The Trojan Audience
March 07, 2004 10:03 PM

To be more exact, Euripides' The Trojan Women opened this past Tuesday, March 2nd, in UI's Kiva Theatre.

It amazes me how exhilarating it is to watch a group of people watching a show. I can't help but watch the audience, and it's not about looking for approval. After working on a show for almost two months, the shift into performance mode is just a great release. Forgive the tired cliché, but it's also a bit like sending the kids out into the care of strangers. With the arrival of the audience, the process is finally complete.

Audiences fascinate me. They are the last key player, the wild card. From one performance to another, you can never really know what you're going to get. A director can orchestrate every other card in the deck, but the audience is a free agent, an active, antonymous member of the process.

Ann Bogart writes about this in her book A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre.

A director cannot hide from an audience because intentions are always visible, palpable. An audience senses your attitude towards them. They smell your fright or condescension. They know instinctively that you want only to impress or conquer ... You must have a reason to do what it is you do because these reasons are felt by anyone who comes in contact with your work. (119)

Fantastic. Scary. Exhilarating.

The show runs again this week from Wednesday through Friday nights, March 10-12.

And in other news:
  1. IRT-Y's production of Pain*t is on tour! The show for K-6th graders is traveling to schools around Northern Idaho. Our first stop is Troy, Idaho, on 2/18/04.
  2. I'm working with a tremendous ensemble on a staged reading of Carol Churchill's play, Top Girls for Lewis-Clark State College. The reading will be at 7:30p on Wednesday, 4/21/04 on the LCSC campus in Lewiston, Idaho.
  3. The Other Place Theatre Cooperative will begin rehearsals for their production of Nick Green's adaption of Camus's The Stranger on April 26, 2004. The play will perform in Moscow, Idaho, during the last week of May and in Victoria, BC, at the Victoria Fringe Festival from 8/26/04-9/6/04. Other possible performances of The Stranger are in the works. Much more info to come about this project!