Friday, August 31, 2007
Concert finishing times? Don't get me started
Telegraph: "Recently I received an irate letter from a reader complaining about a concert at the Barbican that had finished so late that he had been forced to leave well before the end of the performance in order to catch a last train to the suburbs."
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7 comments:
Money can make high-cost scenery happen. Money can make stage crew work overtime. But the directors and the playwrights might never imagine money cannot make the audience stay till the end of show while they are creating a long-time show. It is indeed annoying if we are interested in a performance, yet it lasts long time and we are unable to catch public transport for going home. The directors and the playwrights do need think of the audience while they are creating a show and try to do a good work lasting a reasonable time. Or the show needs to start earlier than usual starting time.
Well a couple of things. First, love the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! Amazing being able to walk and go see a show anywhere, anytime. Secondly though, a part of picking a good repertoire, is knowing what your audience will stay for. So if I am several hours into a concert and either get bored, or have to leave, then that reflects poorly on the production in my mind because they need to consider that while making their decisions. This is a problem that is becoming worse and worse with pop concerts. The artist feels that the people love them so much, that they could play all night and you would stay. I get a bit offended at that, its like them automatically doing an encore without much provication.
I completely agree that production needs to consider the audience more when deciding run times and showing times, etc. Part of what this industry entails is catering to an audience, actively working to capture their attention and to gain their understanding and support. Without the audience, theatre, concerts, or films couldn't accomplish anything. While you can make the argument that the artist should think of his vision before any audience, I also think that you completely lose a degree of communication in performance art if you can't please an audience. While this article may seem petty to some, it's these small grievances that can actually make a difference, and that I think might actually change the way people viewed these industries. The audience wants a little respect and understanding too for their support, I suppose.
I agree with the article, showtimes can be cryptic, and often misleading. I actually ahd a similar experience at the movies last night: we went to dinner at PF Changs before the movie, because our waiter was rediculously slow we ended up using those 20 mins to run to the theatre and catch the end of the trailers. Then the last Port Authority bus never came so we ended up waiting almost an hour for the CMU bus to come to the theater. In our case we both took advantage of the unwritten 20 minutes built into the beginning of movies, and were inconvenienced by the bus that never came.
I seem to remember talking about something sort of like this in interp. Bringing the art to those who have to work regular hours and who can't afford to take time off to go to museums. It definitely limits the demographic of who the performance/exhibit is reaching when the only way to keep attending events is if you have your own trasportation to get home. Then again, if all the concerts in the world ended at 10:30, it would make the night pretty lame.
This issue is a difficult one to argue. Though the venue has to include greatly the audience feedback they'll receive, sometimes, especially in the case of music venues, the headliner ultimately decides when they go on, for how long, and if and how many encores there are. Like Derek mentioned, if the audience gets bored then the audience either wasn't properly marketed or the venue wasn't properly planned. I've never been to a show that ended exactly on time. There's always a little bit of "moodge" but it depends on the show. Recently at a concert the headlining band went over by an hour after the audience cheered for them to come back on stage. My argument here is "it depends."
I can see both sides to this, as I know that many people rely on public transportation to get around, but at the same time, I just think you can get the full experience if you try cutting things to a smaller amount of time...for example look at the Vegas versions of broadway shows. I completely disagree with the film one because that is absolutely ridiculous that you can look up information online that is so readily available, as you can just look up how long the movie runs and add 20 minutes onto it and look what you have. But what I can understand is the idea of concerts and theatre running late on week nights as the good content should be at the end.
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