ETC Article: February

The Other Side
I am back home, in Queens.  I still have a spot of crocodile-green (actually “chalkboard spray paint”) on my right forearm, and a warm glow in my heart from the way things came together opening week.  The director’s process, you see, is done.  I have given the show over to two very influential creative types now: the actors, and you - the audience.  Most of the time shows are merely handed over to the actors after the director has left, but in the case of a show that has no script and is as dependent on audience interaction as ours is, it’s as much (if not more) the audience’s as it is the actors’.
    So what is of the utmost import now, is that we have an audience.  I have some hopes for this, even going into what is routinely the toughest sell - the second week.  The second week is the awkward middle child of the run.  It gets none of the torrential press of opening (see the ‘blog for coverage from no less than six sources) and none of the last-minute dash of closing.  The second week is the one during which people literally forget that there are performances.  Yet, as I say, I have some hopes.  We’ve worked hard to promote the show from even before the articles, even before the rehearsals began.  If you are reading this in the newsletter, you probably received one of our unique holiday postcards, and if you’ve been by the theatre you may have lost in a coat pocket somewhere a fabricated stick puppet, or even a bag puppet you made yourself.
    At the end of my time in Scranton, I got to be an audience member a few times.  Preview performances don’t count (I could still [and did, very much so] take notes then) and opening is far too high-pressure for any sensible appreciation of a show.  That left two performances before I had to cross back over the Delaware Water Gap and of those one had a highly responsive audience, and the other less so.  This is extremely important, and I and the rest of the troupe were lucky to have this contrast.  It meant we were tested against both high-energy audiences - a boon for comedies such as this - and lower-energy ones, which can show some unfortunate failings in a given show.
    I’m very pleased to report that our show succeeds both as an interactive, zany comedy, and as a tender and intelligent little story about bravery and friendship.
    I am, of course, a little biased.  At least I’m basing my evaluation in part on audience reaction.  Even the quieter audience was all smiles, and leaned forward in their seats.  At its heart, our play is a story about how confronting personal challenges can bring people together, and I think that’s the kind of story a broad range of people can appreciate.  Especially when it’s funny to boot.
    And it is funny.  I’ve heard directors say, and occasionally as an actor believed, that a comedy lives only once it’s left the director’s hands.  I can now claim that theory to be definitive.  All our little experiments for audience participation have had their tweaks now, and they work beautifully.  Even the big gamble: text messages from the audience to the players!  At the eleventh hour, literally when I was feeling past all hope, we acquired a new performer in the form of a Mr. Cory Brim.  Cory took up all the offstage duties of ancillary puppeteering, and he is like the epoxy of our strange little world.  Most of all, however, the actors have found their show.  They know how to play it, and when to let it play them, and there’s a sense of satisfaction to that like I’ve never known.
    It was for me, however, slightly bitter-sweet to watch the show from the other side rather than participate in it.  I’ve been grappling with this in little ways even as I sat in an empty audience in rehearsals, but it really hit home as I watched the actors riff on and ride out all-new jokes while friends and strangers laughed around me.  While the audience gets to experience inclusion for the first time, and even participation, I have had to acknowledge that my involvement is waning.  And when I return to watch the final shows, They’ll be something completely different from what I helped make.  They’ll be your performances.  And that’s going to be amazing.