Not true, and here's why. First off, people see it as over-intellectual - like they can't just sit back and enjoy it when it's really "good" theatre. My sister, a chemical engineering student at Georgia Tech (go Jackets!) is exactly like that. I talk to her about theatre and it often times puts her off, and quite understandably. See, this is the issue I have, which is that many of these stereotypes that people put on theatre - well, see, actually they're kind of true. I enjoy theatre I have to struggle with to understand, something I have to uncover like it's an egg waiting to be hatched, but a good portion of people, and perhaps the majority, don't enjoy struggling to understand theatre. They want to see a good story, well-acted but not necessarily creatively directed.
Another shocker for me, and this relates to the first point, is that theatre is often times made only for theatre-goers - and this is exactly how I felt about the new work Blind Alley Guy. I actually enjoyed Blind Alley Guy, despite the fact that I couldn't always follow it, but I was not immune to the fact that Blind Alley Guy was made exclusively for Eugene O'Neill fanatics. Like, seriously. It was basically a creative way to show Eugene O'Neill's notes on his final play and the things he was struggling with as he wrote it. Instead of writing O'Neill's final play, the deviser/director took the script notes and created a play out of them. Now, this is a really cool idea for a play, and I think it worked out reasonably well for them, especially on their first try - but what is the point?
The problem is it was a niche theatre piece, a piece made only for theatregoers, and unfortunately, leaving the theatre, I did not gain much from it. I was not taken on a journey, I did not feel for the characters, and all those other things you're supposed to get from a theatre piece. Or are you? Perhaps Blind Alley Guy didn't want to take you on a journey, didn't want to make you see the characters go on an arc - perhaps it just wanted to be clever and kind of funny, which it was. So is this acceptable as a piece of theatre?
I would say it is. Here's the thing: it would be naive to say that theatre has only one purpose. Obviously, a Eugene O'Neill play is going to give the audience different things than a Broadway musical (and you could even argue that different showings of the same Eugene O'Neill play is going to give the audience different things on different nights.) Maybe the director of Alley Guy only wanted me to leave the theatre with what I did. In that case, he accomplished his goal. The only thing is that I was not fully satisfied. I was intellectually satisfied, to some extent, but not emotionally satisfied, and that angered me. And the only reason I was intellectually satisfied is because I am a director and I appreciate the work done with O'Neill's scraps of script, even though I knew little about his life before seeing this play.
So what I'm trying to say here is that I think theatre can do a lot of different things, but some of those things won't always satisfy the audience in the way they want to be satisfied. One of the things a theatre piece can do is be niche and only play for the CMU School of Drama and no one outside of it - and that's perfectly fine as long as you don't have higher aspirations. A theatre piece can also just try to be clever and interesting but not emotionally appealing, and that's also perfectly fine as long as you don't have higher aspirations. But I have higher aspirations for what I put onstage, and I have higher aspirations for what I think CMU SOD should be putting onstage, so next time, Blind Alley Guy - do something my sister would enjoy.
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