When I go to
watch local theatre or performances I tend to blog about them – a
review/commentary on the play and my experience of it. Also, I think it is worth
talking about exceptional local events and venues to spread the word, as it
were. Nothing spreads success quite like word of mouth. However, I
recently saw a local performance and did not blog about it. Why? The play was good. There were some very funny lines and well choreographed and executed scenes. An
enjoyable evening out was had by all.
But – a big but
that deserves to be a paragraph starter – there was a glaring issue that
prevented the audience’s total appreciation of what they were watching and
prevented them from telling the performers that they were enjoying what they
saw.
The performance
was of a play by Oscar Wilde that was written in three acts, as many are, of
course. The play was performed in three parts with two intervals. The problem?
The audience did not know there were going to be two intervals. Why is that a
problem? When the stage lights dimmed for the first time, a scant 20 minutes
into the performance, none of us knew it was for an interval; it felt like the
end of a scene and we waited in silence for the next one.
When an
uncomfortably long scene change had passed and no new scene began, the house
lights came up and then there was some half hearted clapping by an audience
that was vacating the theatre in some confusion and hovering around the bar
wondering why there had been no notification of the two interval situation or
why the first one had come so soon.
After a 20 minute interval we duly made our
way back into the theatre and the play resumed. I and a few
others in the audience had, by this point, gleaned that there was going to be a
second interval in the play so when the second one came around we few clapped
and attempted to create a proper gap in the proceedings. Eventually those
slower folks in the audience cottoned on and the second interval was slightly
more successful than the first.
The end of the
play was good and overall I think people went home happy; however, there was
that lingering feeling of something not quite right. Not knowing about the two
intervals, and they being so long in themselves, had left the audience-actors
relationship irrevocably affected by it.
There is nothing
wrong with having a three act play with a two part interval, but tell people
about it first. That way the audience has no lingering guilt at its lack of
reaction and the players and everyone else involved in putting on the show have
no lingering doubt over the success of the performance.
Accept that these days we
are pre-conditioned to expect one interval somewhere near the
middle of a play, and communicate when you are going off grid. Tell the
audience to expect something out of the ordinary and they will thank you for it
accordingly.
No one enjoys the end of an act with no applause.
Elloise Hopkins.
