Let me start by telling you I’m sorry. To any actors I've cast in one of my shows, to any designer or production staff I've had the pleasure of collaborating with, to my fellow directors, and to all the other hard-working theatre artists out there: I apologize for not coming to see your work. I have tremendous respect for your creativity and for all the time and effort you put into your art, but I just can't come see it. Actually, that’s not true. I can come see it. But I won't.
Of course, it would be easy to make excuses like:
- Tickets are expensive. (Almost every theater now offers Pay What You Can performances. If yours doesn't, why not? Heck, Mixed Blood is even offering seats for FREE next season!)
- I have a beautiful 3-year-old daughter. Have you seen the cost of babysitting lately?! Plus, I'd rather sit next to my wife at the theater, as opposed to the guy who's attending a cultural event just to appease his date, or your sweet grandma who doesn't really know much about Rent or Glengarry Glen Ross, but she's sure it'll be great because you're in it! (Obviously I've failed to make the grandma = potential babysitter connection.)
- Justified. Modern Family. The Killing. The Big Bang Theory. Men of a Certain Age. (Hello, TiVo?)
Truthfully, even though I'm passionate about the craft of directing, I don't attend theatre anymore because it's almost impossible for me to have any fun and really enjoy the experience. And that's what going to see a show should be about, right?
What makes it so hard for me is that as a director and a former Managing Artistic Director, I've developed a hyper-critical perspective whenever I walk into a theater to watch a production. I'm a constant evaluator of the casting, the pacing, the faithfulness to the text, the color/cut/cleanliness of the costumes, the late seating procedures, the style and quality of the doorknobs on the set, the hum of the lighting instruments, the actor's volume and diction, etc. I spend my time examining everything.
Every.
Little.
Thing.
There is one tremendous (and self-serving) upside to this magnified perception of mine. It makes me a better director. When something works well onstage and I feel that little twinge of excitement, and even when I cringe at the things that aren’t quite performance-ready, I try to file away those nuggets for future use (or not) in my own productions. Picasso once said, "
Creativity is first of all an act of destruction." So, it’s entirely possible that one or two memorable things in a production might get filed away in my own bag of dos and don’ts, but that’s usually not enough to turn off my Hulk Smash! powers of observation.
I can't help myself. You may be giving the performance of a lifetime, and the director may have found the definitive interpretation of the script, but I probably won’t notice because I'm too busy checking out the roughness of the bark, and the color and shape of the leaves on each individual tree. Being such a process-oriented director serves me quite well in the rehearsal room, but it fails me during performance.
This does mean that I’m missing out on the chance to strengthen important relationships, network with potential future collaborators, and celebrate your successes. And it is sad that that’s the price I have to pay for this curse/affliction. But, thankfully, it hasn’t yet deterred my love of the art form and my involvement in such a creative community.
If it ever does, I’ll be sorry for the both of us.
