Lecture 3 - The Audience

This is the 101 introduction to theatre and drama arts. The subject today is the audience you, the audience, and yes, me. I suppose I would say one of my favorite things to do is to go to the theatre. Somebody asked me rather recently how many times I go in a year, and I really have no idea. I don't know that I've ever stopped to count. But I would say probably somewhere in the neighborhood, if I can possibly manage it, somewhere between eighty and a hundred times a year. And I stopped to figure out, "Hey, that's twice a week!" But no, I don't go twice every single week. But there are weeks when I manage to serve it in some way or the other. And when I'm in New York, I may over a five-day period see as many as eight or nine productions in that period of time. Or more if I'm there longer. Or if I go somewhere else, if I go to St. Louis for the weekend, then yes, it's at least usually a couple of productions at that time. So yes, I am a member of the audience. I very much enjoy being a member of the audience. I may be a practitioner, but even more than anything, I enjoy being an audience member and seeing. And I think this is the thing, and you have heard this and you will keep hearing it because it is one of the absolute essentials that must be remembered, and that is that the audience is an absolute essential element for the theater and the theater experience. The audience must be there. The audience must be present. And while there are many things that we can talk about in ways in which the audience in the film or in the movie house, there are similar experiences there. However, the fact that you are there in no way influences the film. And that is whether you were there or not there, the film keeps running. If you are at home and you get up and you leave the room, the television set just keeps on playing and has absolutely no recognition, no cognizant that you have even left. I assure you, if you get up out of your seat and you move in the theater, the actors know it. The actors are very much aware of it. In fact, the actors are constantly on stage, whether they give any overt indication of it or not. The actors are intimately aware of the audience, the audience reaction, and what is going on. I've gone backstage frequently and went to see a friend of mine who might have been in the performance. And when I get there, one of the first things - and this happens over and over again - an actor will say, "Oh, it was a wonderful audience tonight. They did so and so and so and so." Or, as unfortunately also is sometimes the case, they go, "Ah, what an audience tonight. I wonder who was out there?" or whatever. So yes, the audience is absolutely essential. In fact, many people say that the theater is what happens, the theater experience is that which takes place between the audience and the performer. We, the audience, are in the presence of the performer. The performer is in our presence. There is a chemistry that happens there. And again, you've heard this several times and you'll probably hear it any number of other times during the semester, and that is that the actor is a shaman. The actor is a leader, and that the actor then takes us, gathers us up, and takes us on an experience. But in order for us to have that experience, we must be there. In order for the audience for thought, in order for the experience to happen, the audience must be there. The critic Walter Kerr once wrote, "It doesn't just mean we are in the personal presence of performers. It means they are in our presence, conscious of us, speaking to us, working for and with us until a circuit that is not mechanical becomes established between us, a circuit that is fluid, unpredictable, ever-changing in its impulses, crackling, intimate. Our presence, the way we respond, flows back to the performer and alters what he does to some degree, and perhaps even, sometime astonishingly so. Every single night, we are contenders making the play." The evening and the emotion, together we are playmates building a structure. And I think this is what we need to remember, that when we come into this place, that is into this place together, that we, at that point, are indeed soulmates. We have come in now to construct and experience, and this is an experience that becomes a group experience. We enter Stingley in twos or threes, we come in as individuals, but very slowly through something that happens to us as that performance begins, we become members of a group. Or even sometimes even before the performance begins, somehow or the other, we begin to lose our specific identity and we begin then to meld ourselves into a group. I think perhaps one of the most astonishing experiences I have ever had in the theatre was when seeing a production of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of The Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. We all in the audience came into this knowing that we were in for something like about a nine-hour experience. And you go, 9 hours? Yes, 9 hours. We came in at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and we were in the theatre for part 1 from 2:00 until 6:00. Oh yes, there were emissions in there, but we were in the theater from 2:00 until 6:00. And at 6 o'clock, we had a dinner break for one hour. And we left the theater building and we came back then at 7 o'clock and part two began. And part 2 blast hit from 7:00 until shortly before midnight. And then, and then, the show was over and we came out. But even as we came in that afternoon at 2 o'clock, or before 2, and before the performance began, members of the audience, everybody was sort of already because we all knew that this was going to be one very long day. But already, the actors were, in fact, within the audience space, as the individual actor, not as a character, but they welcomed us into the space, talking to us in the space, letting us become a part of that, already beginning to meld with them in some way or the other. And then slowly, one by one, as it approached 2 o'clock, the actors began to leave the audience space and began to go up on stage and slowly begin to take their place on stage. And the audience began to settle down. And we already had begun to feel that we were a unit, we were something here, that we were going to have a very, very special experience. And then the lights went down. We were, for that moment, in darkness. We were at that point now making our transition. We were now becoming audience members. And the lights came up and the full cast was on stage there before us. And then, they began speaking, and they immediately began taking us into that world that we were now going to occupy from that point until about midnight, except for the breaks of intermission and dinner. But a marvelous, wonderful experience. I always remember as we left, by the time the applause was over, the curtain calls and everything were over, it was a little after midnight. And as I left the theater, there were two women in front of me, and one woman turned to the other one and said, "You know, if they came out and told me if you come back into the theater, we're going to start the whole thing all over again, and you can be a part of the audience." The woman turned to the other one and said, "You know what? I'd say, I just say, let me walk around the block once, and I'll be right here." And yes, I've very fully understood because I'd have been right behind her because that was so wonderfully special in the bond that got established, the ability of that cast to take us into the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. We became, we lost our individuality, we became a group. We became a collective mind that now feels, thinks, and acts differently from an individual in a state of isolation. We sense then an intangible communication that gets established here, a communication that gets established between us and the performer, but also even more between us and us. And that is part of the very exciting experience of theatre. But there is also some kind of communication that is going on between us, the members of the audience, as we create this experience together. We and the audience are all focused on the stage. We're all directly in communication with that, and we become aware that everyone else in the audience is also the same focus, also with the same goal in mind - to establish that communication and to become a part of that totality of the experience. Now, all that sounds terribly mystical to you in some way or the other, and you go, "Oh, now what's it talking about?" Actually, it's fairly easy to understand. And that is, it's very easy to take note of this: there are moments at which there is, from an audience, a unison response. This may happen sometimes when something very unexpected happens, and there's a sudden sort of very audible gasp in the audience. And that gasp doesn't just come from one individual; it comes from many individuals all at the same time. And we begin to realize that every individual there is having that same experience that we're having. This is a group experience, not an isolated experience. However, unquestionably the most visible- or maybe, I guess, better than that word, audible response that one can think is laughter. And yes, when we all laugh together, and in fact, sometimes we in the audience may even laugh and we aren't always sure why we're laughing. Maybe we did not completely and fully understand what that particular joke was. But at that point, somehow or the other, everyone else was laughing. And laughter is wonderfully contagious. It is something that spreads throughout an audience somehow. The audio suddenly what? When one person is laughing or a group of people begin to, I think we all begin joining in, in some way or the other. I can remember once having seen the English actor Rex Harrison, and it just happened in the particular performance that I was seeing. I was sitting on the front row of the theatre, so I literally, my chin was almost on this edge of the stage. And Rex Harrison had a marvelous, wonderful technique, comic technique, and that is of letting lines sort of dribble out of the side of his mouth, which we call technique. We call a throwaway line, and Harrison had this marvelous, wonderful technique of throwing the line away. Now, I'm sitting here on the front row, and I sort of see this line dribbling out of his mouth, this throwaway line, and immediately, I begin this wonderful crooked - I began laughing. And suddenly, I began to realize that now I can hear this laughter, which I have already begun to enjoy myself, that this laughter is now sweeping through the theatre. And that the audience, and this is probably in the neighborhood of about a 1200-seat house, and they are going to be, then, and it was a very full house, so there's going to be another 1199 people somewhere behind me, some of them up in a balcony, some of them way up, and the sound of Harrison's voice without any amplification, by the way, our son knew how to do this. A wonderful technique of an actor, how to dribble that line out in such a way it could be heard by me, but that it was also, in the time that it took from travel from the stage all the way to the back of the theatre, all the way to the top balcony, could be heard by every member of the audience. And we all laughed. Oh, that, and at that point, we were in unison, and as we began to get it, we all here, then, were focused together. We were brought together. We had a group experience. I don't know whether any of you have ever been to, and much the same thing can happen, of course, in a movie house. And that is, we are in a movie house, and something funny happens, and everybody in the audience begins to laugh. And so, consequently, again, we're having then, watching the film, this same kind of group experience here that one can have in the theatre. The great difference lies in that the film is not going to know whether we ever laughed or not. I assure you, an actor who is given a funny line on stage is greatly aware of whether you have laughed, the audience has reacted to that or not. But the film doesn't. But have you ever been in a family, have you ever seen a film, and then maybe a year later or whatever, you watched it again when you were at home and you now saw it on your television set. And now as you watch it, the film doesn't begin to seem to be nearly so. Funny as it was in the movie house, or when you find yourself experiencing the same things as those happening in the film, and reacting to them with great enjoyment, gusto, and bursts of laughter, now there is nothing, or maybe just a faint smile. This is because we are now in isolation, maybe with a companion or two, or with members of our family, but we are now isolated. Therefore, our response is going to be greatly different from what it would be when we are in the midst of an audience. In recent years, the theater has tried to capitalize on the phenomenon of live performances. The fact that the audience and the performers are brought together in one location to have a live experience and communicate with each other. We hear the performer, we respond to the performer, the performer knows how we are responding. Audiences coughing, audiences rustling programs, this begins to tell an actor, "This audience is getting bored." There are many different ways in which you may communicate to an actor, whether you are aware of it or not. But when we are here together, this is an experience that separates us from film and television. In recent years, this is what much of the theatre has tried to do. How can we in the theatre capitalize on this experience? How can we make the audience more aware of the reality of the experience that is happening here? How can we make the audience more aware of the liveliness that happens here between us? There have been different techniques. For example, the actor coming out into the audience, being specifically and geographically directly in the midst of the audience, or the character frequently speaking very directly to the audience. This is not a new technique; it dates back to Shakespeare and the 17th and 18th century plays. But with the rise of realism in the late 19th and 20th centuries, as we developed more realistic productions on stage, we dropped many of these techniques. We isolated the performer on stage, put the audience in the auditorium, and said, "Yes, you're both in your separate locations. Now, audience, you watch the performance." However, more recently, there has been a shift. We are now asking, "Is there some way we can make the audience more aware that they are in the theater? That this is a live experience happening here?" Can we have more active participation from the audience? There have been productions in the last 10 to 20 years that have turned into audience participation events. For example, the musical called Edwin Drood. In this musical, based on Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, there are set up direct relationships between the stage and the performers. At a certain point in the second act, everything stops. Just as Charles Dickens' work stops, the musical turns to the audience and says, "Alright, you decide. You make up your mind." And then they give you several choices as to who could have done what, and there's an actual voting that takes place. After you get enough votes from the audience, then whichever choice the audience has selected for that particular evening, the actors then perform it. Depending on which performance you see and how the audience voted that night, you can see several different endings for that particular musical. There are others, such as a production called "Tony and Tina's Wedding". In this case, the wedding starts in a church and you, as the audience members who have bought tickets, enter through the church door. Your ticket is taken from you, and you are then shown to your seat in the pew. The whole wedding takes place, and you play the role of family members and guests who have come to the wedding of Tony and Tina. Once the wedding ceremony is finished, everyone leaves the church and goes to a nearby restaurant for the wedding dinner. You actually sit there and eat dinner, and then the story unfolds. Tony and Tina start to fight, and various family members join in. Of course, all of this is scripted, but there are points at which the audience gets involved in some way or another. All of this is done for entertainment value, where we find ourselves being participants in the performance. However, there is a point at which this can be taken too far, and each person has their own individual threshold. Every artist who creates a performance should always remember that the audience needs what we call aesthetic distance. Aesthetic distance is something that every artwork needs—it is the distance between the audience and the work of art that allows them to perceive the whole and retain objectivity. An analogy for this is looking at a painting. If you are standing too close to the painting, you may see the smallest details that you wouldn't see otherwise. However, you lose the perspective of the whole painting. To see the totality, you need to take a step back, both physically and mentally. The same applies to theater performances. There needs to be a mental distance between the audience and the performance, allowing them to observe and understand the workings of the performance without getting too caught up in the events themselves. This understanding leads to the fact that the creation of the event, the artistic creation of the performance, belongs to the performer. The performer guides the audience through the experience, ensuring that they have the right amount of distance to perceive and comprehend the entirety of the performance. You through that guides you through that experience or it guides you through creating the experience in some way. The actor Julie Harris has described this as the event that is the relationship between the actor and the audience, as the same relationship between the bullfighter and the bull. That is, the bull comes into the ring and the bull knows nothing at that point. The bull doesn't understand what it is supposed to be doing. It does not understand what is happening. So, at that point, the bullfighter must begin to educate him. The bullfighter must begin to create and set up in such a way that the bull will begin to respond. Thus, the use of the cloak, thus the use of the color red. Because the color red attracts the bull, the bull is attracted to it. The bull now begins to understand what it is supposed to be doing, and it charges toward that red color or whatever. The same thing happens in the theater. The actor must guide the audience, but the audience must be willing to be guided. There are obligations, then, of the audience. There are obligations that we all have as we come in - the obligation to be members of the audience. First, we need to arrive, and we need to arrive at least in enough time so that we are there before the event begins. We must arrive and prepare ourselves to enter into the event. In other words, we come in, we come into the theater, we come out of our lives, we come through a lobby, we enter into the theater, we then find our seats, and we take our seats. At that point, we must begin our sort of disengagement from the world that we are in. We have left our world and reality behind us, and we are now entering into the theatrical world. So, we must allow ourselves that disengagement. We must begin to prepare ourselves to enter into the event. We should certainly, in that disengagement, bring our imaginations. Yes, bring our might be ready to open our imagination, be ready then to open ourselves to the experience, be ready to become engaged with our imagination in the experience that the actor is going to create for us. Now, we also have to be aware. We have our biases, we have our prejudices, we have our own personal beliefs in some way or the other. And not necessarily within this world that we are going to enter are we going to always find events that will agree with us. We may see events that we don't find readily acceptable in our own world. But remember, we have now entered the world of the theater. We have now entered the fictive world that is being created here. And we, at that point, should put aside, insofar as we possibly can (and it is something we sometimes have to work at), our biases, our prejudices, and our own beliefs. Maybe you have never seen two people of the same sex kiss each other romantically. Maybe, in fact, you even disapprove of this. But you've got to remember, this is not your world that we are now in. This is not your reality that we are dealing with. You have now entered that reality, and then you need to bring your understanding. You need to bring and see why is this happening between these two individuals. This is very different from your world. And so, be prepared when you come into the theatrical world to be, for yourself, challenged. For yourself, perhaps, to find that what is happening on stage is not what you would want to do or what you even approve of. And just because the fact that you're watching it in no way should indicate that you necessarily believe in that. But at this point, you are now in number four. You have now entered fully into the fictive world. This is not your world. This is not you. You have and the term that is. Frequently used here is the willing suspension of disbelief. Willing suspension of disbelief means that you have made a decision to willingly suspend your disbelief in order to have this experience. By suspending that disbelief, you can begin to find and enter into many things and have many different kinds of experiences that you may never have in your own world. Entering into this fictive world does not indicate that you approve or disapprove. In fact, you always need to learn to separate the two and never make the mistake that frequently happens, thinking that the role an actor may be playing on stage is who that actor is in real life. This isn't true at all. An actor is simply acting the role they have been given and once they have accepted the role, they fully embrace the character. The actor does not disapprove of what the character is doing because to disapprove would mean the actor is not fully entering into the role they are performing. It does not mean the actor believes in or accepts what is going on. An actor entering into a role does not mean they will carry out those actions in real life. For example, an actor may murder someone on stage, but that does not mean the actor is a murderer or that they will go out and murder someone in real life. The actor understands why the character is doing what they are doing and fully embraces it in the context of the performance. To do anything less would be shirking the duty of being an actor. Kathleen Turner once told me a story about her time on the soap opera "The Doctors" in the early days of her career. She played a character named NOLA who was a vamp and enjoyed breaking up other people's romances. One day, after finishing shooting an episode, Kathleen was walking down Fifth Avenue when someone recognized her as NOLA from the show. The person began beating her with an umbrella, thinking she was the character. Kathleen had to run away to disengage herself from the situation. This person could not make a distinction and completely confused Kathleen with the character she played on the soap opera. It is important for us to be able to make that distinction and not confuse actors with the characters they portray. So, we must be willing to suspend our disbelief, but we also need to remember that once the experience is over, we return to our reality. This is why a curtain call on stage is so important. It is a ritual that signifies the end of the performance and allows for a disengagement. Even though most people in the audience may not think about it, the applause and curtain call serve as a reminder that what we just witnessed was a performance and not real life. Point at which the audience begins to see the actor as actor, not as performer. And I suppose it's also one of the reasons I very much believe in curtain calls, where it is the performer that one sees, it is the actor one sees, it is not the character. And when the actor takes that bow, then at that point there are two or three things that are happening in this experience. One, we are in the audience, now showing our applause. We are showing the actor how much we appreciate the job that that particular performer has done, how much we have enjoyed that particular performer. But it is also, in so doing, that act is for us a point of disengagement. It is wherein we begin to remove ourselves from the fictive world. We begin then to return, make the journey back into our own world. And we get up from our seats and we leave the auditorium and we walk through the lobby and we're in the street and we are now back in our own reality. So therefore, maybe a step five here is the disengagement that we need to go through and realize. And coming back to our own reality, which leads us to our sixth obligation. And that is, as a part of that disengagement process, then we also need to learn to be critical. Now, the word "critical" is sometimes misunderstood, or that is, we use it so often these days to mean that we're going to be negative. This is not what the word "critical" in its true meaning should indicate. Critical means to criticize, and not in a negative sense, to analyze. That's a better word, to analyze, to think about the experience. So what we need to do then is to learn to analyze, to think about, as we are disengaging ourselves. To begin, perhaps, talking about if we came with a companion or someone to, and somewhere the other began to analyze, what is it that we saw? And somewhere the other began to think about, what did we see? And then try to articulate that. It is to begin to be able to verbalize what it is that we have seen. So in some way, we begin to analyze. We begin to be objective about what we see. We, in some way, want to go beyond the immediate emotional reaction and, well, I liked it, or I didn't like it. We want to begin, we want to go beyond that point. We want to go and perhaps we can just say why. Just start with the very simple, if you liked it, why did you like it? But now, go back and explore why. What is it that made you feel that way? Or if you didn't like it, then again, the same. Explore why. What is it here that, somehow the other, that you didn't like? Why was that particular experience that way? As you may have noticed, we've switched locations here. It's entirely appropriate, perhaps, that we finish this lecture on the audience in the location in which we become an audience. We are in a theatre, and I am sitting in a theater seat. So, as we talk about how we are an audience and how we want to think, then we have come to this location. I want to propose to you that there are three questions that you might think of as you try, after you leave the performance, after you have finished the experience you have had. Then, at that point, as you go out, there are perhaps some questions that you might ask yourself that would perhaps help guide you in your thinking, help guide you to organize your thoughts. These were questions that were proposed by Johann von Goethe, the German poet, philosopher, playwright, and yes, man of the theatre, 18th century. And he, at that point, as he was formulating theatre performances and how to think about them, he came up with these three questions. One, what is the play or production trying to do? Two, how well was it done? Three, was it worth doing? These are three rather simple questions, but frequently will require complex answers. Let's take them one by one and talk about them a little bit more. What is the play or production trying to do? Different. Productions have different intents, aims, goals, purposes, and expectations of what they want the audience to think. So, don't go to every theater performance or film expecting it to be the same thing. There are many different kinds of films and theater productions. Each time you see one, you need to start with what this particular production was trying to do and how it is different or similar to others you have seen. Determine the reason for its particular existence and how well it was done. Notice that this particular question is descriptive and asks us to think about how well various theatrical elements contribute to or detract from the production. Did the acting enhance the script or detract from it? Did the acting get in the way? Was the scenery appropriate? Much of what you have learned or will learn in this course is an attempt to help you understand question number two. Finally, question number three: was it worth doing? Now we have arrived at judgment. We ask you to think about your subjective reactions and make appropriate decisions. If you have gone through the first two questions well, you can be more critical in terms of analyzing what you saw and what happened to you while you were part of it. Now, let's talk about the behavior of the audience. This has become more of a problem in modern times. Some people don't understand what it means to be a member of a group and differentiate between behaviors in different events. The behavior you have while watching a television show or in the privacy of your home should be different from the behavior you have when watching a film or attending a theater event. In your home, you may not disturb anyone else because you may be alone or with only a few other people. But when you enter a public event, your behavior should be different. This applies whether you are attending a sports event or watching a film. While I hope the excitement and enthusiasm you have in watching a sports event can also be experienced in the theater, your overall behavior will be different. You are in a different kind of group and experience. When you are at a basketball game, you are there to support the team and root for them. However, when you are in the theater, your reason for coming is different. You have come to have a different kind of experience, an aesthetic experience. To have an artistic experience, it requires using a different set of reactions than if you were at a sports event. Let's make some general statements regarding going to the theater or seeing a film. Get to your seat before the event begins and stay there until a proper break occurs. In the theater, there will be an intermission. Yes, emergencies happen, and if you have to get up and leave, it should be for a legitimate reason. Every time you get up and move, you disrupt the individuals around you - those sitting beside you, in your row, and behind you. Limit the amount of movement you do during the performance. If you need to talk, do so before the event starts. Once the event begins, focus on what's happening on the stage and avoid conversing with your friends. There is a famous story about Katharine Hepburn, the film and theater actress, who returned to the stage after a long absence. During a play, she heard people in the mezzanine continuing to talk even though the play had started. She eventually stopped the scene, looked up, and said, "When your conversation is finished, I'll continue the one here on stage." The audience applauded. Turn off your cell phone, pager, or any other device you brought with you. Show respect for what is happening on stage and for the actors and people around you. An actor friend of mine shared a story about a phone ringing during a performance. A woman in the first row answered the call and had a conversation while the scene continued. This behavior is unacceptable and disrupts the experience for everyone. We need to move away from our self-centered and rude behavior when attending public events. When you enter the theater, you are given a program. Read the program; it provides essential information about the play, the cast, and the production. It will help you undersatnd what is happening on stage. Responding to a performance is a complex and delicate process. Remember that we lose our individuality and become part of a social and artistic experience. We are there to react and participate in the creative process as audience members. Completion of the Event The completion of the theater artistic event that we have come to see. We are now partners in this process and we must remember that we must act our part, as well as the state's. The actors who are on stage, acting their part.