I saw a great couple of shows this week. They were very different pieces, at least to the detached observer, but objectivity doesn’t come easily when you’ve spent two decades working on shows in these same venues. Not to mention spending forty years second-guessing those curious, not-to-say mysterious, bipeds who come together to see a show, under one roof, but with a myriad different motivations.
If you were to ask these wonderful creatures, our patrons and paymasters, exactly why they are there (at that theatre, on that night, for that show) you will almost always get a mailbag of mixed responses. Unless, perhaps, the show benefits from stellar casting. Or maybe totally amazing crits. Don’t laugh, but sometimes you might even get both a big name and to-die-for reviews working for the same show. It does happen. Promise.
But of course, the real motors driving demand for a show may often be hidden below the water-line. Show-goers attending The Phantom of the Opera, in the mid-noughties, had stunning reviews and universally gob-smacking word-of-mouth packing them in. So it raised more than a couple of eyebrows when the surveys asked ‘What is your main reason for purchasing tickets,’ and the single biggest response (by far) was ‘Wife Pressure.’*
I might be wrong, but, I feel pretty sure that if I’d asked the same question this week, very few of my fellow patrons would reply with: “To increase my subjective well-being.”
Yet last week saw the publication of research that takes a look at how well-being is increased by that other Greek contribution to The Business of Pleasure, Sport. And the good news is that you don’t need to run six times around the city, freeze your wotsits off on a sub-arctic five-aside pitch, or have your face completely reconfigured at rugby to enjoy the benefits. To paraphrase that other Greek, Nike, Goddess of Victory… 'Just Watch It!'
The recent research** cites something called the ‘interactive ritual chain’ at work when watching sports, and I quote: ‘This theory suggests that individuals establish shared emotional experiences through participating in specific rituals together in social interactions.’
SEE DIAGRAM BELOW
There aren’t many direct theatre equivalents to supporting the same football team, week in, week out,*** but I believe it's impossible not to see how a venue full of strangers can cohere into a (broadly) homogenous unit as it follows, and interacts with, the piece through its various stages. Especially at a Musical, where, I would argue, the show’s structure can be clearly viewed from the perspective of deliberately seeking to achieve this coalescence … including establishing scenes, major transitions, first-half-closers, second-half-openers, coups de théâtre, eleventh hour numbers (the false ending) right through (hopefully) to the grand finale (the big bonus ending).
To put it another way…
A show MD has to lead the orchestra by the score, what’s happening on stage, and the reactions of the audience. And hopefully the show’s creatives will have set down a robust and well-constructed route for all three to follow. So that that roomful of strangers which had assembled when the lights went down, can coalesce together, as they emote together, and, through the medium of a shared theatre experience, send their well-being scores through the auditorium roof by the time the curtain comes down.
DT 14 December, 2024
*Around the same time, a national survey of art galleries also asked why attendees had made the decision to visit? The vast majority cited: “Because we saw people walking into the building and followed them.”
**Guo, Yang and Zhang, 6-12-24
***We did enjoy that wonderful fan-reaction at Phantom early doors, with the same hundred or so regulars queuing overnight, once-a-week (every week!). And I guess the indomitable green-faced Wicked tribe must bear obvious similarities to the dyed-in-the-woad football fans.
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