BWW Blog: Success, Failure, and the Risks of Theatrical Production

The weather conditions in Santa Barbara are so similar day to day that sometimes I have trouble remembering when events occurred; it may have been March, it may have been November; it may have been five years ago, it may have been five months ago. The theater environment creates, in some ways, a similar cocoon that insulates one from the impression of the natural passage of time. Artificial yet artfully designed stage lighting can create midnight that turns to midday in mere seconds. This perceived hiatus from "real time" occurs even in outdoor theaters: not only is this phenomenon felt by the audience as they sink into the "theatre time" of the performance (whether that be a passage of years or moments), but it's felt, too, by the performers. Imagine the strange sense of déjà vu for the actors, who experience the same events after making the same choices in the same scenarios night after night.

Other than subtle differences in the actors' performances from show to show (usually due to mistakes or a wild, spontaneous inspiration to perpetuate different meaning through shifts in inflection), an interesting variable in a performance is audience energy and reaction. But the tastes of art patrons are fickle. I admire those rare few theatre artists who've found a way to charm the favor of the public on a consistent basis; but for most, the risk of theatrical production is that the show won't sell tickets, and the actors will be left playing to a house of ten people--ten silent, sleeping people.

Community theatre companies often have no ruling board to decide which plays to perform based on a successful business model and no marketing team to impart the importance of the work to the public. There are rarely major donors--the producer writes personal checks to fund plays they'd like to see performed, hoping to at least break even at the end of the run. Props and costumes come from peoples' homes. There's no staff, just eager volunteers, and the people who are paid work for a pittance and the experience rather than to fund their IRA. It's theatre by group effort--and beyond being an integral part of the grass-roots artistic landscape of any population, community theatre is a grand, fun hobby.

So, besides my overzealous commitment to moderating this ongoing discussion of Santa Barbara's theatrical scene, I also enjoy the Zen of backstage management (aka running deck; aka stage-bitch). Deck crew is the lowest rung of technical theatre, a basic-skills-necessary, entry-level position that requires a willingness to listen to headset chatter while doing a crossword puzzle, and the occasional bussing of props, on-the-spot Jerry-rigging of frayed costumes and broken props, and quick changes for actors in the wings. I also wash dishes.

My most recent foray into backstage management was a vacation job: there was barely any theatre in August--no shows to claim tickets for last minute, no previews to write or costumes to make or casting over which to agonize. The Out of the Box ladies were in New York or Paris, or gearing up for Fiesta rather than our next production. There was a distinct lull in the momentum of the Santa Barbara theatre world--the calm before the semester begins and the universities and high schools start pumping out drama along with the community's fall shows.

The one show on the books was So-Called Productions' Pvt. Wars, a reboot of a show done two years ago at the Plaza Playhouse. A small, intimate performance, Pvt. Wars portrayed three Vietnam veterans treading PTSD-muddled water in the psych-ward of a rehabilitation hospital for wounded GIs. Beyond suffering levels of shell shock, the characters had a variety of gruesome physical maladies. Silvio (Sean Jackson) had his genitals blown off. Natwick (George Coe) complained of a urine-bag attached to his body, so clearly something traumatic had taken place. The prissy, New Yorker-reading rich kid (Natwick) and the bellowing, blue-collar pervert (Silvio) bickered relentlessly while their friend (and the anchor of the bunch), Gately (Sean O'Shea), compulsively tried to fix a broken radio.

The best way to describe Gately is in Silvio's words: "You do things slooooow." Though the nature of Gately's wounds are undisclosed, this production interpreted the character in a way that denoted a head injury of sorts. It's unclear whether or not Gately always did things sloooooowly, but there is tragic evidence of a life back home that has been eliminated from his memory. The show offered moments of humor, poignancy, and intensity, but despite a certain level of watchability and positive audience response, Pvt. Wars was a flop.

Sean O'Shea, who both played Gately and produced the show, faced one of the cruelest realities of theatre: good, bad, or ugly, no show offers the certainty of selling tickets. Critical reviews for Pvt. Wars pointed out a general lack of subtlety that extended from performances to the writing, and many people who'd seen the show two years ago in Carpenteria were uninterested in seeing it again. After a week, the project started to lose steam. Even O'Shea, who'd begun the run with a fierce enthusiasm for the production (and community theatre in general), was starting to wilt.

"I'm in a perpetual state of feeling like I've forgotten something," he said on more than one occasion, an apology of sorts, an admission that some element of the show must have been overlooked to garner such tepid interest. When he finally made the tough decision to cancel the last several shows due to insufficient ticket sales, his discouragement was palpable. "Right now I'm working past the huge amount of shame that has inundated me over the past several days," he said. "You know what they say. 'When we succeed, we tend to party. When we fail, we tend to ponder.' It's from that pondering that growth happens. It's during these periods of growth that things suck. I'm looking forward to becoming a better person in the aftermath," he said, and then added with his characteristic and unfaltering sense of humor: "I'm still going to laugh at this shit, though."

Producing a show is a financial risk. Performing in a show demands a different type of risk--an emotional investment in the material that's absolutely necessary for the character and the show to have a voice. Acting as both producer and performer is exhausting--mentally, physically, and emotionally.

"Community theater is hard work," O'Shea said. "It's a lot harder than doing theater professionally, and I've done both. As an actor, I work hard. I'd like to think my hard work paid off in this production." However, he also acknowledges that the role of producer requires a level of tenaciousness that inspires followers. "I need to get a lot better at gathering people around me who'll be willing and able to do the work."

From an artistic standpoint, it's important to choose theatrical material about which you feel passionate and inspired. Yet, the financial failure of Pvt. Wars brings up certain questions about the process of community theatre as a viable business. From a commercial perspective, it's important to consider what, exactly, makes people interested in buying tickets to a show. What is the general taste of the local community, and what types of shows tend to be successful? What kinds of shows are people in Santa Barbara most excited to see? Perhaps the population of local theatregoers is too small to warrant producing the same show twice in as many years. Wanting to maintain consistency with the previous production, Bill Egan returned as director. The three performers (all reprising their roles) attempted to deepen their character portrayal and find different notes, but while live theatre has the inherent inability to ever play exactly the same from show to show, it's also remarkably difficult to develop anything completely novel, especially when working from the same script.

After lagging ticket sales and less than favorable critical reviews, the attitude backstage changed. There was a sense of deflated relief after the reviews came out, along with a touch of impotent resentment that flares up even in seasoned actors who understand that not every review is going to be overwhelmingly positive.

"This ends a 25-year relationship with this show," Sean confided. He played this role for the first time in college to wildly successful audience reaction. Spectators absorbed the performances with gusto, forcing performers to pause for laughter for ten cumulative minutes. The audience, filled with inspiration and delight, joined the actors onstage when the show concluded to celebrate a rare, transcendent moment when the vision of the production completely surpasses the expectations of the viewers.

Unfortunately, O'Shea wasn't able to re-create that experience this time around, and has decided, whether out of the necessity for realistic casting (while time may get lost inside the theater, actors keep aging, and sometimes the believability of a character depends on a certain look), or, hopefully, because this production provided closure between O'Shea and Gately. I'd like to think that O'Shea found something in this performance that resounded within him enough that he could bid farewell to the troubled GI: a sense of completion; a sense of having fixed the radio.

It's important to remember that lack of success isn't necessarily failure. Every show offers learning opportunities and provides practice for whatever comes next. I enjoyed my experience with the cast of Pvt. Wars immensely, and appreciated everyone's hard work: Jackson is a perpetual joker more than happy to adopt Silvio's propensity to flash people as a personal hobby; Coe vacillates between consummate gentleman and delightfully sarcastic misanthrope; and O'Shea is a sensitive, eager performer with a vision of a broader, more inclusive and passionate theatre community. It would be disappointing if this harsh yet unavoidable reminder that attempting to re-create a one-time experience of frenzied glory on a stage a quarter of a century ago dampened the sense of enthusiasm O'Shea had pre-production.

With the show behind them, several crucial issues regarding the difficulty of the production process, the constant tinkering with a radio that may never play music again, linger. There are a number of factors that may have contributed to the show's insufficient commercial appeal. It might have been the lack of subtlety in the performances, as critics suggested; it might have been that the show was performed locally in the too-recent past; it might have been the awkwardness of a set that was simultaneously too intimate and too removed from the audience, and didn't quite fit in the Center Stage space. It might have been something completely out of the producers' control, like the fact that it has been hotter than Hades in Santa Barbara and no one wanted to run the gauntlet of global warming that loomed in the space between the air-conditioned car and the air-conditioned theater.

And yet, there are rays of light that find their way through the thick drapes and black walls of the theater:

"Several people said that they forgot it was me up there when they were watching the show," O'Shea said. "My goal is to connect with the audience and transport them to...wherever. It helps if they see a character rather than the 'me' they already know."

So goodbye to Gately, Silvio, and Natwick: thank you for your service, and here's hoping you find your ways home.