Sue's News

Educating the Masses One at a Time

October 13th, 2010

I love talking with the “common men and women” about theatre… finding out what they think it’s about. More often than not, I get lists of what a person has seen and what s/he thought. Today I spent quite a bit of quality time with a cable/phone technician as he did an installation for us. For the record, he recently saw Avenue Q and thought it was a “great” show. On the other end of the spectrum, he also saw God of Carnage, which he said was great — specifically for James Gandolfini. Of that show he said, “It was all dialogue, two hours of talking on a sofa, just straight talking, but it was really funny.”

When I showed him an actual script, he said, “Wow, so you write all the dialogue and stuff?”

I laughed and said, “Who do you think writes it?”

“I know what a writer does, I just thought the actors ad lib a bit.”

In explaining the difference between improvisation and straight up theatre, I said, “No, actually they aren’t allowed to do that. They have to say every word I’ve written as I’ve written it.”

“That must be hard for the actors.”

“It’s part of their job… and it’s part of my job to trust them to bring the characters to life… and trust the director to help them find their way into these characters and find a way to make this world believable.”

“So they can make your story come to life!”

“Exactly!”

Sometimes, the best way to reach and educate the masses about theatre is one person at a time.

–Sue

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