Putting a Face on Theatre
The Best Seats in the House
I will never forget the best seats I ever had for any performance I've ever been to.
It was the last night of my exquisite honeymoon. My wife and I had tickets to a ballet at the Opera Garnier in Paris. We sat in a box one off from the center in what is assuredly the most dazzling performance space I've ever been in.
Here's the thing, though: I'm not quite sure the performance was as good as it seemed. Even if I discount the fact that we were totally full of newly-wedded bliss -- and thus might have enjoyed watching a cow chewing its cud on stage for an hour -- what I find myself wondering, in hindsight, is whether the luxury of our private box contributed misleadingly to our pleasure.
Can a seat have a positive effect on one's experience of a performance? I know for sure that a bad seat can make a performance intolerable. I have particularly long legs -- standing, I'm at least seven inches taller than my wife, but sitting down, we're eye-to-eye -- and seats with no leg room will make me vow never to return to a theater again, in addition to disrupting my enjoyment of whatever I'm seeing. But I'm not talking about obstructed view seats or seats not designed for human comfort: I'm simply talking about the difference between seats slightly better than one another.
I would very much like to see a careful study done of this question -- one that matches the seat in a given house (irrespective of who's sitting in it) with a simple 1-to-1o rating of a patron's enjoyment of the show. The study would have to span several shows, of course -- or, better yet, several seasons -- to be statistically significant, but it shouldn't be that hard to do: just get patrons to write a number on their ticket stubs and drop them into a box as they leave. Each seat would be given an average score over time, and scores would be compared against one another.
Would we see general trends? Would the patrons in seats three rows back, dead center, rate a show more highly than patrons in seats four rows back, just off to the left? Would box seats be more or less generous in their reviews than orchestra seats? What patterns would emerge? Would they hold true across theaters? In other words, would a fifth-row seat always rate a show more highly than a sixteenth-row seat? If not, would the differences speak more to the architecture of the houses at the respective theaters or to the demographics of the theaters' patrons? So many questions, I'm sure you'll agree.
I think we need to bring more science to bear on our profession. Don't you? Why cast about in the dark if we can be more effective?
Comment
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Comment by Gwydion Suilebhan on January 26, 2011 at 6:08pm - I've begun to believe that the only real way to crack this nut would be to use test audiences to which you gave away tickets. But I agree that the variables you've listed are at least part of what would make this a very challenging experiment, to say the least...
- Comment by L Jean Burch on January 26, 2011 at 9:53am
- You would need more information than just the seat - I'm sure that variables involving the patrons would have an effect - are they season subscribers, have theyheld the seats for years, do they know their "neighbors"? do they frequently buy tickets - what are their normal ticket choices? Much of this information could be gained by going through a box office computer depending on how box office records are kept, without bothering the patrons, but it couldn't be generalized to other theatres. However, some theatres don't get information from single ticket buyers - just season ticket holders, so again it would depend on what the box office policy was.
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Comment by Gwydion Suilebhan on January 13, 2011 at 6:32am
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Charlene, the more I think about it, the more I find the idea falling apart in my head. (Sigh.) I agree that there are probably too many factors -- and that type of production is a critical one.
I generally prefer leg room, wherever I can get it, so that I can focus on the show, not on my own comfort. Assuming there's leg room everywhere... I'd probably choose different seats for every kind of production. Shakespeare, I want to sit back for: to see the world at a distance (the way, I would argue, he saw it). For a big musical, in the middle of the action, to "feel" the others in the house reacting to the performance. For a small, intimate play, the front row -- like you, to see facial expressions, and to feel part of the story.
Still... I've read enough science to know that the conclusions it reaches are often surprising and counter-intuitive: so I hold onto a thread of possibility that the study I've proposed, if it could overcome the factors that would challenge it, might uncover something useful.
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Comment by Charlene V. Smith on January 13, 2011 at 5:49am -
Interesting thoughts -- there may be some results you could get out of it, but I think the information might end up being quite varied. The seat is not the only factor:
Type of production: big shows, dance pieces, things like that I love sitting in the front row of the balcony. That's where I was for CANDIDE at the Shakespeare Theatre, and I didn't feel like the orchestra was weak the way other people have noted.
Personal preference: I'm an actor so for the most part, I love the very front row. I want to see every facial expression. I love to watch the actors sweat. Other people can't stand the front row. I had a friend who was a director who preferred sitting back a few rows so that she could see the entire stage picture.
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Comment by Gwydion Suilebhan on January 12, 2011 at 11:47am
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Opening cans of worms is my best thing. :)
All we need is a good behavioral economist. I think Dan Ariely would do a fantastic job, but I assume he's too busy being famous.
The biggest obstacle I see is price: it's a very big variable to control for. Nonetheless, I remain supremely curious...
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Comment by Jacob Coakley on January 12, 2011 at 11:43am - Oh, that's a can of worms, Gwydion. People HATE the idea of "forms" or "questionnaires" in theatre. Some people are doing work asking audiences questions, but as they're mainly marketers that only adds fuel to the fire...
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