AUG
27

Be Unique!

By Debra Fendrich, Publisher, Pioneer Drama Service 

Educational theatre is a place where we embrace uniqueness.  It’s okay if you don’t fit in with the “popular” group, you’re still welcome in theatre because theatre allows and even encourages people to be themselves.  The eccentric, the flamboyant, the loner, the geek, the lost...  they all seem to find a place in theatre and feel part of a community that embraces and celebrates their uniqueness.

Theatre is also a place to explore emotions, to see life through the eyes of somebody different from us, to experience their pain and celebrate their accomplishments.  When we breathe life into stories of triumph and beauty as well as agony and defeat, we learn and expand our emotional horizons.  Theatre has the power to help us grow as empathetic, caring human beings, whether we are acting, directing, working backstage, or watching in the audience.

So if educational theatre is a place that celebrates being unique and being introduced to new perspectives through the stories it tells onstage, why is it that so many directors only want to do the “popular” shows?  Why is it that directors feel compelled to limit themselves to only staging characters and stories that people already have seen repeatedly?  Why is it that so many directors now define their success by how closely their production looks and sounds just like the TV or movie version of their show?

Theatre used to be a place where we took risks.  We strived to be different than other forms of entertainment — to be unique! — because we wanted to introduce audiences to new experiences and expand their perspectives.  Today, though, audiences seem to clamor for the familiar that they already know and love.  They would rather see remakes of their favorite animated movies and shows — think Shrek the Musical, Spongebob the Musical, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Frozen, Disney’s Little Mermaid — with a stage version that looks and sounds like the cartoon!  Really?  Sure, it requires a lot of time, effort, and teamwork to accomplish this, but is striving to mimic what already exists on a screen really what theatre has become?  The same is true for live-action movies and TV shows like The Addams Family, Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Back to the Future.

It makes me sad that theatre relies so heavily now on simply putting forth characters and stories that people already know.  It’s become risk-adverse, conditioning audiences to only seek out the familiar when they go to see a show.  And in that, we lose the magnificent power of theatre to open people’s minds and hearts.  But it’s not just the audiences that are missing out on the best that theatre has to offer.  It’s also the actors, the stage crew, and even the directors who lose the opportunity to create something new.  Actors don’t get the chance to bring to life a unique character with an original style and a complete backstory when all they are doing is mimicking a character they’ve watched a hundred times before.  The stage crew is deprived of the chance to express their creativity and develop their skills in designing original costumes and sets when their task is simply to make it look exactly like what already exists on the screen.  Directors, too, lose their opportunity to create their own vision for a show when the audience comes into the auditorium expecting it to look just like what they’ve already seen on the screen.

Pioneer Drama Service bucks these trends by offering a vast array of original musicals and plays.  Think of the freedom you’ll experience when your audience doesn’t come with any pre-conceived notions of what the show should look and sound like, comparing it to the half dozen other times they’ve seen the same show onstage.  (Yes, I’m thinking about Annie here.)  Think of the growth your actors will experience as they develop original characters to introduce to an open-minded audience that doesn’t know what to expect.  Think of the fun your stage crew will have designing unique costumes, sets, backdrops, and lighting to showcase their creativity.

Educational theatre is in a unique (there’s that word again!)  space in that it has a guaranteed built-in audience in the family and friends of your cast and crew.  This creates the prime opportunity for you to retrain this audience to embrace the unknown when they go to the theatre.  Once they discover how much they enjoy watching something fresh and unexpected, word-of-mouth (and social media) will spread this new, open attitude to the entire student body and community.  Imagine how good it would feel to have audiences wanting to see something original and new, not something they’ve seen before!  You can make that happen simply by committing to not feeding your audiences a steady diet of “popular” shows.

Of course, there’s a myriad of other reasons to select a show from Pioneer Drama Service.  It’s easier on your budget, it’s simple to get rights, it offers more flexibility to make changes to the script, and it’s specifically designed for success with amateur actors.  You’ll also get to experience the second-to-none customer service we provide when you choose a Pioneer show!  But before you can take advantage of all these perks, it’s up to you to make the choice when selecting your show to embrace what’s best about theatre...  be unique!