(Used by permission from the author.)

Considering the Audience: Four Duluth Theatres
Jess Robinson

Theatre 1001
December 20, 2001

Choosing a play is the most important single factor determining the quality and style of a production. In selecting a play, a director must consider the theatre space, the talent available to take part in the production, the budget allotted, and the resources needed to stage the play. While staging a play is rewarding to the people involved in its production, ultimately it is the audience for whom the play is intended. Therefore the age, background, taste, and interests of a potential audience should receive the most careful consideration when choosing and adapting a play. The director of a theatre production must understand the demographics of the community in which the company serves. A theatre audience in a large metropolitan city has access to a broad range of cultural activities and has probably been exposed to a great diversity of ideas and lifestyles; therefore, they will accept and be interested in anything so long as the play has artistic merit of it’s own. The audience in a smaller community may expect more traditional plays with themes and values closer to their own experiences. The maturity and intelligence level of this anticipated audience should be considered as well. It can be said that the less sophisticated an audience, the more it will be interested in story, plot, and spectacle; the more sophisticated an audience, the more it will be interested in character, language and originality of ideas. It is the director’s job to assess the community and choose a play that will be successful with the anticipated audience. Duluth, Minnesota is not a metropolitan city by any means, but with several colleges in the area and a growing theatre and arts community, a portion of the population attending small theatre productions may be more open minded to less traditional plays. “Art” written by Yasmina Reza and staged by the Renegade Comedy Theatre, is an example of a successful community play that is less traditional in style. However, in a class discussion, director Dave Orman expressed that “Art” was not the play he dreamed of directing. Instead, he was interested in directing a play that dealt with homosexuality, but after considering his audience, he realized that a play of that nature might not appeal to the larger Duluth community.

“Art” is a less traditional play for community theatre because it is just one act and uses minimal stage design and only three actors. The play focuses on characters, language, and ideas and therefore caters to a more sophisticated audience. The scarcity of props and sets also calls for a mature audience that does not need spectacle to be entertained or full sets to understand scene changes. The views expressed by the three characters, however, make the play enjoyable for both liberal and conservative audiences alike, thereby making the production a good choice for smaller communities with conservative audiences.

At the heart of the play is the question, "What is art?" Serge has bought (for a large sum of money) a white painting that he believes is a significant work of modern art. His friend Marc, a lover of realistic artwork, argues that a totally white canvas is not art, and is, in fact, not anything at all. Yvan, a friend to both men is caught in the middle. This conflict gives the audience the chance to identify with the views of one of the characters depending on their own background and feeling towards modern art. At the end of the play, the three friends agree to disagree, allowing the audience to leave the theater to consider their own personal views.

While community theatre directors may feel pressure to select scripts that will conform in order to sell tickets, directors at the college level may feel pressure in the opposite way. A university theatre production can afford to take chances because it does not rely solely on the community, and their opinions, for revenue. Without the threat of ticket sales for survival, theatre at the collegiate level is often avant-garde, risky, and experimental and therefore, caters to audiences of students and affluent, intellectual adults familiar with theatre.

Ann Bergeron, who directed Cabaret at the University of Minnesota Duluth, stated, "I think we do have more artistic freedom in a University setting, that is one of the reasons it is such a pleasure to work here. Artists can maintain the integrity of their vision without having to cater to what we THINK is acceptable." The UMD production of Cabaret was Bergeron’s third time directing the Robinson play and, when asked, she replied that each time she directed it, she did it differently depending on the nature of the cast and audience. In this production, Bergeron made the dances more risqué and the costumes more revealing, something, she said, she would not have done if she had been working with a community theatre group. Though she felt that taking the risqué quality out of the production would significantly diminish it’s overall impact, the same sexual themes of the play that might offend audiences at a community theatre were used to attract student audiences. The female Kit Kat girls appeared at a local bar in costume before the first performance and performed a kick line similar to one in Cabaret. A 21 year-old male student who witnessed the spectacle remarked that he had no interest in seeing the production before that evening but upon seeing the dancers he would "definitely check it out."

The production seemed to be made up of two halves, each with a different style in each half. The scenes in the cabaret were all spectacle and story; the scenes in the boarding house about character and language. At the dress rehearsal for the play, the audience was made up entirely of students. Without commenting on the maturity level of UMD students, the audience was enthralled during the cabaret scenes and bored to the point of conversing with their neighbors during the boarding house scenes. One might expect that a more sophisticated audience would find the language as engaging as the spectacle. Bergeron was quick to point out that the audiences that attended the play, young and old alike, were pleased and entertained with the performance, risqué qualities and all.