritten.

Again, original sources. Yellow journalism.

Fortunately, good and smart actors can usually smooth that out, even in a cold read. When they didn’t, well, that’s when we all thought, “OK, fix this here thing.”

After reading it, we had a good discussion about what worked, what didn’t, what wasn’t clear, etc. I was surprised that no one said anything I hadn’t anticipated, which makes me feel good about how we’re going about this project. What was really fun was the debates that ensued where people talked about not just which way should the script go but how to interpret the lives of these people. It was if they had just been to a show, and were arguing its points afterwards at some bar.

The good news is that it actually seems cohesive, interesting and totally doable. It needs some cleaning up, a bit of shaping and polishing, but then it will be ready for its cast. And the cast will have to be ready for it – to help bring it more to life. And shape it some more.

The bad news is….well, I’m not quite sure there is any.

So, I guess we’re on the right road. Which apparently leads to Winnipeg.

A Dawn yet to Come

This is a shot of the pre-dawn sun, taken from Mather Point in the Grand Canyon. I’m putting it up because it’s kind of how I feel today. There’s a looming anticipation as the play reading approaches, followed in a few days by auditions and casting decisions. 

This picture is one of an entire roll of film taken while watching the sun rise. It was an experience like no other. There were about a hundred people gathered on the point, many with cameras, speaking a wide range of languages, all bleary eyed and excited. Everyone there had probably seen a sunrise before—back in our home countries, where ever that may have been, but the site at the Grand Canyon isn’t even describable, and it was a whole new experience for all of us. It was a shared experience. This was different. The exact moment the sun peeked over the rim—and there is a split second moment—was almost spiritual.

There was a nearly audible gasp from the crowd and the briefest moment of pause and wonder.

This may be raising the bar a bit high for a reading and auditions.