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Are New Plays Risky? By ROBERT BETHUNE I’m
talking about doing a play that’s never been staged before, the
“world premiere” production (and what an empty piece of hype
that phrase is! But that’s another rant altogether.) They certainly have a reputation for
it. Just about anything you read that discusses a theater company that
premieres new work will have some sort of reference in it to the risk
factor of doing new plays. I think the theory of this is a theory
about audience risk: that because the play has never been done before,
nobody knows what it’s about, so nobody knows whether or not they
want to come and see it. There’s also a concept of artistic risk
involved; since the play has never been done before, nobody knows what
the best way to do it might be. I think both of these theories are
full of holes. Let’s take first things first.
What is the audience risk of doing a play that’s never been done
before? It’s true, of course, that nobody knows what it’s
about. That’s true of 90% of the plays that exist in this world.
Even among theater artists, how many people can rattle off the plot line
of Ion, by Euripides? Of The Second Shepherd’s Play?
Of The White Devil, by John Webster? Of Beyond the Horizon, by Eugene O’Neill? Very well-read theater experts
know these plays, which are in fact classics of the world’s theater.
Everybody else who buys a ticket has to be educated about them, just as
if they’d never been done before. And that’s not just true of the
less well known classics. How many people, ordinary ticket buyers, can
tell you the story of any three plays randomly picked from the London
and New York seasons of the past three years? Yet those plays are at the
peak of the profession. The fact is, unless you’re doing
the forty-five-thousandth production of Fiddler on the Roof or
My Fair Lady, any of a half-dozen of Shakespeare’s plays,
or any of a dozen or so truly famous modern plays, you have to educate
your potential ticket buyers about what they’re going to see if
you expect them to actually stop by your box office. Classic play, modern
play, new play, world premiere—it doesn’t matter. Unless your
ticket buyers think they have a good reason to expect to enjoy it, they’ll
do something else that does give them that assurance, and there’s
no difference between an old play or a new play—they probably won’t
ever have heard of it in any case. And why should they? It’s our
business to know the plays. They rely on us to pick good stuff for them.
We’re the experts, they’re the people who rely on the experts.
If we consistently do a good job of giving them a good experience in our
theaters, they will trust us. If we don't, they won’t. It’s
that simple. And that complicated. What about the artistic risk? That’s
another story. Tune in next month for another rant! |
