Open: Play w/ Audience

An Inspector Calls opened this Wednesday, and during each energy filled evening since I'm reminded and taught more clearly than ever that the work on a play is only beginning when the 1st curtain goes up, and an audience rides on the story for the first time. We performed our best show yet last night, not because it was clean or glossy, but because we were taping into the real life of the play and bouncing things hard off one another. If I was aware of one thing in addition to what was happening moment to moment on stage, it was what was happening moment to moment from stage to audience. 

What fascinates me about this phenomena is the feeling of breath in the whole theater. When the play is really cooking like it was last night, I can hear the whole theater breathing, gasping, moments when they are made to squirm and moments when the sit so still that they are like a thin sheet of glass, waiting for a pin to drop and shatter their individual perception and leave them with something universal. 

It is wonderful to feel that locked connection, and it doesn't end after the curtain call. As Franklin Stage Company is free for anyone to attend, and runs on audience donations and grants, when the show is over the actors go around to the front door, hats in hand just as I Gelosi or another Commedia troupe of more ancient theater times would let people pay what they can. The gesture does not just support the hearts of the audience, but our hearts as actors as well. There have been many shows in my life that leave me heading back to the dressing room alone, rushing off to something else, with out that moment of communal interaction that gives that particular show closure for ever. In those times I feel myself disconnected from the purpose of the performance, or of performance in general, and its not something to ever forget as a performer. There's an ability to start even fresher the next night, having looked in the eyes, or shaken the hands of the people in the audience and shared that understanding of both simply being people, whether performer or receiver.  

~Drew Perrin