Archives for August 2008

I’ve long been aware of the impact that a performance venue can have on an audience. But it wasn’t until I saw two shows on two adjacent days in two very different venues by the same company that I realized just how differently audiences behave in contrasting settings.

Last week, I caught two of the four productions in Shakespeare Santa Cruz‘s summer season: Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. All’s Well was performed in the Glen — a magical and surprisingly intimate outdoor space framed by towering redwood trees. Burn This was produced in the Festival’s great indoor space, which also feels quite cozy despite its fairly generous 500+ seat size thanks to the gentle rake of the stadium seating around the apron stage. The audience for the Shakespeare was one of the most responsive I’ve ever seen at any production — indoor or outdoor. They cheered and whooped with delight in the comic scenes. They yelled out stuff like “oh no!” when Bertram rejected Helena. They clapped between scenes and generally made themselves very much part of the experience. Contrastingly, the Wilson crowd was much more subdued. They clapped only at the end of the entire play. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, it was so quiet.

I should start out by stating the obvious: In order to compare the impact of spaces properly, I would need to see the same — or at least very similar — plays produces in the two venues. Burn This is clearly a very different kind of theatrical experience than All’s Well. Yet in some ways the two works are comparable — they’re both pretty intense plays about human relationships, they’re both dark comedies, and the key characters in both dramas are complex and fully-rounded. Given that a large percentage of SSC’s audiences are subscribers and go to see most if not all of the four shows on the festival’s program, a comparison doesn’t seem completely spurious.

So why should the audiences respond in such polar ways? It’s hard to believe that the content and presentation of the plays themselves are responsible for this phenomenon. I have a hunch that the reactions of the crowd have more to do with the settings than anything else. If Burn This were performed in the Glen, amid those wonderful trees and with people lounging on blankets, munching snacks and drinking wine throughout, I think audiences would be much more vocal. Similarly, All’s Well would probably provoke less of an overt reaction if it were played under a lighting grid than a leafy canopy, with the audience sitting in regular rows of theatre seats without the snacks and drinks.

I’d be interested to find out if the experience I had at these two plays matches the one for audiences seeing the other two productions in SSC’s current season: Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet and Itamar Moses’ Bach at Leipzig. On a related theme — I wonder how contemporary plays like Moses’ and Wilson’s would play outdoors? Putting the Bard under the stars is the obvious thing to do. I wonder if the festival’s new artistic director Marco Barricelli will ever be bold enough to stage a newer work in the Glen and bring Shakespeare inside?

Those arts critics are an unscrupulous bunch. I should know — I should know: I’m a professional theatre reviewer.

It was interesting, therefore, to find myself at the receiving end of a review for the first time since I started working as an arts journalist. Last Saturday, my a cappella vocal ensemble, San Francisco Renaissance Voices, staged the opening night of our Indian dance and music-infused “fusion” take on Ordo Virtutum, a 12th century musical drama by the German Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. San Francisco Classical Voice sent a critic, Jason Victor Serinus, to review the show.

The review was kind of mixed: the critic didn’t much like our unorthodox approach to the material from a theological perspective: “While no Reader’s Digest summary can do justice to a complex belief system and way of life that embraces ideologies of reincarnation, karma, and spiritual liberation, it seems safe to say that Christianity and Hinduism offer different paths to God. Throw Celtic music, rooted in the pagan tradition of Goddess-based nature worship, into the mix, and you have a very confused spiritual cosmology that trivializes Hildegard’s faith.”

But Serinus seemed to enjoy the musicianship: “On a purely musical level, San Francisco Renaissance Voices excelled.”

I played the role of Anima, the soul who gets seduced by the Devil and then returns, repentant, to the true path. I don’t mean to sound like the universe revolves around me, but the fact that the critic didn’t have anything to say about my performance is a bit troubling. Failing to talk about Anima is a bit like writing a review of Hamlet without talking about the actor who played drama’s most famous Danish prince.

Makes me wonder. Very often, if I steer clear of talking about a key actor’s performance, particularly in a smallish production, it’s because I don’t have anything positive to say…

Anyway, I’m intrigued at how unfazed I’m feeling about the whole thing. I’m just happy to be part of the work. And what do I take away from the experience of being reviewed as a critic? The main thing, I think, is a greater awareness of how much people involved in a production care about what’s said about them — even if it’s just being said by some random guy in a local, online classical music publication. The sheer number of emails that have bounced around today between various members of my group is staggering. I always knew critics at the New York Times and The Guardian could influence productions. I didn’t think San Francisco Classical Voice would make such an impression.

This experience will, if nothing else, remind me of the power of words.

On Friday morning, during a trip to Santa Cruz to review a couple of shows in this year’s Shakespeare Santa Cruz festival, I found myself sitting at breakfast in the lovely waterfront B&B where I stayed overnight, chatting with a New York-based television producer about classical music.

The producer, whom I shall call D, is in the early stages of putting together a television documentary about classical music, specifically looking at the barriers preventing the wider reception of classical music in America today. D was in town to catch the opening night of the Cabrillo Contemporary Music Festival.

D is a big fan of Classical period composers. He especially loves Mozart. “I grew up with this music,” he said. D was feeling slightly apprehensive about attending the Cabrillo Festival, as in the past, he admitted, he had not gotten a lot out of contemporary classical music. “It doesn’t really have any melodies,” he told me over fresh scones and lemon preserves. “There’s nothing to hang on to.”

I thought it was interesting that someone planning on making a documentary about barriers preventing the wider reception of classical music should have this attitude. “I wonder if your feelings about contemporary classical music in some way reflect what many people say about classical music in general in this country?” I suggested. “I mean, you like Mozart because it’s wired into your system. You’ve been listening to the composer’s music all your life, so his melodies, rhythms and harmonic systems seem completely familiar and natural to you. If other people feel the same way about Mozart as you do about, say, John Cage, George Benjamin and Conlon Nancarrow, then perhaps that’s because they haven’t spent a lot of time with Mozart. As a result, his music sounds weird. They don’t understand it. Getting to grips with this ‘unusual’ sound would require a lot of effort, so it’s easier just to say they don’t like it and stick to stuff they know they do like, whether that be folk music, rap, hip-hop or whatever.”

D thought about this for a second and then said, “But you can’t compare your average pop song to a Mozart symphony or piano concerto. Pop music is generally very simple. Often it only employs three chords and has very straight forward repeated melodies. Whereas Mozart’s music is so sophisticated.”

I pushed my point further. “You know, about six months ago, I would have been inclined to agree with you,” I told D. I then went on to describe my experience of learning and performing Ordo Virtutum, a 12th century musical drama by Hildegard von Bingen composed in Germanic Latin plainchant, with my a cappella singing ensemble, San Francisco Renaissance Voices. “When I first received the score, I was completely put off by the music. It seemed like an incomprehensible jumble of notes to me. It had no hummable melodies, no rhythms to speak of and, being monophonic, no harmonies,” I explained. “But gradually, as I got comfortable with the music and started to learn it, I found that it started to take shape. After a few weeks, Hildegard’s formerly dull and inscrutable chants seemed like the most beautiful music in the world. All I needed was to take the time to immerse myself in it.”

The point I was trying to make to D is rather simple: People put up barriers to classical music (and many other art forms) not at the deepest level because they find it too complicated or elitist, but rather because they’re just not used to hearing it. If J. S. Bach’s Toccatas were constantly played on commercial radio stations and in shopping malls, people would inevitably soak up the composer’s sounds. After a while, they might actually dig it. Or at the very least, gain an understanding of how it works.

Thinking about this subject reminds me of the time I experienced my first — and, at this point in time, last — Chinese opera at Berkeley’s Cal Performances the year before last. The Peony Pavilion is regarded as a masterwork. But to me, it sounded like cats being strangled. If I were to listen to lots more Chinese opera, I’m certain the barriers would come down. I may not ever fall in love with this form of music. But I would doubtless be more inclined to stay open-minded and curious about it.

So I wonder if the answer to the barriers question is, at least in part, one of immersion? This is kind of obvious really. It all boils down to openness and education. Simply dismissing unfamiliar genres as “dumb”, “elitist” or whatever is all too easy.

I’m not sure what D made of my breakfast table tirade. I’m excited about his project anyway. I hope it comes off.

Everyone I’ve spoken to regarding Phyllida Lloyd’s movie adaptation of the irrepressibly perky ABBA musical, Mama Mia!, absolutely loathes the film. Anthony Lane’s scathing review in The New Yorker pretty much sums up the feelings of many other people I’ve talked with about the movie in recent weeks.

Yet as saccharine, badly filmed and poorly performed as it may be, the movie seems to be garnering wild praise from one particular section of society: women of a certain age. From my mother to the lady in the coffee shop down the road, to my vocal coach, female Baby Boomers are getting hot flushes over the musical.

This isn’t altogether surprising. We simply love to see ourselves — or a flattering projection of ourselves — reflected in the culture. Infused with catchy songs by the 70s supergroup and featuring a story about forthright, 50-something ladies living the good life, Mama Mia! easily appeals to the fantasies of this particular demographic. It matters not that Pierce Brosnan (in his most career-destroying role to date) can barely hold a note and that Meryl Streep looks like a dyspeptic giraffe in her knee-high silver-glittered platform-heeled boots. What matters is that the middle-aged female characters have all best lines not to mention the most sex in the film. And that Meryl and Pierce end up in the sack.

Should it bother us that cultural products like Mama Mia! have such narrow appeal? Certainly the film is not alone in alienating large numbers of people and pleasing few. Female Baby Boomers certainly are a powerful enough economic and social force to drive the movie’s box office. The film made the strongest debut of any musical on screen to date, box office-wise.

Demographics are a curious thing. The rules that govern how they work seem to have very little to do with the quality of the product.