I'm a huge Jennifer Fawcett fan. She's a Canadian playwright (currently enrolled in the Playwrights Workshop at University of Iowa) whose specialty is carving out big worlds in tiny spaces. Remember that scene in Harry Potter IV when they enter the little, 2-sleeper tent only to find that it's a fully-furnished luxury apartment inside? (Even if you haven't, try to imagine it.) That's what her plays are like. I like them so much I'm producing one this fall.
Anyway, she's slowly starting work on her own website and blog, and she's been kind enough to loan some of her words to us. Enjoy.
“How do we, despite the overwhelming time commitment and struggles, look beyond the needs of our own theatres and find ways to respond to the needs of others?”
This quote is taken from an article written by Jacob Zimmer called All Statements are Insecure Questions. You can read the whole thing here. It’s worth checking out the whole thing.
Twenty four hours earlier I’m walking out of the National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada. I’m spending the afternoon at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. I saw a show, I heard a speech, I met a lot of people, most of whom seemed more important than me. Certainly they seemed more connected, like they had access to more money, more audiences, more media and were somehow more officially “theatre”. But walking into the sunshine and crowds of downtown Ottawa all the theatre folk who I know and don’t know and want to know and wish knew me (etc etc) are then put beside all these other people waiting for the bus or shopping or doing whatever you do on a Saturday afternoon. Do any of these people care about theatre? Do any of them go? The homeless man who I’d walked past on the way to the theatre is still in the same spot, only now there’s a stream of liquid spreading out around him and he’s fallen asleep. Dreaming of theatre? I doubt it. Does theatre dream of him? Perhaps, as a character or a symbol, safe in abstraction.
Is any of what those discussions were about and all my angst about being in this business relevant to the people I’m seeing on this downtown street and, do I care? Am I going to do it anyway?
Going backwards a few years: it’s July 2002. I’m in Thunder Bay, Canada (on the northern shores of Lake Superior) for the fringe festival. I’m touring my show The Disappearance of Janey Jones to fringe festivals across Canada and like any true fringer, I’m flyer-ing (yes, in the fringe it is a verb). In other words, I’m trying to convince people to come and see my show. Thunder Bay is not a rich community. As beautiful as it is I cannot get over the sense that my human body is tiny and weak compared to the mighty-ness of the rocks, pines and lake around me. Winters here are brutal. One of the main employers of the town in a massive telemarketing company. You may not realize it, but if you’re in the US and you’ve called your phone company or been called about a cable deal, you’ve probably talked to someone in Thunder Bay. Well. Here I am, stack of flyers in hand and I’m doing a show about a telemarketer who gets depressed - - hello audience development. Walking past the fringe crowds I go into the untapped potential of seven hundred disgruntled telemarketers on their smoke break and I try to talk to them about theatre.
Some are nice. Some aren’t so nice. But almost all don’t care.
“Why would I go to the theatre to see my life? My life’s a piece of shit.”
“Tickets are $8? That’s more than I get paid per hour.”
“I don’t do theatre. I’m too tired.”
“No one wants to hear about this job.”
“I probably wouldn’t understand it.”
They start to file back in to work. These people, for the most part, aren’t mean. They have a tough job, they have the constant stress of too many hours at work and not enough money, they have a brutal winter looming and most of all they don’t have an escape. By the time I left the parking lot I was seriously depressed. And I was also pissed off – because my show was good and screw this audience development bullshit. Sure the majority of the audience members are other theatre people – that’s fine by me. Theatre’s hard enough without having the beg people to come and then justify my choice to do it.
So, how does all this fit together? I find myself with these questions: what is relevant theatre? Do you try to make relevant theatre? I mean, be honest – outside yourself, your circle, your anticipated audience – in the bigger picture – for the people who are standing at the bus stop. Does it matter? These questions aren’t as rhetorical as they may appear.
I think the future of theatre lies in generosity. That’s another word I’m taking from Jacob Zimmer. I believe, as theatre-makers, we have a responsibility to be generous. It’s a nice idea but one that I’m having to constantly re-examine. But it’s also liberating; to try to create theatre thinking less about “will they like it?” “will they think I’m a big theatre-fraud and kick me out of the club?” “will I succeed?” (and these are important questions, after all, the reality is survival depends on money which means, essentially putting out a product that people like) BUT to think instead about being generous. It’s a paradigm shift, though maybe a small one, but one that I think relieves certain tensions and can open up new ideas and possibilities.
