Immersive EVITA — Page 6

Whizzer, I'm very glad to hear of your experience with Fun Home. It's a brilliant show and a groundbreaking one. That's where the show's power lies: it shows us something we haven't seen before. For that reason, it's vital, and I think the fact that people are calling it one of the most important musicals in decades speaks not just to the strength of Fun Home, but to the general weakness of shows around it... Museum pieces that exist without the vitality. That are shaped and formed with the intent of being commercial. And they never, ever change. The whole 'if it isn't broken, don't fix it' idea is observed, the show fails to transcend itself, it stays within it's own safe confines, and it dies a quiet death. Fun Home's artistic aspirations far exceeded its commercial ones, and I think that fact was integral to its success.

That's what we want out of theatre. Broadway is stigmatized as a place to see flashy song and dance... But the shows with the most recent and significant impact where the ones that subverted that. They have, in other words, breathed that new life and vitality into theatre. They are doing something that is so NOW. They are a product of their time, as were other similarly impact flu shows before them.

THAT'S where the life is for me. When a show is quite literally present. The actors and the audience are there working in tandem, the audience is anything BUT a passive observer. The actors are aware of the audience, and vice versa. They are living and breathing in the same space.

I think we see this way less than we should. And that's what I think will save the theatre, if it is indeed dying as I perceive it to be.

Updated On: 8/14/15 at 04:36 PM

OMG THIS GUY IS LIKE A COMBINATION OF

THIS GUY

AND THIS GUY

Updated On: 8/14/15 at 05:10 PM

"How do we make non theatregoers see theatre? That's what doesn't really happen unless you're a big commercial hit on Broadway. I want non theatregoers, because I think theatre should be for EVERYONE, not just the elite. "

Well. I've been on the producing team of several small, "indie" productions that no one had ever heard of. Storefront stuff. Stuff my friends said would never sell.

With smart producing, and marketing... you can sell it. Our audiences ranged from casual theatre goers, the "elite" as you put it (again with the offensive), to people who usually don't go to shows at all and would prefer a game at Wrigley Field but thought that the idea of what we were putting on was interesting enough for their hard earned money. And they liked it, the shows got good houses and solid response.

Maybe your problem is that your shows aren't being produced or marketed by people who know how to... produce or market competitively? That's where some commercial know how comes in handy! Oh wait, commercial is EVIL. I forgot.

OH MY GOD YES. Darren Nichols. Deal with THAT.

I needed that laugh!