BLOG: Audience: Engaged! (or not)

Your Voluntary Cooperation is Mandatory It started innocently enough. Christopher Borrelli, an entertainment writer for the Chicago Tribune, was assigned the task of writing about the infiltration of "audience participation" into all forms of theater. The article turned into a long examination of why audience participation makes him and other audience members uncomfortable. A number of theater patrons and performers who enjoy "traditional" theater locked behind a fourth wall shared the article and commented that they, too, feel uncomfortable participating. Because this is being handled on the internet, it inevitably led to the obvious conclusion that audience participation is stupid and wrong and evil and its mom is probably a Nazi. So, now we're having conversations about whether or not audience participation in theater is "good". And, as we all know, nothing on the internet can be just a thing that exists anymore. It must be categorized as the best thing that happened since the development of sentient life, or an unspeakable affront to humanity worthy of nothing but contempt. You can blame the internet both for the fact that this is how we discuss things now and for the fact that we're curious about participatory theatre again. In a very short span of time, this piece of technology has trained our populace to expect to be able to talk back, share their opinions and otherwise stick their filthy hands all up in that piece of art and mess with it. So, immersive theatre, like Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, is being touted as the future of theater, and other producers are finding any way they can to try to make the audience sing along. Melissa Hillman at Bitter Gertrude jumped into the fray with an article that, at first glance, appears to agree with Borrelli's bold statement of apprehension. However, Hillman is actually arguing against forced participation, where the engagement is thrust upon the audience without their prior knowledge or consent. She made the quite reasonable point that audience participation is not meant to work for everyone in all circumstances. In fact, it is a merely one type of theater, not the inevitable future revolution of theater. Over at HowlRound, where revolutions happen every day, Josh Sobel argues that all theater is participatory in some way. If you've been burned by audience participation in the past, it's not because the concept is flawed. It's because the execution was sloppy. (There's also a long quote from Greg Allen of the NeoFuturists, because Greg Allen speaks in nothing but long quotes.) Rules of Engagement I think the argument over audience participation is really a by-product of the eternal quest for audience engagement, and engagement goes well beyond letting the audience pick what scene comes next. I'm still picking through the rubble of San Jose Rep's decline and fall, and I happened upon an article written by the company's founder, James Reber. His conclusion is that San Jose Rep fell victim to demographics. When the company started, it was in the middle of a predominantly white city. Today, San Jose has a dramatically different mix of ethnicities, and yet San Jose Rep kept right on with its program straight out of the white, European, English-speaking tradition. In short, they failed to change in order to stay engaged with their changing audience. The James Irvine Foundation recently released a study identifying the key characteristics of arts groups that engage new participants. (Thomas Cott has provided a helpful summary for those of you who don't want to go flipping through a long PDF). The long and short of it is that the demographics of the nation as a whole are changing and that arts organizations need to adapt to those shifts in order to keep engaging the audience. What a Time to Retire Here in Minnesota, our demographics haven't changed quite as dramatically as San Jose (the state is still 86% white), but they are changing. So, maybe we should get ahead of the curve and usher all the old white guys to the door. Except it seems they're beating us to the punch. We're already watching Joe Dowling prepare his swan song at the Guthrie, and now Bain Boehlke, who helped build up the Jungle (and in the process, the Lyn-Lake neighborhood) has also announced his 2015 retirement. (And just in time to be picked by MPR's listeners as someone to take over for old Joe.) To me, Boehlke's succession is more important and interesting than Dowling's. The Guthrie is a huge machine that will not be radically altered by anyone their board will select. The Jungle, however, is fundamentally tied to the personality of its founder and to the neighborhood it inhabits. It has enough gravity to pull the rest of the theater community in some direction, but enough nimbleness to go any number of directions with a new leader. So, let's start speculating about who's going to take over there, too. Middlemen I received an email from the Ivey awards recently, asking my theater company to submit a vote for the coveted Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Artist awards. This, of course, sent me down a spiral of shame and sadness straight into a bottle of Evan Williams bourbon, as I realized that I am now far too old to be considered a bright, young talented Emerging Artist, and far too young and unaccomplished to be considered to have Achieved anything with my Lifetime. I'm in the vast, uninteresting middle, no longer shiny and sexy and new nor august and revered. We give grants and awards to those people. The rest of us wind up drunk on a futon at midnight watching My Cat From Hell. (Or maybe that's just me) That's why I've been excited to talk about the project that Paul Herwig (you may know him from Off-Leash Area) started taking applications for a small curated festival aimed at "mid-career artists". The Right Here Showcase was officially announced last week, featuring Bart Buch (puppetry), Kym Longhi (movement theater), Gadu Fukasawa Schmitz (Butoh dance), Rosy Simas (contemporary dance), Deborah Jinza Thayer (contemporary dance), and Vanessa Voskuil (contemporary dance). I've been waiting on some media outlet around here to cover it. Alas, they have not, so I must play the part of an arts news reporter and bravely cut and paste words from the press release I received: “In our community there are a lot of opportunities for emerging talents and support for established artists, but no platform that specifically addresses artists in the middle of their careers. Yet nearly every significant artistic community I've visited or lived in has some juried festival that focuses on, or at least includes, local and regional artists on the same bill as their national and international counterparts. I believe there is a real niche and a real need for a festival like this in our community. We need look no further than right here to find artists who, but for regionalism or taste, ought to be visible on a national stage. The Right Here Showcase is an opportunity for us to make that recognition. ” – Paul Herwig Middling Men Before we go this week, and head into the giddy, glorious unjuried madness that is the Minnesota Fringe Festival, I want you to take a moment before you climb on the Fringe stage, take a deep breath, look yourself in the eyes, take a full, honest accounting of yourself and ask the important question that all actors avoid asking: "Am I a bad actor?" Of course you're not, snowflake! You're beautiful and strong and funny, and you're gonna go out there an knock 'em dead, kid! (But, seriously, maybe you should brush up on your auditioning skills.)