This topic has been in my head for a while — for sure. It’s obvious that theatre is a passion, next to design, and I love the opportunity to bring them together. I guess there’s also a connection to education that I gravitate toward — is it just education or is it pedagogy. Teaching young performers for so long (it’s been 10+ years at this point) I’ve been able to sit back a bit and think about why and how they learn. I think there’s something unique about learning in the arts—especially for those who lean toward the theatre.

So, this question of how and why people learn has been something kicking around while I’ve been directing too. The question asked by writers of “do my words make sense?” are also asked by directors. We’re taking our audience on a journey and the hope is that they are ready, willing and able to follow us. So many factors are at play; they could be in the wrong mood, not know enough about the subject or just not care at all. Isn’t there a way to help some of those things?

If they’re in the wrong mood, can’t we help to get them there? A theatre I worked at in Austin always had stuff in the lobby - kind of like the energy/look of the show was spilling out of the doors. It was great. And often it wasn’t educational. One show I remember in particular, Beehive The Musical, had this amazing collection of old record covers and whatever other early rock-n-roll-girl-group fun stuff the director had in his collection. The walls were just plastered and you were greeted by this onslaught of imagery—crazy colors, amazing photography, awesome clothes and hair… and, for a lot of the audience, memory. You were automatically transported to another time — a time appropriate for the show. You immediately knew you weren’t seeing two bums waiting for Godot, you were going to spend the next bit of time listening to awesome music.

It wasn’t educational at all. There’s nothing really to be educated about. The show was a celebration. And the lobby lived up to the celebratory mood.

I was lucky enough to work on a lobby display there—way before I was anything but an aspiring designer. The show was A Streetcar Named Desire. There wasn’t much time or money and I certainly didn’t have, at that point, any insight into what I was doing. It was called a “dramaturgical display.”

My understanding of “dramaturgical” came from shows I did at the University of Texas at Austin. When I was in The Love of a Nightingale (Timberlake Wertenbaker) a grad student came in a talked to us about life as a greek soldier. (It’s an awesome play, by the way…) They explained by we’d be wearing skirts as male soldiers. I think they gave us a packet of reading to help us better understand the show we were in and the people we were playing. Same thing, different subject matter, for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Always, sometime in the first week of rehearsal, we’d get this data dump of history from a grad student in Theatre History and Criticism—and it was called dramaturgy. 

So, for Streetcar, I thought it would be a good idea to show some stuff about Tennessee Williams’s early life and make connections from his past to the lives of the characters in the show. The early designer in me knew that these black and white photos would need to be big—playing with contrast to compete with the visual space of the lobby. I knew they would need to be evocative and the shabby plantation homes and grimy streets of New Orleans didn’t let me down. It looked really cool, by my meager perspective. But I wonder if it did anything for the audience. I was trying to treat a serious play with a serious display but on reflection I realize that I wasn’t really saying anything.

How could I have been saying anything? I didn’t know anything about the production that was happening. There was no input from the director. And once it was running, the lobby was nothing more than a pretty prelude with a couple of interesting tidbits. There were missed opportunities for insight into the subject matter of the show. It was all surface. Surface just like the Beehive lobby was, but the difference here was that there was more to scratch than the top layer. We could have introduced the audience to information about spousal abuse, about family relations, about a dying society, about mental illness. Instead, it was all about how Williams lived in a house that became a model for Belle Reve.

To be fair to myself, the production itself didn’t really talk about that stuff either — it wasn’t an amazingly strong show. It meant well, but it treated the show like a masterpiece, like a show horse, not like a vital and alive piece of text that could have resonance and meaning for today’s audience. On top of that, the general audience at that theatre may not be interested in stuff like that. They may be more happy to simply say that they saw Streetcar without really participating in it. Some theaters there are semi-professional, but the audiences aren’t necessarily.

I think that a truly outstanding production of Streetcar, though, would have an amazing historical/philosophical/psychological/every-ical story to tell the audience and I bet some introduction to those themes beforehand would be good. AFter the show too. When I’m floored by a production I think about it for days, weeks. After seeing Caroline, or Change in New York several years ago I walked around the west side for hours trying to come to terms with what I’d seen. Not only had I been moved by the subject matter, the emotional story, the places where the characters went, but as a professional theatre artists I was taken aback by the sheer artistry and talent of those involved. I searched for people to talk to about the show. Not many had seen it, so I was definitely having to look far and wide. To this day I get the same thoughts in my head when I hear the music. It would have been really cool to have a moment after the show to hear with Tony Kushner was thinking. To get some insight. To learn about the history presented in the show. To learn about Jewish life in the south back then.

So I guess I use myself when thinking about who an audience is. If I like a show I want to know more about it. If there’s a theme that’s going to be over my head I’d like to be prepared. I find that this education can be fun — and it can make the evening more entertaining. Rather than having to play catch-up with some random piece by Sarah Ruhl, it would be awesome to have some help. And even if that’s just getting me in the mood for what I’m about to see.

The early reading I’ve been doing about this, starting with Wikipedia and then finally moving on to more complete sources like the American Dramaturgy Sourcebook (or something like that) has lead me to question the word dramaturgy. I’m not alone in that, thankfully. Each definition differs slightly. The one “complete” definition I found took about 200 words. My summation is that a dramaturg does everything from working with a theatre to choose a season, helping a playwright form a narrative or providing constructive criticism to the director during rehearsals. Also, there’s the whole thing about providing information and context to the performers. But no mention was made of anything like the lobby displays I remember from Austin. But it’s definitely in the purview of someone like a dramaturg. I don’t think I made up “dramaturgical display” on my own. So, the search continues for a critical/historical/analytic/or-even-fictional description of what I’m interested in.

Back to that — that time before you see the show (at the theatre - or even before you leave the house), those moments of intermission and after the performance — can dynamic media play a role in this… discussion. That’s what I’ll call it. A discussion. How can dynamic media foster a discussion between the watcher and the watched?

The concept of watching has come up in my brief and fresh reading about the philosophy of aesthetics… theatrical aesthetics in particular. It focuses on this idea of the watcher and watched - and how both parties have roles to play and need to know how to play them. The author told a story about seeing a mid-week matinee of Waiting for Godot in London’s West End. At the performance was a whole host of school kids on a field trip. They were not at all interested in the proceedings on the stage and, in fact, creating such a stir that it amounted to its on performance. The actors onstage, he said, were well-known as actors who were very famous and quite popular with young people and old [I’m guessing it was Robin Williams… but the author never stated.] But he wasn’t performing Godot for young folks, and the young folks didn’t know how to watch Godot. It’s not that people don’t or aren’t capable of liking the theatre, it’s that they don’t know how to watch it, to experience it. It’s become such a foreign thing for most people. Or, at least, the act of having live performers on a platform pretending to be other people for a couple of hours is a foreign experience… everything in the world is theatre. Most high school cafeterias would rival Hamlet for dramatic angsty outbursts.

Taking off on this idea of “how we watch” - I want to figure out how to help our audience become better watchers. I’m not going to change the world and magically find a way for theatre to replace TV and lower the costs while raising quality across the world. But, I think there are some people who would really like Coriolanus if given half a chance. There’s a marketing question - how to get the butts into seats. There’s the kind of narrative question - how to share thoughts and ideas surrounding the show without giving too much away. There’s the programming question - how much is too much. There’s a pedagogical question - what’s the point where we don’t want to learn and we just want to be entertained. There’s the content question - what’s the stuff that needs to be shared. There’s the financial question - how much money does this cost. There’s the time question - in a time-strapped theater who wants to put this stuff together. There’s the design question - what’s the appropriate piece for a 30-minute pre-show, 15-minute intermission, 5-minute post-show and/or a before/after printed/online. And of course there are many many more questions surrounding each of these.

A local production of a Broadway-bound musical recently tried their hand at a dramaturgical display. It was sad. Two foam-core-mounted posters with lousy typography and pixelated image were hung in a corner behind the ticket takers. No one was able to spend more than five minutes looking at them. And they really didn’t want to. The content was actually not very interesting when considered with what the show is about. These posters were fairly dense biographies of the composer and lyricist. (Maybe the book writer too.) These were “posters” in format, but were really not much more than pages from a book blown up and hung. As I’m writing this I’m wondering if they were present only to fulfill a contractual obligation with the estate of the writers. Anyway, there’s a lot of history in and around the show and there could have been a really rich experience for the audience, even if only in a printed form. A look at race relations or the slums of the south could have made for a really interesting read before the show.

One time I was talking to a theatre about making a lobby display for a show. This was mainly because the general consensus was that the lobby looked a little ugly and could use some dressing up for a world premiere that was going to happen. Though nothing actually happened with our discussion, they got really excited about the idea of bringing the show into the theatre. Having the experience begin right when you walk through the lobby doors.

I don’t want to stop there. I think the experience could begin with the first time you read about the show. It doesn’t cost much money to run a conceptual twitter feed. (We’ll ignore time for now.) Sleep No More had wild success with a digital scavenger hunt leading up to the opening in New York. (Which had something to do with a fanboy attitude.) Someone is posting the works of Shakespeare line by line on Twitter. Characters on TV shows has rich and thorough existences online in various formats.

There aren’t necessarily specific technologies I want to explore. I’m more interesting in forming ideas - theories about how to engage the audience, and in particular using dynamic media to do so. And it’s not just because that’s the program I’m in. The opportunities here are great and it doesn’t have to cost all that much. So much is possible and it could be a boon to non-profit organizations. 

Along with the idea of enriching the audience and helping them be better watchers I bet this study will also involve asking questions about marketing. If it’ll get someone to buy a ticket many theaters will try it.

Why else dynamic media in the lobby? I’m thinking back to that Streetcar lobby I worked on. It would have been amazing to create an experience that made you feel like you were sitting in New Orleans - or some sort of virtual tour of a decaying plantation home. 

This is why I did my radio project in the first semester. As soon as I knew it was a narrative project I knew what the objective of the piece would be: to enhance the audience’s experience with a text. I didn’t want to give too much away, but I wanted to tell a little bit of the story, introduce a feeling of dread about the impending plague. 

I’m gathering reading material - thankfully Matt and I have a fairly substantial library at home. And I’m looking forward to going through the Emerson library. This semester I hope to take a dramatic lit class to bone up on some analytic skills - maybe even building a list of topics to look at for specific projects. I want to use my connections at the ART to set up some interviews with their dramaturgy students. The Huntington has a fantastic resident dramaturg who I need to have a chat with. (Boston’s such a great place to be for this project - even if the theatre sometimes sucks, there’s a wealth of scholars available.) Over the summer I think I’ll be driving to Texas and hope to be able to schedule some interviews for the road. There should be fabulous people to talk to in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Cincinnati, Chicago, Atlanta, Philahelphia, DC… Hopefully I can get some introductions made in the next months and have a fruitful summer getting some opinions recorded. 

I’ve returned to a little once-a-week job that I had in undergrad manning the reception desk at the ART. I hope to be able to snag some people and make some introductions. There are lots of folks here who I’ve love to hear from.

Was reading an essay by the (former?) dramaturg at Arena Stage in DC about dramaturgy and musical theatre. The essay was a great insight into the dramaturgical process and made me realize what a small part of the art of dramaturgy I’m referring to so I want to be cautious and careful about the language I use. I don’t want to upset any professionals. They do so much more than make lobby displays. This will probably form a major part of some of my early interviews. 

This is supposed to be stream-of-consciousness writing and I think I’m doing a pretty good job of that. To quote Liz Lemon, “Pimple. Monkey butt.” I’m not accustomed to this kind of thinking in a prose format. I’m probably just not used to a prose format at all.

I’ve been thinking about what kinds of projects I could work on. I am trying to push my studio and elective projects into this realm - if nothing else I’m choosing dramatic literature as something to respond to. Starting small is definitely where I am. The technology needs are going to be particular to the content of each project. I’m not the type of designer to start with the product first. When looking at a show like Three Sisters I would have no idea what the lobby would look like. I like that part of the challenge: creating the question and finding the route to the answer. I’m a big believer in that process. I really believe that it’s how I’ve found success with design work in the past. So, it’s all about creating opportunities for myself in the real world. There’s only so far I can take this work in the studio — and really I can’t test any of these ideas in a vacuum. I have to start talking to friends in local theaters about upcoming shows and seeing if they have any interest in my working with their dramaturg to build some experiences. Since no one has any money (least of all myself) the start of this may be web-based. Audience outreach kind of stuff. Maybe there would be some interest somewhere. The folks I’ve spoken with already seem to think it’s all a pretty good idea, but we haven’t gotten down to actual planning. Maybe a college production would be a good place. I should start, though, by figuring out who is doing any sort of dramaturgical display work already. From what I’ve seen no one is. At least as far as I can tell.

Some places, like the ART, put out reading materials. ART has a publication called “Guide” — used to be “ARTicles” — that has articles, images and other general “stuff” to go with the shows. It’s not exactly full of content - it’s mostly ads - but it’s an effort. I’ll try to learn about the history of this publication. Lisa Rosowsky worked there many years ago - maybe she’ll have some info. On top of the ads, the publication is co-produced with The Weekly Dig. I’m sure that’s an enormous help in offsetting the cost. Dig probably prints it in exchange for the sale of ads. That type of partnership is smart. But overall I find the piece is trying too hard to be a magazine. The dramaturgical audience outreach in one issue is about wine pairings. It’s related to a production about Schubert in which they serve wine. I guess it makes sense. But, I’m as disappointed in this “education” as the people who came to the show expecting some real insight into Schubert but instead felt they were at a wine tasting. At least the article is true to the production.

It’s hard to put an “end” on this. I would like to recap or conclude in some way but I have no clue what I’ve actually written. So… I’m going to try my hand (again) at articulating what I want to propose:

The art of theatre lies in the hands of those in the seats and those on the stage, the watchers and the watched. As the act of playgoing has become less and less a part of our culture, the art of watching is quickly becoming lost. What role can dynamic media play in helping teaching how to be an audience? How can dynamic media become a way to prepare to watch something? How can dramaturgs use dynamic media and design to reach their audience? How can marketers take advantage of this new media to engage an new audience or retain existing ones? How can these things things be accomplished on a tight budget, remaining accessible for smaller theaters? What type of engagements would be of interest to an audience? How much learning is too much for an audience who is there to be entertained?