I had several people comment in person and post on my personal page about a status of seeing Wizard of Oz last night. This is one of those things that I have to be really careful about when I post something because I don't want to give people the wrong idea. I just got back from attending the regional Odessy of the Mind competition for Middle Schools yesterday and I watched the 6th grade Lone Oak Middle School team (of which Jade is a member) compete for a spot at the state competitions. There were several good friends of hers competing for Paducah Middle School at the same time and the kids were all cheering each other on and hoping that both teams would go on to state. As each team got their scores some were elated and some were depressed. They immediately wanted to compare their scores to the other schools scores. Who was better and who was worse. Who won and who lost.
Our culture is so focused on winning that if you don't place first many people feel like they lost. I've seen personally time and again at American Association of Community theatre competitions with 10 completely different kinds of shows competing that the 9 who didn't win feel like they failed, in casting shows that the 75 people who didn't get cast for 10 parts feel like they failed, even with shows that the Carson Center and the Market House Theatre or WKCTC produce that, that our nature is to want to declare a winner and a loser, one better than the other. This is really frustrating for me because every production, every audition, every creative endeavor is filled with personal challenges that we should be cheering on. There were great moments last night in the Wizard of Oz at the Carson Center, there were great moments in the Market House production of Wizard of Oz. Even 15 years ago at what was then PCC when they did Wizard of Oz there were some great moments. For the kids from Paducah who performed last night in Wizard of Oz at Carson Center, that was a really great moment. To perform in front of over a thousand people for each of 3 performances. That is really great. To take the risk of going out onstage and doing all the dance steps and singing with only a few rehearsals and to have the audience and parents cheer them does something magical for a person. That's what MHT does as its mission every single day. For the professionals in the show last night they have to be willing to go onstage and give it their all and risk doing a bad show in order to create something really magical. There reaches a point in the life of any show where the actors just start going through the motions. They start feeling like they don't have to go out and prove themselves every time they take the stage. The truly great performers are ones who really work at creating something new everytime they are on stage. Having said that I also have to say that just because you step onstage doesn't mean you should get a standing ovation every time. Some performances really create that synergy between performer and audience member and there is an electricity that makes a performance truly incredible. Some performances things just don't work out or the actors aren't really connecting and you are left with just an okay performance. We still applaud the effort for some really great moments, but we don't have to give a standing ovation every time.
I heard a great interview on Fresh Air the other day with the well known actor Alan Arkin, who talked about his time at Second City in Chicago. Each night they would go onstage and collect ideas from the audience and then take 10-15 minutes and create a play based on that audience's suggestions. They knew that each night a significant portion of what they created was going to fail. Sometimes miserably! But other moments might be pure genius. It is the most liberating and personal character building experience there is to put yourself into a a situation where the chance for failure is not only high but in some ways expected. It allows you to create something that is much better than you ever could have done if every thing you had to do was to succeed. Each mistake in the process is a building block that makes the final product better. Alan Arkin doesn't do Broadway shows anymore because it is so difficult to go out night after night and try to do exactly the same performance without making a mistake which is what the producers expect. The Spiderman show on Broadway is in previews. I personally think it is a mistake to charge audiences high ticket prices for shows that are still in process and to have every single performance minutely critiqued when you are trying to be creative. That doesn't seem to be a positive environment to create in. Audiences can be great partners at the right time in the creative process for feedback but if they are involved too early it kills the neccessary process of trial and error to create something better.
I can't tell you how many times we try something on stage that doesn't work. How many sets I've painted and designed that had to be redesigned or repainted after I saw how they worked and often didn't work. But I didn't have an audience watching me make those mistakes. If you want to be truly creative you have to fail in order to get better. The musical performer Sting talked recently about many musical efforts he does that fail in between the successes. He doesn't release every single thing he works on to the public to buy. One of my favorite writers once wrote that if anyone ever saw her first drafts they would believe that she was totally psychotic, without talent and must have stolen all her work from someone else because she could never be capable of creating anything of value. When casting a show we make the best decisions we can and sometimes we make mistakes. The process at Market House of having everyone watch auditions is probably the worst for both the actors and the directors. Many theatres do not allow spectators or other actors into the audition process because it puts a lot of pressure on both the person auditioning and the director. Everyone then becomes the judge of who they think should have got the part or how someone else did compared to someone else. It makes the director hesitant to try different things with different actors during the audition because the audience will think not everyone got to do exactly the same thing. Even though the director might be able to get a better audition out of each person. The audition spectators tend to pick winners and losers. If MHT had a bigger lobby we probably would do private auditions with just small groups at a time to eliminate some of that pressure on the performers and the directors. Private audtions also help that everyone gets to do a scene or dance for the first time without those who go last having the advantage of seeing how everyone else did theirs and correcting for others mistakes.
I guess my point in all this is that the Carson Center, WKCTC, MHT and all of the groups that are producing shows in our area should be proud of their work. When I see a Carson Center show it makes me proud of the many talented people who perform at MHT without taking anything away from the professional performers and when I see an incredible show at MHT it doesn't take anything away from the Carson Center shows. We need to go to plays and celebrate or commiserate with the performers when things go really well or things fail. We need to take pride in what we do and continue to strive to make it better while at the same time accepting failure without assigning winners and losers.
Creating something is incredibly rewarding, if we are willing to work hard at it and learn from our mistakes and make it better each time we perform it. Every show at MHT should be better than the last show because hopefully we have learned from the mistakes we made in the last show. Every performance should be better than the last performance. At MHT we are striving towards getting just a little better with each show and with each season. For the individual performer it means that with each audition you strive to get a little better and keep trying to improve yourself to get that call back or get cast in that show. Don't give up after the first time you don't get cast. Also just because you got cast doesn't mean you don't have to work at it. My favorite moment as a director was when I cast a young man in the lead in the first show he auditioned for. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time and the others who auditioned fit into other parts. In the next show he auditioned he got cast as a non speaking rock. His father later came up to me and thanked me saying it was the best thing that ever happened to his son. In another instance a local adult auditioned and got the lead in his first show which required a certain look and certain kind of accent. He never got another lead while here at MHT because his accent was too strong and he didn't work on changing it and his appearance tended to work against all the roles he wanted. That actor has since gone to L.A. and lost his accent and made some changes to his appearance. He is getting work as an extra with a few lines or small recurring characters on some television series. He is still waiting for his big break over 20 years after that first lead role at MHT, but he is happy acting in the roles in which his looks and voice work well for.
Even though both April and I have been in theatre for over 30 years we still have to go out and prove ourselves every time that curtain goes up. We still are working to create something very special with each performance and risking failure every time. So congratulations to the Carson Center on Wizard of Oz. I'm looking forward to seeing Nunsense at WKCTC in April. Here at MHT we are working hard to create a great performance of Phantom of the Market House Theatre on March 18 & 19, The footlights shows on March 26 & 27, Dixie Swim Club the last two weeks of April, EAT in May and ANNIE in June.
I'm also excited for my daughter and her LOMS Odessy of the Mind team. Even though the team placed 3rd in their competition, they get to go to the state competition and try again to create something special with their orginal Odessy of the Mind presentation. I haven't heard yet, but I hope the kids from Paducah Middle School made it to the state competition too! We can wish success to both of them, just as we do with the Carson Center, MHT, and WKCTC!
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