Putting a Face on Theatre
Theater in the Raw
In my last blog post, I suggested that what might have addressed some of the problems faced by both the initial production of Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (affectionately known as iHo) and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is a new culture of openness: inviting, allowing, and expecting audiences to engage with work before its finished and polished. Such transparency would help us learn about the plays we’re developing by watching how audiences experience them; they would also build loyalty among audience members, I believe, because we’d be involving them in our work’s evolution.
The traditional model for new play development doesn’t easily allow for that sort of engagement model. Oh, it supposedly does: that’s why we have previews, after all. In my experience, however, previews are usually only previews in name only. The tickets are a bit cheaper, and the performances may not be fully realized, and the play’s technical elements may be a bit unresolved here and there, and there may even be minor script changes… but all of that doesn’t really amount to much in practice, at least not often. The last preview performance and the first performance of a run are about as similar as they can be… for good reason: they are only, at most, a few days apart. If we want to be open, we need to push ourselves further.
How, then, can we expose audiences to what I’ll call theater in the raw? How can we share with them a story still in development, a set unfinished, costumes imperfect, and performances roughed-in? And how do we do that, furthermore, without ignoring practical realities? I would like to suggest one option: putting previews BEFORE rehearsal, rather than the other way around. Allow me to explain.
The Taffety Punk Theatre Company in DC (full disclosure – I am the company’s resident playwright) has a several year-old tradition of putting on what it calls “bootleg” productions: usually Shakespeare, but also (beginning with a play of mine last month) contemporary work. Actors show up for rehearsal at 10 am having memorized their lines on their own. They block the entire play from 10-3, taking a quick break for lunch; do a run-through from about 3-5, then get notes, all while various designers are arranging a few simple costumes and props and lights and sounds; and the production goes up at 8 pm. Actors occasionally call for lines – the stage manager stays on book – and there are one or two stumbles… but the audience knows to expect them, and nobody really cares, because the story gets told.
So… what if this was how the production process began? What if we paid actors for their time memorizing lines – that’s the first week of rehearsal – did a bootleg (or two or three), then spent two or three more weeks evolving the script and the artistic decisions that were made that first day? While we worked, the word of mouth from those who bought tickets to the bootleg shows – assuming they showed promise – would be helping to sell tickets. Heck, we might even sell tickets to some people who come to the bootleg and end up wanting to see a more realized production, too?
The difficulty, of course, would fall on playwrights and directors and actors to enter the process willing to discover things during the bootleg that might require significant course-correction during the ensuing two to three weeks. Better than having the need for such changes reveal themselves during “previews,” though, right? A mere few days before opening? With no time to make significant adjustments? Speaking as a playwright, I’d take two or three weeks over two or three days every time.Tags: Punk, Spider-Man, Taffety, bootleg, iHo
Comment
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Comment by Gwydion Suilebhan on February 10, 2011 at 6:23am -
Contract changes for actors -- and, for that matter, designers, who'll have to do their work in a very different way, too -- might be tricky, but not insurmountably so.
If an actor is typically paid for four weeks total of rehearsal and previews (your mileage may vary), those four weeks will be allocated differently: a week to get off book (working alone), half a week of bootlegs, two weeks of post-bootleg rehearsals, another half-week of traditional previews. (I may be off slightly, but that's a minor problem to be solved, no?)
The bigger hurdle, as I see it, is getting everyone to think about their jobs differently. Directing isn't about preparation in this model: it's about a living, immediate process that has to be refined quickly. Acting isn't about trying this, trying that, honing in -- it's about making an instinctive choice, then refining that choice.
The biggest benefit I can see is actually marketing... and that upside seems enormous to me. People will want to go to the bootlegs -- they will be prized for their raw energy, their derring-do. Those who've been, two weeks or so ahead of the rest of the world, will be energized word-of-mouth evangelists. If the bootlegs are as exciting as I've ALWAYS seen them be, they will sell the regular run themselves...
Just be sure to credit me when you make it happen at Woolly ;)
- Comment by Pete Miller on February 10, 2011 at 4:24am
- So what kind of contract changes are required to obligate actors to show up off book and compensate them for that time? That concern aside, this is sounding quite promising.
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Comment by Gwydion Suilebhan on February 9, 2011 at 6:37pm
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Well... the Taffety Punks have a company of actors, but not enough to tackle the annual Shakespeare bootleg. We put out a call among our peeps, and the necessary 30 or 40 folks show up. It's really not hard -- or at least it doesn't SEEM hard. We have the benefit of good will in the community, which helps... but yes, I think you're being too pessimistic. Sorry.
As for the Nightingale (instead of, one presumes, the Lark)... it's possible that such an organization might be useful. But the actors do a great deal of learning in that initial day -- learning they'd want to leverage in the following rehearsal process. Unless the actors would transfer from the Nightingale to the production, it might very well be wasted knowledge.
- Comment by Pete Miller on February 9, 2011 at 10:27am
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Very cool idea, though perhaps difficult to do unless you have a standing company of actors ready to engage in this sort of thing. I saw the T-Punk bootleg of Two Noble Kinsman, which was a delight from wall to wall. A bootleg Oedipus el Rey or Owl Moon in lieu of a first table read would certainly have more audience power. I can't weigh in on how much more or less the artists would learn from the process.
You raise another question for me, though. Is there a place in the play development ecosystem for an organization (let's call in the Nightingale) that keeps a company of actors employed specifically to do events like this, that builds a competence in doing so, and offers such flash productions as a development step for plays shortly before production?
This only comes to mind because the bootleg form seems to me hard to do as a one off by people many of whom are strangers to each other. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic.
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