Meeting the Audience

Let's face it: the arts can be brutal.  Uplifting, meaningful, inspiring even; yes, the arts can be all of those things.  The arts can also be brutal.

Recently I sat through one of the worst performed plays I've ever seen.  By this judgment - and I want to be fair, here - I mean the following, specifically:

• the actors didn't know their lines (most were reading straight out of the script, believe it or not)
• they didn't know their blocking; didn't know their entrances and exits
• as a result, there was precious little characterization of any poignancy and, therefore,
• relationships between the characters (which make up the heart of any entertaining performance) were almost entirely non-existent

In short, it was a lot of well-meant, if quite hapless, flailing around up there.  What was the problem?  In a sentence: the play was badly under-rehearsed.  It should never have gone to curtain in that state.  Now, perhaps we might fault the cast for not trying harder.  However, in fact, it is squarely, and almost solely, the director's fault.  (I know - that sucks, but it's part of the onus of being the director.) 

On the other hand, one might argue that I am, unfairly, taking this way too seriously.  That, after all, it's only community theatre (which it was).  Or, in a similar vein, that the audience got what it paid for (the ticket price was, I admit, absurdly low).  Of course, that argument always overlooks the obvious: community theatre or not, modern audiences pay the ticket price  + performance time + commute time.

There's a rule in theatre: Audiences take their time very seriously; dramatists who fail to, soon quit.  For example, I know from experience that you can get away with such poorly rehearsed theatre for about ten to twenty minutes, tops.  Most audiences will forgive just about anything up to that time limit.  After that, however, is a different story as the audience will, first, grow restless, then bored, then resentful.  Yep, stretch that period to half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half, two hours or (as was the case here), well over two hours and now you have an audience that is fairly growling, "Can we just get this f*king thing over with, already?"  In the case of this show, by the time I ducked out early, 1/3 the house had already left.  Clearly, they had better uses for their time.  Then, too, right before I left, I could hear the mutter on all sides: "Is this show ever going to end?"

So, yes, in the dramatic arts, it's important to meet the audience's expectations.  (Fail to, and they will let you know real fast.  Particularly American audiences.)  Therefore, meet their expectations or quit.  Those are the rules.  I know that sounds brutal.  Maybe it is.  But those are still the rules.  If you don't want to play by them?   It's simple: do something else.

But you know what?  The visual arts are ruled similarly (if less dramatically).   Fail to meet the audience's (or collectors') expectations and your fine art or fine craft will collect dust on that gallery shelf until the gallery owner moves you out, replacing your work with another's that moves enough to help him pay his rent.  Same rules: meet their expectations or quit.

Perhaps this awareness is why I am so amused these days at squabbling by, say, two self-appointed cognescenti over whether, say, a painting is great art.  I could care less.  What I want to know is whether that painting will meet a collector's expectations.

And, after that?  Well, let's just say that after a decade or two of meeting audiences' or collectors' expectations, we'll know who the artists are and who chose some other field.

Jeff