Theatre Development Fund – TDF: I have a habit of reviewing in bulk. I started out, back in the pre-digital era, as a restaurant critic. I'm happy to report that covering theatre is a lot less caloric. But I've retained a disconcerting tendency to go whole hog. Call it completism, if you will. I suffer from a certain perverse perfectionism: I just don't feel qualified to pass judgment on any particular enterprise until I've done my best to study the entire field -- even at the risk of overtaxing my appetite.
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I can't imagine seeing eight different plays a week for any reason but obsession. It takes something more than will power to maintain that level of eagerness for anything. It is a serious dedication of your time every night (and day). Also, it must be exhausting to process all the thoughts and emotions provoked in you because not all plays are happy ending musicals. I really wonder how she keeps up the enthusiasm even after seeing so many shows already. It is slightly different but when you have seen the same show for more than couple times, heard all the table work and eventually called the show for multiples times, the killing joke is no longer a joke and it all becomes a routine. You still love the show, but it does not excite you as it did when you first saw it. She may see different shows every night, but at some point, you recognize the faces and there are only a handful of strikingly unique shows to be honest. She's so lucky that her obsession aligns with her interest and also with her vocation.
I can’t tell if I’m exasperated by this woman or in awe of her. On the one hand, seeing that much theatre would be exciting- each day would be an adventure to get to the theatre somewhere in New England and experience something in a darkened theatre. And she is right: live theatre has some sort of energy that makes it seem like an event and an experience in a way that TV and movies do not have.
However, seeing that much theatre would be exhausting! She admitted that not all theatre that she sees is good. That same quality in live theatre that creates that special feeling also can make it excruciating to sit through a play that you hate. Since she is gifted tickets for being on committees and writing reviews in Time out New York, TheatreNewsOnline.com, and The Boston Globe, she is not out too much money- just time and travel expenses. I am frustrated by articles that imply that everyone should go to tons and tons of theatre because it is just not financially possible for so many of us.
During my undergrad years there was a group of students lead by a professor in the theatre department who went each year to New York City for the sole purpose of viewing productions. We saw, just as this woman often does, eight shows in a week. I was fortunate enough to attend twice, and those two weeks where a whirlwind. In my own limited experience with seeing that many shows I found that often my perception of some of the shows I viewed were affected by the shows I had seen previously. If something had really blown me away or touched me I could not help but compare the quality of each show I saw that week to the show that had impressed me the most. It would only be much later that I realized that I had over looked what the other shows had to offer. While Sandy is probably much more of a professional it seems to me that the idea is still the same. I question how she can really appreciate the merits of each production that she she’s will being so inundated by the mass quantity of material she takes in.
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