OCT
24

Surviving the Less Than Stellar Performance

Part One 

By Flip Kobler 

Flip Kobler began his performing career as an actor before morphing into a writer.  Flip and his wife, Cindy Marcus, run Showdown Stage Company and Showdown Theater Academy in Valencia, California.  Pioneer Drama Service is pleased to offer several plays and musicals by this dynamic duo, including Best of Both Worlds, the one-act version of the popular Mirror Image. 

So you’ve been rehearsing for hours, days, weeks, months.  You’ve poured sweat, tears, even a little blood into getting the show up and when the curtain finally rises — Ta-Da!  — the reaction isn’t what you hoped for.  No laughs, polite applause, awkward coughs.

Suddenly you’ve got that mule kick in the guts feeling of disappointment, confusion, a little anger as garnish.  Your cast is feeling disheartened and are so blue they want to start singing Tom Waits songs.  And the question keeps coming up, “What went wrong?”

Odds are, nothing.  This is just the glory of live theater.  It’s not always going to go perfectly.  But we want to keep morale high and the good mojo flowin’.

So after every show (usually the following day before the next performance), we gather our cast to talk about the last performance.  At first we focus on just the good stuff, asking them to share all the good comments and positive feedback and compliments they got.  That usually gives their spirits a much-needed helium infusion.  Then we start to talk about some of the possible reasons for that “let-down-iness.”

There are two main reasons a performance doesn’t go as well as hoped.  Either the audience didn’t react as we expected they would or there were mistakes, onstage or behind the scenes, that impacted the performance.

Sometimes these two things are related, but often they’re not.  So we’ll tackle them separately and deal with unresponsive audiences here and mistakes in the next newsletter.

Audiences

Audiences vary.  We’ve all seen it, Friday night’s crowd laughed at every joke, they whooped and hooted after every song, they brought the rafters down with applause at curtain call.  And Saturday’s audience ...  well, they sat on their hands and the only sound was crickets.  We all know that no two audiences are alike.  Weeknights are harder on parents and friends who’ve already put in a long work day.  If it’s raining, or parking was a hassle, or the AC isn’t working, or blah, blah, blah...

Some audiences are smilers, not laughers.  That doesn’t mean they’re not totally diggin’ the play.  They’re just quiet.  Usually you get one good laugher in the mob and BAM! — that seems to give the rest of the audience permission to laugh.  Consider a plant in the crowd, a mom or dad with a contagious laugh.

Sometimes the audience wasn’t prepped for that kind of performance.  A high-octane comedy can get off to a shaky start if the director’s curtain speech is serious and somber.  They’re now ready for a subdued drama when suddenly jokes are flying and the audience doesn’t know how to react.

Or they may simply be following the story.  Unless you’re doing Wizard of Oz, or Grease, or Annie, the audience may not know the tale and are laser focused on the plot.  They don’t laugh or clap for fear of missing a clue to a who-dun-it or or to why Robin and her merry men are crashing Prince John’s party.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter.  Here’s what we tell our casts:  “It’s never the audience’s fault.  Ever.”

We can’t control an audience.  What we can control is ourselves.  So let’s make sure our diction and projection are better than ever so the spectators can understand every syllable.  If the crowd is yawning, then we need to give even more energy and pick up our cues.  If the audience isn’t having fun, then we have a full-throttle blast.  Because fun is infectious.

This is great stuff because it gives the power back to your cast.  These are things they can change and control.  They’ve worked hard to get to this point.  Now isn’t the time to let the audience control us.  We need to stay in control and put forth our best effort ever.  And when we do that, we are successful, no matter what.

Read more in part two of this article.