The fledgling Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region is like a promising first draft of a new play. One can envision its beautiful potential – its warts are a little more immediately self-evident.
“This is a festival that is extraordinarily well-run. And it’s not only wonderful that it exists – it’s essential that it exists,” said Joe Kraemer, director of new-play development at Juilliard in New York. The 18-state showcase gave voice to 26 writers and galvanized a theater community that offered up 169 directors and actors who worked for free.
But after two years, organizers must address some fundamental flaws that threaten to make a third go-round in 2006 seem inconceivable. The showcase is expected to have lost about $8,000 for the second straight year. That’s because only 504 people attended the nine sessions at the Arvada Center over three days. Of those, 255 were unpaid comps. That means each session averaged only 27 paying customers in a theater that seats 498.
There are many reasons for the sparse attendance. Right now, too many perceive the showcase to be an industry weekend. The public has to know it exists. The Arvada Center draws nearly 160,000 a year for its theater programming, but it does little to encourage its subscribers to attend an event it co-presents with Red Rocks Community College.
How about offering one free ticket to each subscriber? Basic marketing says if you give one ticket away, that person brings someone who pays.
The $15 admission fee per session ($40 per day) is exorbitant for staged readings. If it were say, $5, and four times as many people came, you would actually boost revenue.
The actors and directors whose work makes the festival possible should be allowed to attend the entire festival for free. Organizers may see that as lost revenue, but few starving artists working for free can afford to pay up to $90 just to see their fellow actors work. It’s an insult to ask that of them after they already haven given of themselves for nothing.
It will be years before the festival can expect to break even. But a future financial goal does not have to keep it from reaching its artistic goal now: to have these plays heard by as many people as possible. The more people, the more feedback writers can collect from experts, audiences, actors and fellow playwrights. Paper the houses now: Increased attendance by any means necessary increases awareness, word of mouth and the value of each empty seat in future years.
It continues to be a gigantic wasted opportunity that the festival does not actively recruit the attendance of theater companies best known for doing new works. Theaters that can turn a reading into a staging are your most important audience.
It was a mistake this year for organizers to require all playwrights to attend and participate in his or her talkback. The talkbacks are great fun for the writer and audience alike, but good plays that were legitimately chosen as the best got bumped, and rejected plays were elevated. That’s sacrificing quality for entertainment value, and it’s a mistake.
A word on acting
Kraemer: “Those of us who work with professional actors all the time in New York remarked again and again at how marvelous this acting pool is in Colorado. I mean it’s outrageous. I am not joking when I say every performance has been fantastic. Not only is good acting a pleasure for an audience member, it’s essential for the playwright. Lousy acting can make the next rewrite the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest because you just don’t know if the problem is with your words or their acting.”
Briefly …
Dick Devin, producing artistic director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, says his tentative 2006 lineup is “The Tempest,” “The Merchant of Venice” and “Titus Andronicus.” He also expects to invite Seattle’s “Unexpected Shaxpere” improv show back for a second run. …
The Avenue Theatre will host a remount of the Nomad’s “The Fourth Wall” opening Saturday and running through Oct. 1. Meanwhile its naughty late-night hit, “The Rocky Horror Show,” has been extended through Oct. 1. And Alliance Stage’s “The Syringa Tree,” which closes today at the Town Hall Arts Center, re-opens at the Avenue Nov. 11-Dec. 18 …
The Physically Handicapped Amateur Musical Actors League premieres its new 45-minute touring show, “Smile and Say Hello,” at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Mizel Center. It’s written by PHAMALy actor Lucy Roucis and director Steve Wilson (303-575-0005) …
University of Denver chancellor emeritus Daniel L. Ritchie has been named to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Board of Trustees, and DCPA director of communications Dorothy Denny has been promoted to executive V.P. …
Celebrity sighting: Legendary Broncos linebacker Karl Mecklenberg at a recent performance of “Oklahoma!” at the Country Dinner Playhouse.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
