Have some respect, please

This is simple but in two parts. Bear with me and forgive me its contradictions.

First, to artists: Could you please respect your audience a little more? They don’t have to come to your show, and it's not because they are uncultured philistines. How were they supposed to hear about it, get a babysitter, conquer the snowstorm, corral the husband, whatever. Life is a complicated proposition and your audience’s inability to be your audience is more a result of that than it is of their stubborn refusal to see your genius.

Your tickets aren’t too expensive. Your show isn’t too esoteric. You don’t have to change your conception of the theatrical arts. You simply have to understand that even good people with good intentions can’t or won’t conform to your view of the world. It doesn’t matter how great the show—what a shame. It doesn’t matter how original the conception—I want to see it, I do. It doesn’t matter how much they’re missing. Live theater is harder to do, for you and for them, than bad sitcoms, Netflix, and the latest easy-to-read magazine that just arrived in the mail.

Give ’em a break. Cut ’em some slack. Respect that their lives are complicated, messy, and constantly urgent in a way that makes fitting your show in to it more difficult and less essential than you think it should be.

Now, that being said, to audiences: Could you have a little self-respect? Could you make an effort? Could you meet us even a quarter of the way down the road to wherever it is we’re all trying to go toward understanding and enjoying this one incredible life of ours?

Don’t tell me that all you want to see is something light. Sure, you’re entitled. You’re entitled to do whatever you want. I concede that point, but, really, Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding? That’s it? That’s all you’re interested in? You don’t have enough obnoxious relatives of your own, so you need to spend some time with actors pretending to be obnoxious while you eat cardboard spaghetti dinners off stiff paper plates? Really?

A little self-respect is in order. Don’t come up to me after my show and tell me that you enjoyed it all the way through and laughed and it was good but you, maybe, just didn’t get it, as you then proceed to tell me what you got. You did get it. Trust me. I wrote it. I know what it is. You got it. Maybe you had to think it through, but you got it—or you got something at least, and that’s good, too.

Take responsibility for your own thoughts. Yes, it seemed a bit more complicated than, I don’t know, something else, but that's something worth doing in this life before you die. I’ve been a teacher in addition to a playwright for 18 years now, and I’ve never seen a person have a real thought and not enjoy it. A thought. A thought. It’s not as shiny as a beer can or as bikini-clad tits in a magazine but it really does have some horsepower to it.

But the thing with a thought is that you have to have it. I can’t have it for you. I can write a play that you don’t really have to think all that much about, or I can write a play that you’ll enjoy thinking about – but in order to get to the pleasures of the second one, you have to be willing and eager to do some of that thinking. So make some time in your life for it. Hate the play, if you want. Go to the bar after the play and complain about what a pretentious ass the playwright was or how much you hate that it seems like theater people are trying to make you feel stupid -- We’re not but you’re entitled to your opinion. – Respect your own opinions and shout them from the rooftops, whatever they may be. That’s part of it. What happened to you that you think that any theater besides musicals maybe “just isn’t for you”? You like television, don’t you? Where do you think television writers come from? It’s nice of you to be so passive-aggressive, but we’d rather you had an opinion, a thought, a reaction – and I’m pretty positive you do, you just haven’t said it for so long that you can’t remember how to.

Seek out experiences that provoke you, ask you to have thoughts, get the blood moving in your veins and your brain. I’m not saying find bad theater, or purposefully offensive plays, but I’m asking you not to be afraid of them. I’m asking you to respect that brain and those emotions you were given, enough to want to exercise them on a regular basis and be willing to take a chance on the type of work that tries to do that with you. Whether it turns out to be good or bad, your brain cells will thank you in the end. And, if its bad, if you don’t enjoy it, please, do, proclaim that with confidence. (It’s actually kind of fun sometimes.)

We make theater because we believe in you, the audience; we believe in your responses and reactions and lives. We shouldn’t expect you to come and love us just because. We should respect the business and peculiarity of your life, but please, I have to say, you’ve got to respect yourself enough to want to push yourself out in to the world a little more. Tony n' Tina’s Wedding is fine—I saw it once, and it was fine. But there’s more to your life, our lives, than that. Come down that road a little ways with us. Take a few steps in to the unknown. It’s unknown to all of us. See what’s in there. You’re entitled, you’ll even enjoy it, and you don’t need to watch every banal reality show they put on television. They’re all the same and mostly lame. Have a little more respect for yourself.

Please. ❦