The Audience You Deserve

BY Kerry Reid

It took me a while to figure out what to write about for this annual hootenanny that Carrie Kaufman is kind enough to throw for all of us. I knew I didn’t want to do a Top 10, because I already did a Top Five for the Tribune’s “On the Fringe” column (the weekly real estate that I share with my colleague, Nina Metz).

Not that I couldn’t find 10 shows that I loved this year—from the spine-tingling “Oh my god, I got to see this opening night!” sensation of August: Osage County (perhaps you’ve heard of that one) to the sheer smart joy of Silk Road Theatre Project’s production of Shishir Kurup’s Merchant on Venice to the bone-crushing post-9/11 giddy thrills of Qui Nguyen’s Men of Steel, produced by Theatre Wit. And this was the year that Marisa Wegryzn got on my radar with her lovely play-in-monologues, Diversey Harbor, produced by Theatre Seven, and that Emily Schwartz stayed on the radar with her macabre little musical Mr. Spacky…The Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves. Steep Theatre covered themselves in glory with their revival of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, and Lifeline Theatre delivered a lovely and absorbing adaptation of Daniel Mason’s gorgeous novel The Piano Tuner, adapted by James E. Grote. Sean Graney and the Hypocrites made me appreciate—nay, LOVE—Ionesco again (something I thought might be impossible) with the their production of The Bald Soprano. In the Continuum at the Goodman, about two different black women struggling with HIV—one in South Central Los Angeles, the other in Zimbabwe—was heartfelt and blistering in equal measure, and a fine reminder that just because white people of means are living longer with the virus, that doesn’t mean the epidemic is over. And people who think “political theatre” is a recipe for stupor need to check out Mickle Maher’s brilliant The Strangerer when Theatre Oobleck remounts it in 2008.

Yeah, I know—I just gave you a Top 10, after all.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to talk about the people who are most responsible for making theatre possible. No, not playwrights, though I hold all of you in high regard. Sit down, directors. You all get to talk enough during the year. Actors—I love you all (except when I don’t). But this follow spot isn’t on you. Stage managers, designers, composers, running crews, front-of-house, administrators—I’m afraid I’m going to be ignoring you once again. By this time, I’m sure you’re used to it.

No, I’d like to give a little shout-out to “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” as Norma Desmond would say. The audience.

You remember them? They show up, give you money, sit there politely (most of the time) and are kinda the raison d’etre for your work?

But there were some troubling signs this year—or at least, I noticed it more this year—that certain audience members just aren’t desirable. Indeed, to read some theatre pundits, one might think that they are the Enemies of True Art and must be vanquished. Or at least derided at every available opportunity. Or given some form of re-education to make them understand the brilliant groundbreaking work they are about to see.

Sometimes they’re called “bluehairs.” A few commentators are kind enough to spell it out for us in greater detail. On his blog, playwright Jeffrey M. Jones reprinted a piece that originally ran in American Theatre on what he perceives as the need to find ways to help audiences accept new plays (in short: more essays to read). To judge by the number of times Jones used some variant of “gray-haired little old ladies” (six, not including the phrases “fashionable middle-aged ladies” and “matinee ladies”), it’s obvious that he finds “old” and “female” to be perfectly acceptable shorthand for “ignorant” and “afraid of change.” (Don’t believe me? Read the entry for Oct. 22 at http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com/.)

Let’s call this attitude what it is, shall we? And that would be “bullshit.” No one would give Jones a pass (much less go into raptures at his suggestions, as so many did) if he described minority audiences in such condescending terms. Yet this barely-disguised venom toward old people—most often old women—popped up so much in various theatre blogs and their comments this year that I started wondering just why the older females who actually, you know, GO TO PLAYS are the problem, instead of the young people who don’t go to theatre at all.

I taught a class on Reviewing the Arts at Columbia College Chicago this past fall, and was reminded all over again that, even for creative and open-minded younger people such as my students, going to theatre isn’t something that they do. Why not? Well, the reasons they gave included many usual suspects: lack of money, lack of time, fear of being bored or hectored, lack of familiarity with “what’s good” out there. But not one of them gave “I don’t want to have to sit next to some gray-haired old broad” as a reason for their theatre avoidance.

I understand the need to build theatre audiences when they’re young. I applaud all that the House has done to make going to new plays an anticipated event for their audiences, though I must note that companies like the Annoyance, the Neo-Futurists, Curious Theatre Branch, and yes, Theatre Oobleck started getting the “I don’t usually go to theatre, but this is different” crowd in the seats 20 years ago. (See, since I’m a middle-aged lady, though hardly a fashionable one, I remember.) But what’s the point of building audiences today if you’re only going to turn on them in the future and say, “Well, now you’re old and yesterday’s news, and I don’t think you’ll get what I’m doing with my Brilliant New Form of Theatre, Grandma Moses!”

Not to sound like the stereotypical jaded critic, but as someone who sees between 150-200 plays a year, I can tell you that a lot of what is described as “exciting and new” is kinda old hat. Noah Haidle has been my particular whipping boy on this point ever since he issued this edict (again in American Theatre): “I don’t want to see any representation or mimesis of reality on stage. That’s just outdated and can be done so much better in film and TV.” I’ve seen two of Haidle’s plays now, and especially after experiencing his highly smug and irritating Mr. Marmalade, I felt like telling him, “Kid, know what else can be done better on film and TV than on stage? Potty-mouthed cartoon children!” Seriously. One of the side effects of teaching my class is that I started watching “Family Guy” and “The Boondocks” to keep up with what “the kids” like. That shit is funnier and more insightful than a lot of what I’ve seen on stage from freshly-minted MFA tyros.

But the best counter-argument for Haidle’s stance is Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County. What I think I may love best about Letts’ piece is that he created so many incredible roles for women “of a certain age.” These were tough, emotionally fraught, funny, whip-smart women who still felt completely real to me, not some tired and enraging stereotype of old and middle-aged women who are too ill-educated and/or timid to engage fully with life or art.

Now, I’ll admit that there are occasionally older women in audiences who drive me nuts (like the one who sat behind me at an orchestral performance last weekend who apparently thought the perfect accompaniment to Bach is the percussive effect of a plastic shopping bag being twisted and folded). But rude behavior is hardly the sole province of old women—they’re not usually the ones texting the night away. (Letts laid out the scourge of problem audiences with hilarious precision in a Steppenwolf blog entry called “1% of You” earlier this year.) But to pretend that theatre would enter a new Golden Age if we could get rid of those meddlesome old women is naive at best, and hateful at worst. Old women aren’t the ones doing the programming at most theatres. They sure as hell aren’t the ones whose work is getting produced. And frankly, anyone who chooses to spend a portion of their waning years at the theatre when they could be doing a million other things deserves our thanks and praise, not our disdain.

Think theatre is in trouble because of “the little gray-haired old ladies?” See what happens if they all decide to stay home. So show some respect, already. Anyone who has made it through several decades as a woman in what is still a pretty male-centric (and youth-fetishizing) society has earned it. They don’t need your lip. And if you shut up from expounding on your Grand New Theories of What Makes Theatre Work long enough to give them a listen, you may be surprised at the things you can learn from them.

This is, of course, directed at 1% of you. The rest, I’m sure, would never be so crass and clueless.

Happy New Year, and thanks for the comps, and the memories.

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