Everyone and no one

I directed a show a few years ago that still sticks out to me very vividly, not because the show was particularly memorable, but because of the reactions it got and my own reaction to it.

It was a Christmas show (200… 4? Yeah, it had to have been 2004), which we’d ended up starting from scratch at the end of October. As in, we had no script or anything. We’d started rehearsing a different script (which I’d still like to do one of these years) in August/September, but for various reasons, it just wasn’t the right show with the right people, so we scrapped it and wrote something entirely new, six weeks before it went up. Well, I didn’t write the new script, but a new script was written, and I pulled together a completely different cast and started directing it with less than six weeks to go. (Keep in mind, this is a volunteer cast, so six weeks of rehearsal when you’re only rehearsing once or twice a week for 2-3 hours at a time means something very different than it does in a professional setting where you can put in 30-40 hours of rehearsal a week and 4-6 weeks is a normal rehearsal period.)

To be honest, it wasn’t any of our greatest work — actors, writers, me. Artistically, it didn’t push any boundaries, and the concept was okay, but not great. The staging wasn’t what we wanted it to be (some of our decisions were overridden by people higher up the food chain than us), and the laughs, while genuine, were sometimes a bit cheap. It served its purpose as the church’s Christmas production that year, and it had a good turnout, as always, but there was something about it that left a stale taste in my mouth.

I found that there were three distinct reactions to the show. First, there were friends that I’d invited who just loved it. They laughed, the whole family had a good time, and they had a nice evening out that didn’t ask much of them. Second, I had colleagues who came who gave me those very reserved congratulations. You know; the kind that are masking their real opinion while trying to find something nice to say. It wasn’t that they thought it was an awful show, but they knew that I had the talent and skill to do something better. Third, there was my team’s reaction. The core team had pulled through a lot to get the show up, and we were proud of the fact that the show came together, despite everything. We knew it wasn’t the best work any of us had done, but we also knew what it took to make, and because of that, the experience glowed a little more than it would have otherwise.

So whose opinion counts?

To an extent, of course, all of them do, and the answer is found in the balance between the three.

(And let me put it out there right now that I’m not talking, in this particular entry, about the Audience of One. I create art as an act of worship, first and foremost, and my ultimate goal is to glorify God with these gifts. However, I don’t work in a vacuum, and there are people in the equation. Their opinions and interactions are the ones I’m talking about right now, and the rest is for another entry, another day.)

There’s something to be said for doing a show that an audience enjoys. Mass appeal, while it may not be sexy, has its place and is important. The audience doesn’t know — and most don’t care — what goes on behind the scenes, and many people just want to be entertained. (My best friend’s husband claims that movies are for entertainment only, and if he’s not entertained, he doesn’t want to watch, although I’m sure that part of why he says it is just to make me mad and start a debate. Colin and I claim that movies are worth watching for a wide variety of reasons, entertainment being only one of them. Guess that’s why we’re in the industry and he isn’t!) If they get something deeper out of it, great, but if it’s not entertaining, you lose them pretty quickly.

I constantly struggle with how to treat those audiences. I don’t want to cater to them, but at the same time, I don’t want to alienate them. Still, who are the people I do this work for? My artists? Myself? The thinking audience? The educated audience? The uninformed audience? The people who pay the bills? There are a thousand people to have in mind when making art, but they can’t all be at the top of the list, and when entertainment without artistic integrity tops the list, something’s wrong (in my own personal hierarchy of importance).

It was nice to hear that my friends enjoyed the show, but it was hollow praise, in some ways. The opinions of my colleagues, who could offer specific critiques and who know my other work, was taken more to heart — and unfortunately, they were the ones who weren’t thrilled with the show. I didn’t invite many theatre people to that show, to be honest.

But, like I said, we overcame a lot to put the show on, and the people who were in the trenches with me were the ones who understood. Our friendships and working relationships were strengthened, and we proved something about ourselves as artists — even if we didn’t prove it to the world at large (or at least, not that they knew). There were about four of us who persevered through it and were at the center of making the decisions and the change, and at the end of the show, we could look back on it with pride, because we made it happen. That colored our opinions, and most of our conversations about it went something like, “Well, given the circumstances, we did a pretty good job.”

Still, that show isn’t on my resume, and (when I finish finding and adding all the content from past years), it likely won’t be in my portfolio. I’m not ashamed of the work I did to make it happen, but it’s not the kind of show that I want to define me to someone who’s looking through my work without context. It’s the kind of show that comes up in conversations and interviews — the kind that answers those job interview questions where you’re supposed to provide an example of how you displayed such-and-such a job attribute. It’s the kind of show where the process, not the product, exemplified my values as an artist.

So whose opinion matters? Everyone’s. No one’s. It’s a complicated mix of opinions, and even 4 1/2 years later, it’s impossible to parse out where the value of one set of opinions stops and the next one begins.