Barbara Fingerote: Super Audience
Backstage, ready to go on. Hook the curtain with my little finger, slowly, slowly pulling it back to catch a surreptitious glimpse of the audience tonight.
Sitting as they are in the dark, a distant presence; an amorphous blob, a mass of undifferentiated humanity. You either give them too much power (“They’ll hate me, I suck”) or none at all (“Who cares what they think, I’m an artist, they suck”). They’re hard to see.
Then: “Barbara’s here.”
Front row centre. If it’s the first preview, she’s there. And then she’s there again later in the run. And then again after that… She is pure audience. The Platonic Ideal of audience. She is our omniscient outsider. Our god’s eye view. Her mind is an evolving snapshot of the Toronto theatre scene at any given moment. When she sees a show, she is seeing it in the context of every other show that’s currently playing. She is disinterested in the sense that she doesn’t make her living in the theatre. She’s interested in the sense that she actually likes the theatre.
She sees everything. It makes me a little bit nervous.
Theatre is a strange sort of art form. It disappears as it is happening. And then on the last night it disappears forever. Ultimately it exists, if it exists at all, in the minds of the people who were involved in making it, and the people who saw it, and, beyond that, as a kind of unreality in the form of a fading rumour. There are relics (press clippings, posters and postcards, publicity shots) that can attest to the fact that the actors, designers, directors, and writers were there, if anyone decides to look.
But what about the audience?
I’m not sure why I made this video. Is this a record of Barbara? Is it for Barbara, or about her? Is it a glimpse, a primer, a tribute, a facet, a souvenir?
Whatever it is: here’s Barbara Fingerote: Super Audience. Enjoy!
iPhoto caption: Writer and theatre artist Sophie Rivers in Yellowknife, N.W.T.
What can Toronto theatre learn from Yellowknife?
Growing up in Toronto, the Northwest Territories were always a distant idea, a place I knew only from colouring in elementary school maps. But over the summer, I came to see Yellowknife in a different light.
Cake, commuting, and conversation: Here’s what Canadian audiences value when they go to the theatre
This past spring, we invited a group of scholars, artists, and students to gather at the University of Toronto Mississauga to figure out what Canadian audiences want and need from their hosts.
George Bernard Shaw, Dungeons & Dragons, and me
I love George Bernard Shaw. This is my 11th season as an actor at his namesake festival. I think so much of what Shaw wrote could have been written yesterday. But some people aren’t interested in hearing what Shaw has to say to them 74 years after his death.
iPhoto caption: Kailin Brown in the Broadway National Tour of Chicago. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.
I’m not a woman, I just play one
“As a performer, my job is to play a character, and if that character is right for me it doesn’t matter what gender they are,” writes non-binary actor Kailin Brown. “What matters is that I can make a difference in someone’s life who can relate to the character, or to me as the actor.”
iPhoto caption: Photo by Robert Motum
Why would anyone do a PhD in theatre?
In an industry where stagnant government funding and tuition freezes have contributed to increasingly rigorous competition for fewer full-time positions, I’ve found myself reflecting: why do a PhD in theatre today?
Will female stories ever have a place in Canadian theatre?
A season of less than 50 per cent female playwrights, directors, and actors means the female-identifying population is not being fully represented. Programming becomes a question of this play or that play, as opposed to this and that, resulting in some narratives receiving short shrift.
A Final Checklist Before You Print up Your Play
Your play must have at least one character that could be played by a puppet.
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