Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "For theatergoers like Dave Henning, familiarity breeds content.
Henning, who lives in Reserve, has been to multiple performances of 'Forever Plaid' and various editions of 'Late Nite Catechism.'
'It's like watching a favorite old movie on TV,' he says. 'It's fun to see it again.'"
5 comments:
This article worries me a bit. I don't really understand the value, other than a monetary one, of producing the same show over and over and over again for the same audience in the time span of a couple of years. Instead of saying "here is the same show you liked so much last year" the theater companies should be saying "if you liked that show we did last year, this new one is right up your alley". Doing similar shows will make sure that the public finds them interesting while still broadening their theatrical experiences while at the same time stretching the company into new experiences as well. The biggest issue with producing the same show over and over is how does one encourage people to write new shows that are relevant to us? The classics are all well and good and everyone should be exposed to them, but what are the classics going to be in 400 years? the same they are now or something we have done?
I think that having the same company revive a show every few years can lead to stale designing, engineering and acting. The people who are subscribers might like the show, but would rather get exposed to new things. Also, financially, I can't see how this is a good thing. If you have such long runs of shows you've done before, wouldnt you have patrons only go once? whereas if you have shorter runs of more shows, they would probably go to all of them.
I do like the idea of showing forever plain and then its sequel later in the season. That is something i am sure doens't happen often.
The only time i really like repetition is for holiday shows. Families make it a tradition to go see a certain show each year, whether that be white christmas, a christmas carol or the nutcracker. These always draw big audiences who more or less want to see the same things each year, because its tradition and traditional. But for non-annual repetitions, I don't really see their point.
I love Forever Plaid, and i really liked what was said about these repeated shows being like movies you love and want to go see over and over again. There aren't a lot of shows like that. However, I think if you want to bring shows back like this, it can't be every few years. I think people will get sick of the shows if they are played all the time. And the people working on the shows will also get bored, because there's only so many ways you can design Forever Plaid. I mean, a designer can always find something new to throw in, but ultimately, each design will look slightly similar. I like the idea of bringing shows like Forever Plaid back, but it shouldn't be done quite so often.
I'm not a fan of seeing shows more than once. It can be interesting to see different productions of the same show if you've read the script and have ideas of your own about it. However seeing the same production a few times is just depressing. Every time you see it it gets looser. Its not like a movie where you can talk to your friends and be generally silly mid-screening.
We talked about revivals recently in Foundations class; theater companies are hurting the recession and sticking to more traditional plays in order to scrape by until their more fulfilling artistic endeavors can be financed again. While this is a little sad for us youngins wanting to Get Out There and Try New Things, a revival isn't always a bad thing. We also recently talked about Kabuki in Foundations. The canon of plays performed is incredibly small - smaller even than our list of musicals of the 20th century that seem to get put on over and over again. Audiences still go to see Kabuki because of the love of the form itself. It is the nuances and changes in production that make it worth seeing forty seven times. No one cares about the story or maintaining a close aesthetic distance. It becomes more about the production than it does about the source material. This can translate over into our culture and it's not necessarily a bad thing. People go see theater because they like theater, no matter what the play itself is.
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