Category Archives: Audience

On the road again

April 10, 2011Audience, Playwright, playwritingan artist's life, art, college, FPI, Kitty Felde, play selection, studentsKitty Felde

I’m looking forward to Tuesday. That’s when I’m stepping on a plane to Rhode Island where yet another college is producing my war crimes play “A Patch of Earth.” I’m looking forward to the talkback session with the students. They always ask the hard questions.

I’ve been very fortunate with this particular play to find exactly the right audience. It premiered at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, where it won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition. But it’s not exactly the most commercial thing I’ve ever written. As my pal who runs MetroStage in Alexandria puts it, “it’s hard to sell tickets to a show about slaughtering Bosnians at Srebrenica.”

But it’s exactly the right play for colleges, a place where young people spend hours debating moral questions. The play is the true story of Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat who ended up fighting for all three sides during the Yugoslav war. He says he never killed anybody until his unit was sent to a farm outside of Srebrenica where they were instructed to kill busloads of men. He said he didn’t want to shoot, but was told if he felt so sorry for the victims he could stand up there with them and be shot himself. And then his compadres would go back to his village and shoot his wife and child.

It’s a story with characters around the age of college students, a story that happened in most of these students’ lifetime. The play has a big cast (at least 9, as many as 30) with lots of good female roles. Perfect for college productions.

And it’s had those college productions in Detroit, Pretoria, Costa Mesa, New Jersey, and now Rhode Island. (It even had one high school production last year in England!) “A Patch of Earth” was even published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

I don’t write all this to brag on myself, but to remind myself that not everything I write is destined for the Taper. Or the Geffen. Or the Pasadena Playhouse. That doesn’t mean the script doesn’t have value. In fact, it might affect more lives by being the perfect script for colleges. Or for community theatres. Or for young audiences.

Write the play that’s calling you to be written today. Worry about the audience it’s written for after you’re done. Because plays that need to be written seem to find their own audiences.

Playing with Time

March 23, 2011Audience, playwritingtimeJen Huszcza

As playwrights, we (I’m assuming a collective we because playwrights are probably the only readers of a blog about women’s playwriting) are shapers of time.

By time, I’m not talking about THE TIMES. Instead, I’m talking about the time that an audience is sitting on their backsides and watching a play. It’s the magic hour between dinner and late night cocktails or perhaps between cocktails and late night dinner.

Like sculptors, we have different knives to cut through time. We could show some nifty characters, maybe put them in conflict with each other. We could show flash and sparkle. Or we could show nothing at all but turn it into something magical. We could have dancing and singing. We could have kissing—people seem to like the kissing parts.

Whatever we decide to do, the audience is sitting there. Sometimes they’re eating snacks. Sometimes they’re drinking water out of plastic bottles. Sometimes they’re sleeping. Maybe they had some wine in the lobby before a performance.

Maybe some are secretly texting their lovers. Maybe some are getting live updates of a championship game they are missing in order to see the play they were dragged to. Maybe some are making a mental to-do list for the next day.

Maybe, just maybe, some get sucked into the play in spite of their best intentions to remain aloof and cynical about the proceedings. After all, it’s just actors pretending on a stage. Or is it?

What is the play’s relationship to the audience? How can the playwright slow down time? Speed up time?

Why do people spend their time watching plays? It’s something to do, I suppose.

Entry Level

January 26, 2011Audience, NewsArena Stage, Atwater Theatre, Circle X2amtheatre, creativity, Dennis Baker, EST-LA, Los Angeles, playwriting, production challenges, writingCindy Marie Jenkins

Yesterday I published an article for Bitter Lemons on the amazing way that Arena Stage, 2amtheatre and LA Stage Alliance* are working together to widen the dialogue on new plays.

That’s fascinating in and of itself – not my article, but all the detail and coverage that Arena Stage created and is creating, so that artists know what people are talking about and can contribute in a meaningful way.

Remember that.

Cut to later that day, and Dennis Baker announces that the LA satellite convening was relocated because of high attendance. It happened to be relocated to four blocks from my house, the site of the new Atwater Village Theatres, home to EST-LA and Circle X.

Not just convenient for me, but I amended the original article and then could post it on Atwater Village Now, gaining more exposure for both the event and the neighborhood. While writing it, though, I thought of my audience for Atwater Village Now and decided they might have no idea why a convening on new plays is important. If my goal was to interest those outside of theatre practitioners to find interest in the art and the craft, then I needed to write an entryway into the article. The Editor suggested I give some history, a small idea of how important this dialogue is for the national community, the theatrical community, and in some way give a larger importance to our community.

This was my introduction. I welcome feedback and suggestions in the comments:

With Broadway focused on revivals and musicals based on movies and star vehicles, new plays often go by the wayside. If you are an unknown playwright, it’s nearly impossible to be produced.

Not so at The Arena Stage, however, and they’ve been working intensely for a national dialogue that includes all voices – new playwrights, established playwrights, and the people who decide which plays are produced. Arena Stagey began a New Plays Convening yesterday in DC, and Los Angeles participates on Saturday, in our brand new Atwater Village Theatre!

*Full Disclosure: I also write for the LA Stage Times.