#1
Posted: 9/8/08 at 12:48pm
**This ended up being a lot longer than I expected so read through it if you want to hear my thoughts and observations on the semi-recent rise in the popularity of stagedooring
It seems nowadays, more so than ever before, stagedooring has become a necessary part of the experience of theatre. People come to the theatre visit the box office to buy a ticket, get that ticket scanned to enter, have an usher point in the general direction of your seat, sit and watch for 2 hours, stand and applaud and then visit the stage door. As if its required (as all the other steps in the process are).
Now, as long as Ive been around the theatre there has always been stagedooring. But it used to be 5-10 people who either knew someone in the cast or really really enjoyed the show. After any given show today there are 50-100 people at the stage door and its not just for celebrities. I could be wrong but I think that it began to take off like this back when Wicked first opened (I am not blaming or accusing Wicked or their fans of anything, so lay off. Its just an observation.) Wicked is the first time I can remember 300+ people being at the stagedoor every single night for non-celebrities. And with the popularity of Wicked many people who saw the show and then stagedoored have carried that “tradition” on to all the other shows they’ve seen since then and its taken off.
It used to be that the curtain call signaled the end of the evening. Not only was it a finite ending but it allowed the audience to snap back out of fictional world of the show and back into reality. It gave the audience the chance to recognize the actors for their performances and to realize that the actors are just that, actors portraying a character on stage and they are just regular people. Today it seems as though the audience has deluded the significance of the curtain call. Its almost as if people are applauding for the characters and not the actors. Case and point of this was Cry-Baby, a mediocre show with mediocre leads would end every night to wild standing ovations. Its as if the audience were cheering for the happy ending and not the performance of the actors. To those people, they were still characters (or actors in role) during the curtain call. I think this leads to the stagedooring issue. When you take away that opportunity for the audience to recognize and applaud the actor it leaves people feeling unfishished, like they didn’t get the closure they deserve. They then feel compelled to stage door and tell the actors how much they liked the show and to see the actors out of character.
This part of the problem can be attributed, I think to the recent rise in popularity of the standing ovation. There have been many threads on this and I don’t really feel like going into it too much but with everyone standing it eliminates the chance for the people who truly loved the show or were moved by it to express their satisfaction above everyone else. So those people then feel compelled to stage door to express it. Perhaps the 50-100 people who gather at any given stagedoor on any given night are the 50-100 people that would have been standing during the curtain call regardless.
I don’t know if there is a real answer to this or if it has just become a new trend that will probably only get more and more popular but I think its interesting. Id like to hear some thoughts on it.
It seems nowadays, more so than ever before, stagedooring has become a necessary part of the experience of theatre. People come to the theatre visit the box office to buy a ticket, get that ticket scanned to enter, have an usher point in the general direction of your seat, sit and watch for 2 hours, stand and applaud and then visit the stage door. As if its required (as all the other steps in the process are).
Now, as long as Ive been around the theatre there has always been stagedooring. But it used to be 5-10 people who either knew someone in the cast or really really enjoyed the show. After any given show today there are 50-100 people at the stage door and its not just for celebrities. I could be wrong but I think that it began to take off like this back when Wicked first opened (I am not blaming or accusing Wicked or their fans of anything, so lay off. Its just an observation.) Wicked is the first time I can remember 300+ people being at the stagedoor every single night for non-celebrities. And with the popularity of Wicked many people who saw the show and then stagedoored have carried that “tradition” on to all the other shows they’ve seen since then and its taken off.
It used to be that the curtain call signaled the end of the evening. Not only was it a finite ending but it allowed the audience to snap back out of fictional world of the show and back into reality. It gave the audience the chance to recognize the actors for their performances and to realize that the actors are just that, actors portraying a character on stage and they are just regular people. Today it seems as though the audience has deluded the significance of the curtain call. Its almost as if people are applauding for the characters and not the actors. Case and point of this was Cry-Baby, a mediocre show with mediocre leads would end every night to wild standing ovations. Its as if the audience were cheering for the happy ending and not the performance of the actors. To those people, they were still characters (or actors in role) during the curtain call. I think this leads to the stagedooring issue. When you take away that opportunity for the audience to recognize and applaud the actor it leaves people feeling unfishished, like they didn’t get the closure they deserve. They then feel compelled to stage door and tell the actors how much they liked the show and to see the actors out of character.
This part of the problem can be attributed, I think to the recent rise in popularity of the standing ovation. There have been many threads on this and I don’t really feel like going into it too much but with everyone standing it eliminates the chance for the people who truly loved the show or were moved by it to express their satisfaction above everyone else. So those people then feel compelled to stage door to express it. Perhaps the 50-100 people who gather at any given stagedoor on any given night are the 50-100 people that would have been standing during the curtain call regardless.
I don’t know if there is a real answer to this or if it has just become a new trend that will probably only get more and more popular but I think its interesting. Id like to hear some thoughts on it.
"Have they come yet?"
Updated On: 9/8/08 at 12:48 PM
