TCG National Conference 2006 - Building Future Audience

Transcripts

National Conference 2006
Friday, June 9
Transcript: Anne Bogart
“The Role of the Audience”

First of all, thank you so much for being here at 9:00 a.m. Whose idea is that? [Laughter.] Probably Ben Cameron’s, who I’m going to give grief later on.

Speaking of Ben Cameron, when I heard through somebody’s e-mail—I never talked to him, this is the world we live in—that he wanted me to talk about audiences, I trembled. Because probably all of us in here think about audiences more than anything—is that true? I mean, that relationship between the artist and audience is everything. So I have been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and taking mad notes, and there’s no way in this 37 minutes that I’m going to speak before opening it up to questions that I’m going to be able to get through my notes.

But I’m also going to slow down time, so we’re not going to rush. Which is the first job of the theatre right now, to slow down time for audiences—to change the time signature of the lives we live, that are wracked by announcements about terrorism, by very very fast Internet connections. Our time signature’s gotten so fast. So right now let’s slow down. Even though I have so many things to say!! [Laughter.] But I’ll just go as far as I can and then we’ll open it up for questions.

But actually, that’s the deal in the theatre: that time is compressed, like life is compressed. And inside of that compression you need to find space and freedom. Inside of the mad rush. And I think of the theatre like an hourglass that you turn over and the time, like life, is limited. And you don’t know what’s happening and it’s compressed and it’s fast, but the sand is very light and very beautiful. If you watch the sand come down in an hourglass it’s a beautiful thing. That’s our job, to have that much lightness and to change the time signature for audiences who come in from a time signature that’s changed a lot, even in the last five years.

To speak about audiences, I’m speaking from the middle of the process. I don’t have answers but I do have variations on the theme which I’d like to share with you. The issue of audiences, there is no certainty in it. There is plenty of paradox which I hope to get to in 37 minutes. And there is struggle and there is a worthwhile-ness in bringing up the difficulty. The difficulty with audiences is not a bad thing, it’s just a real thing, and I think first of all we can accept that the issue of audiences is complex, is full of paradox.

I think it was Jerzy Grotowski who said that a director has two ensembles, the actors and the audience, and that one learns to manage both. And it was also Jerzy Grotowski, I think, who left the theatre in about 1970 because he found the separation between audience and actor unbearable. Which is interesting, right? It is a sort of unbearable separation. I refuse to give up the theatre because I’m in love with what happens in the morning when an actor wakes up, and somewhere else an audience wakes up, and they spend the whole day leading toward meeting across the footlights. That’s an extraordinary thing and a very beautiful thing.

I want to start with a story. Is Sam Woodhouse here? Hi, Sam. It actually started with Sam Woodhouse. In 1991, he called me and said, “Do you want to do a show with San Diego Rep?” And I said, yeah, I’d love to. And I thought about it. Now, don’t take this wrong, Sam. [Laughter.] San Diego Rep is in a mall in Southern California. So one thinks, what plays do you do in a mall in Southern California? And there was a play I came up with that I really love: Clare Booth Luce’s The Women, which is a screwball comedy from the ’30s written by a very angry woman who’s very funny. It’s fabulous! So I said to Sam, “Let’s do The Women.” Fine. We decided to not cast the normal women that one would cast—you know, floozies—but that for each of the 16 women that we cast, the prerequisite was that they could play Medea. You know, even if they were playing the Second Pedicurist from the Left, that each one of them could do that. And we found 16 women who could play Medea. They were amazing. And we had these amazing clothes, and we had these amazing rehearsals.

And then, the second preview happened… [Laughter.] We all know what a second preview is. And it was a really dark moment for me, because I sat in the theatre in the beautiful Horton Plaza Mall…basement…and it didn’t work. It wasn’t working. People sat there. These incredible women were giving amazing performances. And it was beautiful, and it was passionate. And it wasn’t working. An audience learns from each other to see a play. It wasn’t working. They were not learning from each other, they were not giving permission. And it was one of those times you just want to give it up.

I did come back to San Diego a couple of days later, but that night I had to get on a red-eye to New York. I got on the plane and I was deeply depressed. It was around this time that I was in discussions with Tadashi Suzuki to start a company. And I had said to him, let’s start it in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., which is three hours north of New York. I was sitting on the plane, incredibly depressed, and I thought, okay, that’s it. Who’s my audience? What am I going to do next time I do a regional theatre production—Harvey?? [Laughter.] I mean, what do I have to do?! And I started thinking, okay, I’m going to move to Saratoga Springs, and people are going to have to make pilgrimages to see my art. [Laughter.] My audience will come!

Then this voice in my head came up that said, “Elitism!” And I got even more depressed. [Laughter.]

Anyway, the good part of this story is I came back to San Diego and it had indeed been just a second preview, that awful second preview that we all know. It was a wonderful show, had amazing audiences, it was really terrific, very enthusiastic. But I was confronted with this issue of : Who is my audience?

A number of months later was our first summer of SITI Company. We rehearsed in Japan, in the town of Togamura, which is up in the Japanese Alps, where Suzuki has an international theatre festival. I was just getting to know Mr. Suzuki, who’s a very formidable man. I barely knew him, but we were starting this theatre enterprise where we would make shows in Japan then bring them to Saratoga Springs in the summer.

We were doing Chuck Mee’s Orestes, and I was working with American actors in Togamura in a lovely rehearsal studio. We worked and worked, everything was fine and great, good meals, you know, fun. And the play was going fine. One afternoon at lunch break somebody said, “Mr. Suzuki would like to come see your run-through.” And I said “Sure, no problem, fine. We’re doing a run-through after lunch.” When I told the actors they got very nervous.

Mr. Suzuki padded in and sat very sweetly in the back of the rehearsal hall. Hardly looked up the whole time. He was looking down, because someone had translated the play for him and he was basically reading. And I stood there—because I stand during rehearsal, if I sit I lose it—I was standing there watching the run-through. And the actors were really bad. I mean, they were sweating, it was affected. I, as a director, was standing there looking at what was going on, saying, “What have I been doing for these weeks! I haven’t done anything! It’s a mess!” By the end of the rehearsal we were all completely a mess. Mr. Suzuki very sweetly thanked us, got up and left, shuffled out. No problem. And the actors were suicidal. [Laughter.]
I went for a walk in the countryside with Leon Ingulsrud, a SITI Company member who at that time was a Suzuki Company member. A huge red-headed Minnesotan who speaks fluent Japanese. Go figure. He knows Suzuki very well, he’d been translating for him for many years. I said, “Leon, what just happened? What was that about? Why was that such a horrible experience just because Mr. Suzuki came to see the rehearsal?” And Leon said, “Actors know that Suzuki will say to them in rehearsal, ‘A professional will see this in your work….’”

I thought, that’s so interesting. In other words, the actors knew that he was watching them from the point of view of a professional. I realized that as an American I was watching from the lowest common denominator of myself rather than from the highest. This comes from being an American, a populist. Will it work in Peoria, you know? Does Joe Schmo get it, do Mr. and Mrs. McGillicuddy? You watch from this place in yourself that is from a lower rather than a higher, more discriminating, more aesthetically differentiated point of view. The director is the first audience—that’s our job. We’re the first audience, and then we give it over, which as those directors in the room know, is a very painful process. What I realized is that as an American, as a democratic populist coming out of that tradition, I don’t watch from a high place in me.
And what I also realized—it comes back to the San Diego Rep experience—is that we don’t have an audience. There is not an audience for one’s work. There is not a specialized audience. We speak to every audience in a certain part of them. Do you understand the difference? In other words, there’s not a crowd of persons that is your audience. Everybody is your audience, but when you are speaking to them as an artist you are speaking to a particular part of them, and you choose that particular part. Where in their souls and what in your soul are you working from? As a director, as the first audience, from which part of my being am I watching?

I think that we as Americans tend to watch from a place that is too easy. The worse things get in terms of marketing issues, in terms of season planning, we tend to forget the really differentiated sensitive receiving able-to-be-impressed-upon parts of ourselves that create something that asks an audience to bring the best of themselves forward.
Did anyone here see Ivo van Hove’s More Stately Mansions at New York Theatre Workshop? It was an amazing show. My memory of that is that three actors came out on stage. They bowed to each other. The other two went to folding chairs on the side of the stage. And Joan Mackintosh, who was left on stage, inhaled and then began to speak very very very very very very very very fast the first eight pages of monologue in this very long play. I was sitting there and I was just jolted forward because I couldn’t follow it that fast.

And then I started to hear the seats go flip, flip, flip, flip. I would say we must have lost easily a quarter of the audience in the first 10 minutes. But for the rest of the five hours… [Laughter.] The rest of us sat there so entranced and so caught up in this amazing production with these amazing actors. What I learned from that, again, and this is the issue of being American, is that Ivo van Hove had no problem with saying right away, “If you want to stay, this is what you have to do as an audience. These are the rules, and they’re actually not easy.” And the result of those…was it really five hours? It was long. [Laughter.] It was beautiful! It was dense. The best things I’ve seen are too long and too dense and too difficult, and then I’m changed. [Laughter.] Meeting with that is extraordinary.

As a Dutchman, Ivo van Hove doesn’t have a problem saying, “You know, these are the rules and if you want to stay, stay, but you’ve got to actually participate.” As Americans we always think, let’s work into it slowly. Maybe about halfway through the audience will really see what this play is about. We don’t want to scare people off, perhaps.

Again, I start out by saying this is difficult, this is paradoxical. Because ultimately all of us want that incredible circular relationship where the audience changes breathing with the actor. That’s the ultimate thing, if the actor can actually change the audience’s breathing. Where the audience gives the actor permission. Where there is this extraordinary thing called an event, as opposed to a play, that happens. Where it lifts off.

But what I’d like to say—and this is actually the beginning of my talk. [Laughter.] What I want to say—after how difficult it is—is that one’s intentions vis-à-vis an audience cannot be disguised. That somehow you have to own them and say, what are we doing? For me the theatre is a gym for the soul. One goes to the theatre for a workout. It can be exhilarating, as a trip to the gym can be, and it can be challenging, and there are difficult spots, but that’s what I want for an audience.

It’s very difficult because there will be the flip-flip-flip of chairs. But the ownership on the other half of the audience, who say, you know, “This is the only place in my life where I’m finding intensity…” That in this culture we live in, this mediated, secondhand culture that becomes more and more that way, we crave intensity.

I don’t know if you feel this way, but I love being close to opera singers. Well, not that close. [Laughter.] I mean, opera singers are crazy. [Laughter.] But what I love about being close to an opera singer—if you ever watch an opera singer who’s doing a concert going from sitting to standing and then singing—what that person has to do to get that sound to go through that bone in his or her throat is extraordinary. And it’s heroic. And it is poetic. And it is incredibly intense. And it is incredibly beautiful. And this is the kind of thing, I think, that one can find in the theatre—the kind of intensity and the kind of beauty that becomes less and less available in our over-mediated society.

The other thing I’d like to keep in mind as we discuss is that the theatre is the only art form that is uniquely about the society we live in and the network of society. Dance doesn’t do it, visual arts doesn’t do it. It uniquely asks, can we get along? Can we get along in this room right now? The plays are about social systems, relationships. Can we get along inside of this society? Therefore it’s the job of the theatre in a sense to actually create new kinds of society on stage that might be communicable—and I mean that like a disease—“influenza,” from the word “influence”—that might influence the way one might be in society. That we show social systems that are alternative, that are more, perhaps, awake.

I learned something in the last couple of weeks. Again, my friend Leon Ingulsrud, the big tall redheaded Minnesotan who speaks Japanese. He’s a smart guy. And he made me understand that actually it’s not acting techniques that are of interest. I’ll explain what I mean. When Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre came to the United States in 1922 and 1923 and knocked over the audiences in New York and completely, essentially changed us as a theatre culture…. When those young people whose names were Harold Clurman and Bobby Lewis and Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg went to see these productions and were blown away, and then begged the Moscow Art Theatre to leave some teachers behind…. I used to think what was interesting is this new acting technique that was taken from the small part of Stanislavsky’s oeuvre, of affective memory, that became a religion in the United States. I mean, that’s a problem I won’t go into here because we’re talking about audiences. [Laughter.]

But what I do want to say is what those young people in the audiences saw was not an acting technique. They saw people behaving together as they had never seen them before. They had never seen people on stage not act, like act in a play that way, but act with one another that way. What was offered is an alternative kind of social system. The states of being of these people on the stage was different than the state of being the audience was used to. And that state of being was influenced at the time, in terms of Stanislavsky, by things like Pavlov’s discovery, Freud, certainly, around the time of the discovery of Cubism, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, etc. It was starting to formulate around how a group of people behaved on the stage. I’ve actually come in the last few weeks to think that’s why there’s such a reaction to the Viewpoints. It also puzzles me—why is that such an interesting thing? Because the way people are on stage is non-hierarchical, is a community actually creating something together on the stage, that it’s novel, in a sense, to see people function that way. And so it is a different social system. And that every time we make a play or get up on stage for an improvisation in Viewpoints, it becomes a tribe, that group of people on stage, it becomes like any other tribe in the world with its own mores, its own sense of humor, its own structures, morals, values, ethics, and it happens very quickly. But what I’m trying to say is that in terms of audiences that the notion of can we get along and how are we getting along is present in the room at every moment. Sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully.

I have outlined here on my notes, I asked myself, what are the specific challenges and obstacles of our present environment? And then I asked myself, what are the problems—as Christo would say, there’s no such thing as problems, only situations—what are the problems of audiences right now? And then I took notes on what is already moving in a promising direction. And then I have a whole series of pages on solutions—what we can do.

Okay. The challenges. This is big. I don’t know if you feel this. And I would be interested to know if you did and maybe that could be part of the conversation. In a perfect reflection of where our country is going politically, I believe that audiences in general, and I hate to say anything in general but you feel it, are becoming more and more fundamentalist. Which is a reflection of our culture. The attitude of audiences that is really scary to me is, “I bought this, this is my product, and if I don’t like it I’m leaving.” This is scary. I find in the last five years, the intolerance—and not just in my shows, you can say they just don’t like my shows, but… In theatres there’s a sense of ownership that’s becoming more and more prevalent.
I think of a conversation with Chuck Mee. He had just gone to Avignon and he said he was amazed how in Europe audiences don’t come out saying, “I liked it,” “I didn’t like it.” They’re actually treated as part of the process rather than as receiving a product. Now, I’m an American, I’m quintessentially an American, and I do feel in rehearsal I’m making a product, and that product has got to be shiny, and bold and finished. And I think we’re feeding into that notion of product as opposed to process. As opposed to, as Chuck found the European audiences in Avignon and elsewhere were doing, the audience comes in, and the artists’ attitude is, we are actually in a process and you are now a part of this process.

Another one is—and this drives me crazy, I wonder if it does you too—you go in museums and watch people take cell phone pictures of paintings. [Laughter.] What is that? [Laughter.] Think about it for just a moment.

I wonder if we shouldn’t reinvent chivalry. What I mean by that is courtesy. If you look at the ancient meanings of courtesy and the chivalric code, the notion is that you treat your enemy as a guest. You allow them to have secrets. You don’t own them. You approach them across the field. They are your guest. They’re a little bit dangerous, but they’re also friendly and they have a secret and you keep a certain distance. It’s a way we can think about art and one another on the stage and audiences. That you don’t eat them. I think that when you take a cell phone picture of a painting, you’re essentially going, “Got it, got it, got it, got it.” But the notion of approaching a painting and allowing it to have its secrets and its distance and for it to change you rather than you to own it is remarkable. And I’m trying to point with the cell phone anecdote at another of these problems that we have. And I think it’s not unconnected to the first, which is the sense of ownership.

Another problem. I ran into Peter Sellars, the director, not the actor, a number of years ago in the Washington airport. I looked over and he was at the next phone booth. We started talking and I said, “Peter, why don’t you do more theatre? You’re always doing opera and you’re such an amazing theatre person.” And he said his frustration with the theatre is we don’t share a language. That in opera and ballet and other art forms that audiences share the language of the art form. In the theatre we don’t actually share one. And I think that’s an issue. It is a problem.

A couple of months ago I saw Peter again, and I asked him again, “Why do you do opera? Because you’re so political and so engaged and so out there and most of what you do is opera.” And he said, “Because the opera audiences can change things.” That they’re the hegemony, that he wants to speak to them. I have nothing to say about that except I thought I’d throw it out there.

Another problem we have is that expectations create experience. You cast a big star in the show and it’s already a success. Because the expectations of what you’re seeing actually creates a success. That’s an issue, when you decide not to cast a star. And that’s a problem. I’m laying out the problems here. I have good things and solutions coming up.

The last thing I’ll say under the problem area was inspired by Ben Cameron. Where are you, Ben, are you here? Ben, I hope I don’t usurp—I think this anecdote you told is so deep and maybe you’ve written a treatise on it already. But Ben told this story and, I’m sorry if I’m stealing it from you, but I’m going to use it to write about. Your story becomes mine.
Ben was describing how he was in a Barnes & Noble once and he was going down the steps and he tripped over—I’m sorry Ben, is this okay?—he tripped over somebody on the stairs who was sitting on the floor with coffee, reading. And the coffee spilled, right Ben? Yeah. And I guess Ben said, I’m sorry, and Ben started thinking about how interesting it was that people read in bookstores now. And how when he was growing up, he read in libraries. And how different a bookstore is than a library. In a bookstore, you buy your coffee, you sit on the floor, you read your book. It’s a whole different social experience. And when you go to a library, as Ben remembers it, you go in, there’s someone who tells you where to sit and brings you a book and you’re supposed to be quiet. And there are rules. And Ben was thinking about how much that is like what the theatre still is. You’re given a ticket, you’re shown your seat, and afterwards you’re told what to think about it. That, in a way, our theatres haven’t kept up with the changes in the social environment.

I’ve always found—I’m actually jumping to solutions on this one—I’ve found that lobbies are important. That I’m happy to see the public theatres starting to have this really exciting lobby life, the kind of social intercourse that can happen.
Anyway, those are the problems. I think in terms of what’s already moving in a positive direction, I think number one is that since 9/11 I have noticed people crave being in rooms together. They crave being together, talking about substantive issues. I mean, look at the New York Times. How many Times talks are there? People go to the bookstores to hear… There’s something about being together and grappling together, whether it’s in the context of a play, the notion of breathing common air, being together… And there is a need, a desperate need for it. I find that positive. I also find the lack of intensity in our daily lives makes us crave intensity. Being close to an Olympic athlete, one can also feel that in the sense of being close to an Olympic, a virtuosic actor. I find that very positive.

A couple of months ago I was invited to speak at the SETC, Southeastern Theatre Conference. There were 5,000 young people who came to it. Five thousand! And that’s just the Southeast! The organizers said it’s the biggest they’ve ever had. There is such a thirst for theatre in our times.

And I think that theatre audiences are best when they’ve done theatre themselves. When they’ve done it as kids, when they’ve actually tried it. I find that really positive.

Also I think what’s really positive is this notion I started with that the theatre can change time signatures. The time signatures we live in is becoming so fast. Years ago, the director Juliette Carrillo was at the Yale Drama School. She called me in New York and she said, “I’m graduating from Yale,” and she asked if I would come up and see her thesis project. And I said sure. I got on a train and I went up and it was in the big university theatre, afternoon show. It was an adaptation of a Borges novel. It was full, there were young people in the theatre, matinee. It was really a wonderful afternoon. What was remarkable is that it took time. Not a heavy time, a light time. There was this big guy playing one of the main characters. And he would just take his time going up the stairway, crossing the balcony, nothing was rushed. And it was a beautiful story, kind of South American time. And on the train back to Manhattan I thought, how amazing that Juliette Carrillo actually avoided the biggest pitfalls that directors have these days. At that time it was, what do you do with MTV time? Do you try to go faster than MTV time? Since then it’s changed to Internet time, it’s even gone faster.

So the acceleration in our lives has led to a kind of preciousness that can exist within alternate time signatures. We can own that and offer audiences a time signature and be brave about it and not try to outdo anything but find what is unique, and certainly uniquely what is the language of the theatre, which is quite different from film and television.
The next thing in terms of what’s positive is a new scientific discovery. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. A professor in Southern California has discovered this thing called mirror neurons. They’re saying it’s the biggest discovery in science since DNA and Darwin’s origin of the species. What the scientists found is that monkeys have something called mirror neurons. I’m just barely getting to know this so please forgive my cursory knowledge, but the way it works is that when one monkey is watching another monkey do something, the muscles of the monkey who’s watching will involuntarily twist and move when the monkey who is picking something up, for example, makes that move. The same muscles will be activated in the monkey who is watching. And what they found out is that humans also have these things called mirror neurons. In fact, the development of the species is because humans have these mirror neurons and we have learned to adapt from one another.
I haven’t even begun to think about what this means for the theatre. But to be present in the theatre with clear action. What does that do? I always think, going back to the Viewpoints and how it functions in society, that an audience actually feels more open if it’s working well. That watching it you kind of feel that you’re not stopping things constantly. That as an audience you feel you can breathe better, that there’s a physical change that happens in the audience. And I won’t go further into mirror neurons. But I just would give you that as a thought, what that means in terms of the theatre.

And I really have to stop. I didn’t even get to the solutions. [Laughter.] But I will say that the difference between the theatre and film is that film is about suspense. It’s about the next moment. And the success of most films, especially blockbusters, is built on generating suspense.. The glory of the theatre is that it’s about the present moment. It is about the present moment opening up, and actually being present, and being together in rooms.

And maybe that’s where I’ll end and we’ll open up for questions and maybe some of the solutions can come out through the questions. Thank you very much. [Applause.]

Question

What are the solutions? [Laughter and applause.]

Bogart

If I had to say, the most important under this list of solutions is to learn to listen to audiences. I think of Kaufman and Hart and the era of that kind of playwriting. I always think of stories of Kaufman and Hart going out on the road, and in pre-opening New York tryouts, pacing the back and listening to the audience’s responses, and then going up into their hotel suites, thank you very much, afterwards, and rewriting the play based on the circular relationship.

I also think that it is important to allow audiences in the process, into the rehearsal room. I know that sounds radical because we think, oh, that’s a sacred place. Audiences can learn to speak the language. I have done it, thanks to a TCG/Pew Charitable Trust grant. The audiences who sat in rehearsals and sat through the process, when I talked to them afterward, actually felt more ownership. When they went to see the play, they were more like at a sporting event, where rather than say, “This person sucked,” they say, “Yeah, he’s having a down day, but he’ll be up tomorrow!” [Laughter.]

I think most of my comments in terms of solutions have to do with listening and responding to audiences. That does not mean pandering. It’s different. It’s about really listening to how it’s working, and what the circular relationship is, and how breathing is happening.

I always admire—I don’t know Dan Sullivan at all, the director, but I’ve heard that he will say to an actor—and I wish I could do this—he says, so I hear from actors, “Don’t let them laugh on this line. Wait till this line, you’ll get a bigger laugh.” I think that’s fantastic! And I don’t think we do that enough.

And I think the fourth wall is an issue, and that’s a whole other history of theatre thing. The notion of actual ly allowing the audience to feel like they’re in the room together is our number-one job. Because a lot of audiences think they’re not in the same room. So how do we actually conceive our work to include audiences as part of the process, having a creative role to play?

Certainly as artists we have to do less on stage. What I mean by that is we tend to over-describe plays. We make sets that describe everything that’s in the set as opposed to making a suggestion, an ideogram, so that you do just enough that the audience does the rest. I’m thinking of the end of Peter Brook’s Carmen, the last moment Don Jose goes to kill Carmen—it’s a beautiful moment—the knife starts to plunge, and that’s the first blackout of the evening. In other words, you don’t have to kill the person, you do just a little bit, which is a suggestion, an ideogram that allows the audience to do the rest of the work. So in the theatre, the power of the theatre as opposed to film and TV is that the audience is creative and using their imaginations. We do far too much on the stage. We put too much shit up here. We spell things out. We think they don’t get it. We need to treat them as in the chivalric code—the audiences are people who have their own secrets, they have their own danger, we respect it but we grow into it. The intimacy with respect is what we don’t have, and that’s on both sides.

Question

[beginning cut off]
…TiVo machines and iPods, and how do we confront the fact that they might start to think that an evening in the theatre is not only too expensive but too inconvenient?

Bogart

It’s a great question, and I have two parts to the answer.

We have to be cheaper. We just have to deal with money differently. Have to. [Applause.]

Secondly and very important, if we start trying to be as available as TiVo, we’re lost. What people remember is what they struggle to get to. I actually think we have to make it harder, in certain ways, and in ways that make the going to the theatre more special. What is the obstacle you’re putting there? It could be a delicious obstacle. I just think you lose if you try to out-speed the present way that people consume entertainment.

If we think of the theatre as an art form, which it is, because it is artful human beings interacting in ways that change you, then let’s make it more special. If we go to a midnight show—this show’s only happening at midnight—amazing response. I know it’s really scary to think this way, because you think, I’m going to lose half my audience. But we are, anyway. [Laughter.]

I’m so excited about Oskar Eustis’s ideas of having all theatre free for everybody. As he says, it’s really miniscule when you think how much tickets are actually paying for. It’s so small, such a small part of the overall budget. So to radically diminish ticket prices is our job. We have to. There’s no choice. I mean, I can’t go to see plays I want to see on Broadway—when I look and see History Boys is $150. And I earn a good living. Who can do that? But I would hate us to try to make ourselves too available. That’s never attractive, for anyone. [Laughter and applause.]

Question

Young audiences are to me the future audience we’re talking about building, here. You’ve said something interesting I thought you might expand on a bit. The current generation coming to the theatre, as I look at my own teenagers, is a generation that multitasks all the time. The iPod’s in one ear, the laptop is open and IMing and MySpacing and downloading iTunes at the same time and the TV’s on at the same time. These kids, that’s their life and that’s how they’re used to operating. And what you’ve said is, let’s not try to emulate that. What I do hear a lot is let’s emulate it, we have to multitask, we have to be changing things on the time on stage for them to stay interested. Maybe you could expand a little on what you said about not taking that route, taking an alternate route.

Bogart

The answer to that is as varied as the production one is doing. To start with intentions and to say, wait, wait, am I trying to outdo the multifocused environment we’re living in? We’re not. And then like a composer—this is not satisfying, I know—but like a composer you say, what time signature is this bar in, and what is this bar? And what is this measure? It’s really tricky. I want to say exactly to your question, because that’s the issue, how do we try to be absolutely true to our variegated interests about something as we’re producing it? And be interested in the people who come to it as well at the same time, to enter into their space.

I think it is our obligation to try to get inside of the way the culture is functioning right now. But then not to be a victim to it. You know, Thomas Friedman wrote that lovely book called The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Did you read that? The Lexus is the car, and the olive tree is like ancient culture. He said that cultures that get rid of the ancient culture and just do technology lose their souls . And cultures that pretend technology doesn’t exist and only deal with ancient culture become fundamentalist religions. That in a sense, the cultures that find the most success do both. They embrace technology but stay deeply rooted in culture.

For us, the culture is really ancient. It means intensifying the magnetisms of the stage, which come from ancient times. Using things like revelation of space, using those 15 great tricks to making great art—like, use any of the four elements in excess and it always works. [Laughter.] Any Pina Bausch piece, right, is one of those…. Simultaneously, using the ancient magnetic—there are seven, actually—human needs that the theatre fulfills… Things that actually, like a magnet, draw to it.
But actually staying in touch with technology. I do that practically in our company. We have very high-tech lighting and sound, but not set. So we balance it.

Thomas Friedman says, where in the world is the balance happening most between the Lexus and the olive tree? The South of France. Think about it—the TGV and and ancient culture together. We can’t give up one for the other. The thing that is unique about the theatre is its history. There are many many many ancient conventions that we can use liberally that we don’t use enough. Does that somewhat address your issue? It’s hard, it’s not easy.

Question

Since 9/11 one of the big questions is how fear manifests itself on culture. And I think audiences come [to the theatre] to affirm their particular location in the world as oppose to challenge their location. One of the questions I have for you is, how do you engage in this notion of challenging them if they come to a space to be affirmed in so many ways? Since 9/11 that’s what I’ve found in theatre, is people do want to come into a room, but they want to come into a room and know everything’s okay. How can you make them know that it’s never going to be okay? [Laughter.]

Bogart

There’s a theatre in Belgrade called Dah Teatar, some of you might know them. The artistic director’s name is actually Milosevic. Go figure. Poor woman. She gave a talk once, a couple years ago at Columbia. Remarkable. She spoke to Columbia’s theatre students and said, “Look. You guys, Americans, you’re undergoing now what we went under with Milosevic. You’re going through some bad times, you’re going through some dark times. I’m going to help you. I’m going to tell you how to deal with it.”

She said that when she formed the Dah Teatar Company the first thing they didn’t want was ever to do anything site specific and also they never wanted to do something that was political. They just wanted to do theatre. And of course right away they had to do things site-specific and political. But she said, “The one thing that functions in dark times is humor.”

She gave an example. In Belgrade, the Serbians were really sick of Milosevic. And they came out by the thousands onto the streets. It was in the middle of winter, and they started protesting against the soldiers on the streets and they wanted to take back the city. Finally it was decided that these thousands of people would go home and bring back noisemaking things. Banging. And so they did and it was miserable, cold, wet, nobody wanted to be outside. But they decided to stay outside till they would take back the city. And they banged things, and sang songs, and made inane jokes. And the soldiers who were on the streets trying to get them to go home got more and more and more confused. Until finally, long story short, they did win back the city. The soldiers knew how to deal with violence, but they didn’t know how to deal with humor. Humor is our strongest ally. I think she’s absolutely right. How we find humor in dark times is very important. The one thing we can’t afford is inaction due to despair. This is probably the most important time in a very long time that we act and speak as citizens and as artists. The only thing I can say in terms of help is to stay very close to one’s sense of humor. Or else…we DIE. [Laughter and applause.]

Contact conference@tcg.org or Jenni Werner, National Conference Director at 212-609-5900 x233.