More comments on the issue and I will continue to shamelessly plug. Get your tickets here: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/899505
PS-I am getting to the point where I think people who have read my blog and also come to Flying Snakes in 3-D!!! are going to be completely surprised when they find out that the piece is a comedy.
PSS- Remember when a similar thing happened around this time last year and we ended up in The Guardian? Where is Chris Wilkinson?
From Andrew
Kevin-
Some interesting thoughts, though your thesis of the need for artists to start thinking of their work as a business does raise some important questions for me. As a playwright, it’s always very difficult to listen to the audience when revising or developing a piece, especially if audience members are not artists themselves. Especially if they’re not theatre artists. Especially if they’re not playwright. This is in no way a statement of elevated status, it’s logic. An electrician wouldn’t ask a televison producer how to better wire a house….etc. Too often I’ve found audience members disagreeing with elements of my plays, suggesting changes of ending, being confused by symbols…etc because they didn’t agree or “understand” it in a visceral sense that they were able to relate to their own personal experience. This is not me being defensive, it’s realizing my vision and intention being addressed from outside, critical eyes. It’s a simple disagreement, and in business, the old adage goes: “The customer is always right.” In this case, “customer” would translate to “audience” or even “producer” (if we should be so lucky). But often times in audience response you have polarities in opinions, most of which come from a responsive place of “I want to see this” vs. “The play/story needs this”. As Leah has brilliant articulated and defended, audience reaction come from a place of personal taste and personal history. Sometimes – in my opinion, all too frequently- artists have their art being criticized and reviewed by members of the varying different classes/statuses/gender/race/sex… and yes, while this is productive for dialogue, how productive is it in the further development and/or the evaluation of the art?
I’m very worried that if we artists begin to look at our work through a heavy business lens, we’ll be creating work that lacks breath, lacks muscles, lacks ourselves. In business, you change plans and models to cater to the customers who are keeping you afloat. If theatre does this, then what’s the point?
Keep in mind too, that Shakespeare was writing in a different time, a different place, and different stories. He is a master of the stage because of TALENT and because, frankly, what other playwright of the time created the complex, beautiful, dynamic stories that he did? It was just a different time, so therefore not at all comparable.
Just my thoughts.
I loved FLYING SNAKES IN 3-D because it made me LAUGH. It was funny, it was campy, it had snakes being represented as silly sock-pockets the actors slipped over their hands. They hissed. They danced. They came from a place of privilege. And they were defeated. By a large mongoose. I loved FLYING SNAKES IN 3-D.
Andrew
