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Hooked on awards, or: What ever happened to word of mouth?
The coming season: Awards or rewards?
Naomi Orwin
It’s fall and the new season of plays and music and dance and art is upon us. As I make a list of the shows I’m looking forward to, I begin to notice that each one boasts some sort of pedigree. The show is validated either by already having won an award or having been created by people who have won awards.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the reasons I want to see certain shows— The Book of Mormon at the Academy of Music and the current In The Heights at the Walnut Street Theatre, for example— is because they succeeded elsewhere. I’ve waited all this time; now I can go see them here in Philadelphia.
Some shows I want to see because of the people attached to them. Christopher Durang— whose Beyond Therapy played at the Adrienne last year, and who has won an Obie and a Tony award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist— won a Tony award for his Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which the Philadelphia Theatre Company will present. And Tom Stoppard, having already accumulated Tony and Academy Awards, won the Drama Desk award for The Real Thing, which will play at the Wilma.
(I once attended a workshop with Durang, and Stoppard’s work always intrigues me. But those awards ratify my judgment.)
A less fringe-y Fringe
Notice how often “award-winning” has become a necessary part of the description of the play, the playwright, the director or the cast. Clearly, people like to go to watch people who are successful. And theaters like to offer plays that they know will draw an audience.
Does this mean that audiences won’t go to see a show unless we know that somebody else has already liked it? Perhaps. But to judge from the excitement over the recently concluded FringeArts Festival, there is an appetite for new shows. Except”¦
Many of those allegedly “fringe” shows were “presented”— in other words, they were invited to the FringeArts Festival because they’d either been presented in Philadelphia before or because they had already succeeded elsewhere. So even the newly configured FringeArts isn’t quite so fringe-y any more.
Tried and true
When you come right down to it, virtually every play these days relies on some prior hook to attract an audience; ironically, in the age of the Internet, when a single enthusiastic theatergoer can start an audience stampede, few theater companies seem willing to entrust their fate to word-of-mouth.
I am drawn to the Lantern Theater Company’s Emma, for example, because I love Jane Austen (even if I didn’t love Austenland). And I want to see Flashdance, The Musical at the Academy of Music because I remember the movie— and who didn’t want to dance like Jennifer Beals?
Parade, at the Arden Theatre Company, is a musical based on a notorious historical event: the 1913 lynching of a Jewish factory manager in Georgia. And the actor-playwright Colman Domingo’s one-man show, A Boy and His Soul, is not only based on his gritty life, it has a Philadelphia connection. So does InterAct Theatre Company’s Down Past Passyunk. I’m a Philadelphian, so I want to see these shows, too.
Premieres, so-called
There are, of course, the classics for those who can’t survive a theater season without some Shakespeare (Julius Caesar at the Lantern) and some Chekhov (Three Sisters at the Arden). And there are the opera and the ballet for the classicists among us.
Yes, there are new shows as well. Some plays are designated “Philadelphia Premiere,” meaning that they’ve been done elsewhere but not here. Tribes at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver at the Lantern began their lives in regional theaters.
And there are world premieres, which are definitely new shows. Don Juan Comes Back From Iraq was developed over the past few years in discussions between the Wilma Theater’s artistic director Blanka Zizka and the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel.
Add to that concerts, performances, art exhibits, all the restaurants I’ve yet to try, along with checking out the new TV season, and”¦ Yikes! I just looked at my calendar. There’s no time left to just breathe. But then, I’m not an award-winning breather.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the reasons I want to see certain shows— The Book of Mormon at the Academy of Music and the current In The Heights at the Walnut Street Theatre, for example— is because they succeeded elsewhere. I’ve waited all this time; now I can go see them here in Philadelphia.
Some shows I want to see because of the people attached to them. Christopher Durang— whose Beyond Therapy played at the Adrienne last year, and who has won an Obie and a Tony award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist— won a Tony award for his Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which the Philadelphia Theatre Company will present. And Tom Stoppard, having already accumulated Tony and Academy Awards, won the Drama Desk award for The Real Thing, which will play at the Wilma.
(I once attended a workshop with Durang, and Stoppard’s work always intrigues me. But those awards ratify my judgment.)
A less fringe-y Fringe
Notice how often “award-winning” has become a necessary part of the description of the play, the playwright, the director or the cast. Clearly, people like to go to watch people who are successful. And theaters like to offer plays that they know will draw an audience.
Does this mean that audiences won’t go to see a show unless we know that somebody else has already liked it? Perhaps. But to judge from the excitement over the recently concluded FringeArts Festival, there is an appetite for new shows. Except”¦
Many of those allegedly “fringe” shows were “presented”— in other words, they were invited to the FringeArts Festival because they’d either been presented in Philadelphia before or because they had already succeeded elsewhere. So even the newly configured FringeArts isn’t quite so fringe-y any more.
Tried and true
When you come right down to it, virtually every play these days relies on some prior hook to attract an audience; ironically, in the age of the Internet, when a single enthusiastic theatergoer can start an audience stampede, few theater companies seem willing to entrust their fate to word-of-mouth.
I am drawn to the Lantern Theater Company’s Emma, for example, because I love Jane Austen (even if I didn’t love Austenland). And I want to see Flashdance, The Musical at the Academy of Music because I remember the movie— and who didn’t want to dance like Jennifer Beals?
Parade, at the Arden Theatre Company, is a musical based on a notorious historical event: the 1913 lynching of a Jewish factory manager in Georgia. And the actor-playwright Colman Domingo’s one-man show, A Boy and His Soul, is not only based on his gritty life, it has a Philadelphia connection. So does InterAct Theatre Company’s Down Past Passyunk. I’m a Philadelphian, so I want to see these shows, too.
Premieres, so-called
There are, of course, the classics for those who can’t survive a theater season without some Shakespeare (Julius Caesar at the Lantern) and some Chekhov (Three Sisters at the Arden). And there are the opera and the ballet for the classicists among us.
Yes, there are new shows as well. Some plays are designated “Philadelphia Premiere,” meaning that they’ve been done elsewhere but not here. Tribes at the Philadelphia Theatre Company and Athol Fugard’s The Train Driver at the Lantern began their lives in regional theaters.
And there are world premieres, which are definitely new shows. Don Juan Comes Back From Iraq was developed over the past few years in discussions between the Wilma Theater’s artistic director Blanka Zizka and the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel.
Add to that concerts, performances, art exhibits, all the restaurants I’ve yet to try, along with checking out the new TV season, and”¦ Yikes! I just looked at my calendar. There’s no time left to just breathe. But then, I’m not an award-winning breather.
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