Stage Directions: Scary new things” is how the Actors Theatre of Louisville characterized the audience barrier for attending the company’s prestigious Humana Festival of New Plays. It’s a familiar concern, and one that prevents some theatres from producing new works at all.
But in Louisville, a change in strategy produced significant results as the company changed its focus from “product” to “process,” from “great plays” to “high-quality productions,” and from “passive feedback” to “active feedback, ” according to Director of Marketing & Communications Kory P. Kelly.
2 comments:
I was very struck by the statement, "the company changed its focus from product to process, from great plays to high-quality productions, and from passive feedback to active feedback. I think this is absolutely true because nowadays, a lot of theatre worry about the success of new plays beforehand, so they tend not to create any of them. When I read the ideas of this innovative approach of the Actors Theatre of Louisville, I could truly see how much this theatre think their audience first. The ideas of showing process, keeping the audience in mind are all for audience's true and engaged understanding of the show. I hope based on the successful story of this theatre, more theatre can produce a commercially and artistically successful show that people will be impressed and will remember the passion and enthusiasm that the theatre put into in order to create a great art.
--OPPOSING VIEW WARNING--
It's interesting to me that the new play competitions and festivals featured here all have an element of brevity - from the ten-minute play festival to the theatre that asks for only the first ten pages (because "if you've got it, it should be obvious"). It's less of an encouragement and fostering and more of an audition for the playwright's tone and style when put before an audience. Are those the merits of a playwright, being able to tell their story in ten minutes? Or is it enough (reasonable?) to expect that someone who can weave an intriguing nugget can then sufficiently stretch a story to 90 or 120 minutes? Over two acts? I take issue with these abbreviated play festivals, not because of commercial success (the descriptions of avid attendance dismiss that notion), but because it's not necessarily representative of the real situation for a play in full production at most any theatre in the country. It may play amazingly on rehearsal cubes for 10 minutes, but remember, "If I don’t like what I’m seeing now, there will be something else in 10 minutes.".
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