Interesting piece by Lyn Gardner in yesterday's Guardian about whether theatres should be funding audiences not just the artists.
The truth is that it's often pretty easy for theatres to offer development time and scratch performances, where work can be tested on stage; what is often harder is to actually programme the work or help it to tour and find an audience.
Which got me thinking about the relationship between theatres and the audience. I do sometimes think that there is a disconnect between the artistic world and those who put their hands in their pockets and pay for tickets. There have been occasions when I have felt like 'the pesky audience'.
More could definitely be done to engage and even, in some instances,
welcome.
For example, there has been a plethora of playwright-led 'festivals'. The Royal Court even had playwrights 'taking over the theatre' in the summer which had me flippantly imagining playwrights running amok and the audience knocking on the door trying to get let in. Engaging with the audience is a tricky feat – a festival for theatre fans? (Now there is a whole new post about what my fantasy theatre festival would include.)
OK so a festival for theatre fans is perhaps a silly idea but at the very least more theatres should engage with the audience about their experiences. As a regular, it would be nice to feel some faint sort of acknowledgement as to the part we play. (Is now the time to suggest the loyalty card, coffee-shop style?)
Earlier this year Polly Stenham was interviewed about her new play No Quarter by Mark Lawson for Radio 4's Front Row. Lawson had seen a £10 Monday preview (the same night I was there in fact) and dismissed the audience because of the cheap tickets. He seemed to think that those in attendance weren't serious theatre-goers, just people attracted to a bargain and therefore their response was in some way less important.
But Stenham's reply had me yelling 'hallelujah' at the radio. She said that the £10 Monday audience was probably the most important because it's made up predominantly of regular theatre-goers. Those who spread the word among other regular theatre-goers and occasional theatre-going friends and family. It was comforting to know that there are those in the industry that understand their audience.
Now Lawson is a critic rather than a theatre industry professional but he, in a similar way, is removed from the whole dirty process of exchanging hard-earned cash for tickets.
It's a little bit early for new year's resolutions but I'd like to suggest the audience goes onto to the list for 2014 in a more prominent position than it perhaps has.
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