I am not a fan of professional sports. I have nothing against them (for that, you have to get me started on college sports and the ethical and educational issues involved), I just don’t connect with them the way so many do. For the record, I enjoy the occasional baseball or hockey game or tennis match (live and in-person, of course), but I don’t live and die by the fortunes of any team. And yet I feel that the arts could learn a lot from sports.

Sports certainly command much greater attention overall than the arts. Even the smallest newspaper, in these embattled times for the print media, have a daily sports section; not so for the arts. Local TV stations all have their nightly sports report, while arts related stories (outside of accidents or scandals) are lucky to occasionally turn up as the “kicker” just before the segue to national news, Leno or Letterman. Countless colleges (and here’s where I get riled again) offer various sports scholarships to lure top athletes, while I’m unfamiliar with performance scholarships outside of schools with major performing arts courses of study, and even those are relatively scarce. Broadcasts of sporting events blanket the airwaves week in and week out, while the arts are relegated to PBS, Ovation and twice annually (The Tonys and The Kennedy Center Honors) to CBS.

So what can we learn?

Surely frequency is not the issue, since there are countless “major league” arts performances around the country every night. The audience for live arts performances is (at least according to figures I heard once upon a time) comparable to the live audience for sporting events (and let’s not forget that the trend in stadium building is to go smaller, not bigger). While arts fundraising is at a particularly challenging juncture, sports fans don’t buy tickets and make contributions to support their teams, and in fact plenty make no financial commitment beyond a TV set and cable or satellite service.

It is not too outlandish to think that perhaps sports and the arts have comparable audiences (when you factor in school performances, amateur productions and the like). So perhaps the issue is one of perception and not necessarily participation. Herewith, a few thoughts on the matter.

1. We are not well organized. Despite the best efforts of national organizations like (using theatre examples) TCG and local organizations ranging from ART/NY to Theatre Bay Area, the arts remain a patchwork quilt of activity at the professional level. While artists would surely resist the oversight of anything akin to the sports leagues, the marketing and promotional benefits of such associations provide a highly professional means of advertising each sporting discipline. And while we now have the NFL as a Broadway producer, with the NBA not far behind, you won’t see the League of American Orchestras sponsoring a team at NASCAR.

2. We don’t offer enough variety. Sit down, sit down, listen before you shout. While there is in fact a vast array of arts on offer, each show, each exhibition is, ideally, a fixed event (or that’s our goal, consistency). Whether a production has four performances or forty, the event itself is relatively unchanging from night to night, while every sporting event promises a different outcome. Consequently, a play, a concert, a dance piece, once reported upon, doesn’t necessarily warrant (in the eyes of the media) a second or third write up. Opera seems to have an advantage here, since the major companies rotate casts in the same productions regularly, and as a result, where there is comprehensive arts coverage, a single production can be reviewed many times. Can we do more to change things up, such as Ayckbourn’s infinitely tricky Intimate Exchanges, eight plays with 16 endings, or the various courses one can follow through Sleep No More?

3. We employ a veil of secrecy. Many years ago, I read a provocative essay (which I deeply regret not being able to credit properly or provide a link to), in which the author suggested that sports get more attention that the arts because they invite the press in at every step in the process. There are reporters at spring training, at pre-season games, conducting interviews in locker rooms before and after games. In contrast, the arts tightly control access to artists and perhaps even more so, to process. Can we be more open at every step of creation?

4. Parental guidance is delegated. Far be it from me to denigrate arts education programs, but there’s something a bit curious about them, in that they essentially allow others to take the primary responsibility for educating our children about the arts. While I realize that many parents may not have knowledge of or inclination towards the arts, isn’t it peculiar that I learned the rules of sports from my dad (who is no buff either) from a very young age, while my arts education was all by people to whom I had no particular emotional connection, namely my teachers. Especially at a time when arts education is threatened, doesn’t it make sense to advocate and support efforts in which the arts are a family activity, rather than a school-based one?

To paraphrase a line from playwright Bill Cain, I don’t have all the answers, I just want to ask better questions. And so I am fascinated by fan engagement with sports and I constantly ponder it, examine it for solutions which might afford the same level of attention and enthusiasm for the arts. I don’t mean to minimize the extraordinary efforts made by so many – umbrella organizations, dedicated arts educators, passionate and evangelical fans – but I keep hoping that we can do better, especially when I am deluged by conversations about basketball brackets, world championships (that are, egocentrically, only U.S. championships), and spectacular television ratings. After all, we’re well behaved, why can’t we have nice things?

And maybe that’s it – we’re too well-behaved. The arts have to not merely break out of the box (and indeed, we perform our work in boxes for the most part) but smash the box altogether. If we can be truly unpredictable, infinite in our variety, assiduous in our lobbying for attention and creating our own avenues for that attention, then maybe we’ll get more than we get today, in eyeballs, in funding and in understanding.

A final word, about the title of this piece. One of my former bosses, who shall go nameless, often troops out a timeworn metaphor when talking to Rotary Clubs or government officials about the work of theatre, comparing it to baseball while also acknowledging that everything we do will not succeed. He has honed this particular elevator speech and employed it so often that any staff member can “sing along” with him every time he lapses into it (much to his consternation). But after many years of teasing him about this odd, all-occasion St. Crispin’s Day speech for the theatre, I have come to realize that while it may need some refreshing, there is something very smart at its core: not unlike a politician, he has adopted the language of the competition in order give others some insight into our world, since that language is the lingua francaof the American public, while ours is esoteric and mysterious. Perhaps trying to level the playing field (a phrase surely derived from some sporting event) isn’t the worst idea in the world.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

It goes without saying that, as a literature based-discipline, theatre must be very sensitive in its word usage. Certainly playwrights choose their words with care, to insure that we understand not only story, but character, by faithfully following their script. In contrast to what we hear about the movie business, playwrights’ words are sacrosanct in the theatre; they are not altered, production by production, by actors or directors to make either party – or the audience – more comfortable. Words are the road map from which all theatre springs.

So now let me pose a hypothesis: what if the word ‘theatre’ is the greatest threat to the very discipline of theatre?

Before you begin to parse the last phrase, let me state that I am not seeking to reopen the tiresome “theater vs. theatre” argument that seems to blossom anew every so often. For the purpose of this discussion (and as far as I’m concerned, at any time) the variant spellings are interchangeable, as is ‘teatro’ which I tossed out once during an internet debate in an effort to end a cycle of meaningless debate.

So, why do I worry about the word ‘theatre’? I’m concerned that, like so many things that are said in the world, its meaning to the speaker may be profoundly different to those who hear it. And I fear that the word ‘theatre’ — not the act of making it, or the buildings that house it – has connotations we rarely think about.

If you happen to use Google News to search on either word (and the ever literal algorithm distinguishes between them), you will of course find a deluge of articles that speak to the act of people collectively gathering to present a dramatic story live for an assembled audience, as well as a steady flow about performance spaces being built, refurbished or razed. But seeded amongst these expected results are the stories that make we wonder about whether ‘theatre’ always means what we want it to mean.

I cannot tell you how many articles about government, be it city, state, federal or foreign, constantly cite acts of ‘political theatre.’ In the vast majority of these citings, they refer not to activists engaging in some performance-based activity designed to illustrate a position on an issue. Instead, ‘political theatre’ seems, in its common usage, to refer to political acts, statements and strategies that are merely for show — empty, hollow gestures that serve only to advance an agenda, and are sized up by reporters as cynical acts of attempted manipulation.

I also see flare-ups of articles about ‘security theatre,’ in which the more public efforts to address the safety of the populace, such as the work of the Transportation Safety Authority or random bag checks in the New York City subways, are seen merely as sham demonstrations of protection, rather than meaningful steps towards securing the population. But one thing is for certain: whether it’s ‘political theatre’ or ‘security theatre,’ ‘theatre’ is used to denigrate the action taking place, not to elevate it.

So when we talk of drawing people to the theatre, or working in the theatre, are we, for the many people who are not attendees, suggesting that what we do is itself a sham, the apotheosis of fakery? Yes, what we do is to engage audiences in an act of collective pretending, but in order to achieve a higher purpose, whether it is to bring them joy or illuminate some truth. But is that possibly understood by those who have either not been exposed to, or do not connect with, the art form so many of us love? If the media and the public accept ‘theatre’ as a pejorative when it is tied to ventures other than the act of making words come alive on stage, is the word becoming barnacled with a negativity that carries over to our own efforts?

Let me offer a corollary. One of the words that theatremakers embrace and champion is the word ‘new.’ It is, to us, a word that means many things – not yet of the repertory, encompassing of current style and ideas, unseen by our constituency – but in every case it is worn as a badge of honor by artists, companies and enlightened funders. That we are engaged in the ‘new’ is to blaze a pathway and be part of building the continuum of the stage.

Yet I have learned, from both anecdotal and research evidence at multiple theatres in different communities, that most audiences do not hear ‘new’ when we say it. What they hear is ‘risky,’ ‘unproven,’ ‘experimental,’ even ‘avant-garde,’ when all we’re trying to say is that they probably (or in the case of world premieres, certainly) have not seen it before. And when they’re deciding whether to plunk down money in order to enter into the unknown, many will balk. This is why whenever I hear about theatres surveying their audiences to ask what they’d like to see, the answers are invariably titles of plays they’ve seen before and liked. After all, they cannot name plays as yet unwritten, and the casual theatergoer is not going to ask to be subjected to risk, even though those of us on the inside of creative endeavors know that only by risking do we have the potential to achieve great things.

Perhaps you find my wordplay on ‘theatre’ and ‘new’ to be merely semantic pedantry; it surely would not be the first time I’ve been accused of such. But as we watch the political arena, the marketing arena and other cauldrons of ‘message,’ I don’t think we should simply overlook the possibility that the very words which we hold so dear may be stumbling blocks to reaching new audiences. Perhaps we should have gotten a message when a decades-old PBS mainstay of high quality drama dropped ‘theatre’ from its name, to be known henceforth as “Masterpiece.”

If it is true that theatre audiences, or audiences for any of the arts, are in fact experiencing a diminution of demand, then we may need better words to describe our efforts and to incite others to experience them, lest the work we create and celebrate – that of playwrights, bookwriters, lyricists and composers – go unheard.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

My parents were not theatergoers. That is not to suggest that they didn’t enjoy theatre, but for reasons of time, finances and priorities, I was taken to theatre (at least that I can recall) only twice by my parents.

Consequently, it was once I began working in this business that my parents had their most consistent opportunities to see theatre. That is not to say they were omnivores, gorging on complimentary tickets; I had to choose rather carefully for their tastes. I can best sum that taste up by explaining that they saw most every show produced at Goodspeed during my four years working there (and for many years after), while I’m not sure they saw even a half-dozen during my eight years at Hartford Stage.

The great plus in this was that I had my own two-person focus group handy whenever I needed them, and they would often prove instantly insightful without any provocation. “This isn’t a review,” commented my father one time, reading a particularly non-committal piece of ostensible criticism in a major Connecticut paper. “It’s a book report. I can tell he saw it, but have no idea what he thought.”

That said, my parents were just happy to enjoy a show, and for many, many years, when I would point out some aspect of a production that I didn’t feel was quite right, I would hear their endless refrain, “You’re just too picky.”

On one rare occasion, my parents had the opportunity to see a new show in workshop when I was running The O’Neill. When that musical was later produced at Goodspeed at Chester, they asked to see it again. Why did less-than-die-hard theatergoers opt to see the same material a second time? Simple. They had liked it so much in the barn at The O’Neill that they wanted to enjoy it once more, but this time with sets, costumes, props and a proper rehearsal period.

When the performance was over at Goodspeed, they carefully waited until no one could overhear, then my mother leaned in and whispered, “Why isn’t it funny anymore? It was so funny at The O’Neill.” They were disappointed and clearly stumped, since in fact the show had undergone little revision, but it was, in fact, just laying there on the Goodspeed stage after soaring at The O’Neill. And that’s when I tried to explain to my parents the difference between a play and a production. I don’t recall what I said, but I think they got at least some of it.

I wish I could have that same sort of conversation with everyone who goes to the theatre, because I think it is a concept that is central to the creative work of theatre, but least understood by the audience.

Admittedly, understanding how to differentiate between play (and for the sake of simplicity, please know I include musicals as well) and production is difficult for almost anyone when seeing a world premiere. When a text is in progress right up to its opening night, when artists – director, designers, actors – are interacting with the playwright’s words for the first time, it can be very difficult to know exactly how they have impacted upon each other when every element is brand new. It is entirely possible that the director invented a piece of stagecraft that the playwright never envisioned; actors’ personalities and skills may cause their characters to evolve a certain way; their suggestions may inform the writing as well.

On premieres, even those of us in the business don’t always know. After all, we may also feel something is amiss in a debut production, but it’s not always possible to tease out what feels wrong, since we have no yardstick with which to measure the relative success of the text (the play) or the production (the direction, the acting choices, the design).

This is a shame, because many a new play that receives a less than optimal production can have its future life derailed. I vividly recall the physical production of the originalLa Bête on Broadway in 1991, but when I heard it would be revived, I was blank on the play. After this revival, I now believe I have been able to truly see (and will remember) the play. And not to harp on Matthew Warchus productions, but having found the film of Boeing-Boeing unwatchable, an opinion apparently shared by the press and audiences upon its Broadway premiere in 1965, I can only think that the blame lies with the productions, since the Broadway revival was a riot.

Revivals, or simply subsequent productions, are where the distinction between play and production come into greater relief. If we have seen Hamlet in full 17th century regalia, we understand immediately that the play remains Hamlet even when we see it again, but with our hero in a hoodie, or a business suit. We begin to see where a director’s vision has acted upon a text, and if you see multiple Hamlets, it also becomes clearer how each actor’s interpretation changes our impression of this young man.

Why is this important to me? Because I think there are too many times where a play can get a bad rap because of its first production – and that as a result, audiences can be scared away from new plays.

Inside of a theatre, we are all excited by new plays. The opportunity to be there at the inception of a new work (maybe even get our name in the printed edition), is a heady, thrilling thing. It’s why we got into the business, to experience creation. As a result, we believe that the audience shares our enthusiasm.

Au contraire.

At Goodspeed, whose work is as audience-friendly as you can get, we were confounded when audience members told us that Goodspeed at Chester, our second stage, was where the “experimental” work was done. Experimental? In progress — yes. Receiving its first production — sure. But experimental? This work was as far from the avant-garde of Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson as I am in looks from Hugh Jackman. So where did that impression come from – and linger – after well over a decade of productions?

When I was up at Geva Theater in Rochester, I noticed a peculiar tic on the part of the audience, even of the board. If an unknown work was produced and proved popular, then people remembered its name. If it was generally disliked, it was shrugged off with the pejorative of “that new play,” a vague plot synopsis substituting for a title.

New is not a good word for many audiences. It’s a warning sign flashing “Danger – ahead lies the unknown,” and not everyone likes surprises.

There’s a corollary to this, which takes me back to the issue of play and production. That’s the frequency with which, when a new work doesn’t fully succeed, a certain phrase recurs in conversation with theatre patrons: “Why on earth did they ever pick this play?” Complete dismissal of the project and the process, incredulity that anyone had found value in it.

No artistic director or commercial producer chooses work with the intention of it failing. But sometimes it does, in part or whole. Maybe the play doesn’t truly work, or maybe the production doesn’t develop it and further reveal it. However, no one set out to produce something unsatisfying. Those are the moments when I wish that audiences could better ascertain the distinction between play and production, giving the author, and the producers, the benefit of the doubt and understanding that the artistic process is imprecise. It is not manufacturing, it is creation.

So how do we tackle this problem? It cannot simply be explained. I believe we can never put ourselves in the position of explicitly educating our audiences, lest they see theatre as a chore to tolerated – or avoided. The distinction between play and production must be demonstrated, and I suspect artists are better equipped to devise a means to do that than anyone.

Once at Hartford Stage, Mark Lamos conducted a master class, in which over the course of 90 minutes, with two actors who had just met, he set about to do a cursory staging of a mere 14 lines from Romeo and Juliet, explaining bits of the text to the actors (and audience) and suggesting some rudimentary blocking. Then with a bit of time left, he took the same actors through the first 24 lines of Act V, scene i of The Merchant of Venice, where Lorenzo and Jessica have just spent the night together. Mark had the actors play up the sexuality of the scene, the post-coital bliss, forcing these strangers into immediate intimacy, which they literally embraced at his direction. And then he asked them to do the scene again, giving them only a single note of direction to alter the approach: “Now do it as if the sex was bad.” And they did so with all of the awkward pauses, avoided glances and disappointment they could muster. The audience gasped, then broke into applause. The infinite variety of play vs. production was laid bare.

For those of you reading this who are members of the audience, I hope you will take every opportunity to discern the difference between play and production, as I think it will give you an even greater appreciation for the performances you enjoy, as well as the ones you don’t. Unless you have a script in hand (easy when in England, all too rare in the U.S.), you can’t work apart the intertwined strands. I offer no easy prescription, no declarative key that will unlock these mysteries, only the hope that they can be increasingly understood, especially so that formative work with be taken in its true context, not viewed as a final, immutable product, and supported even when it comes up short in your eyes.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.

Had I seen any one of the following items over the past week or so, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But, as I say, each of the following has caught my attention over the last 10 days:

• A major institutional theatre featured on its blog of a series of overheard audience conversations which I shall refer to as “rather unenlightened” regarding the nature of theatre
• A talented composer sent a tweet seeking to incite use of the hashtag “Dumb Audience Comments”
• A theatre employee tweeted the title of their current production in the form most mangled by a patron
• Theatre ushers endlessly shouted at patrons outside a theatre as to which lines to get into and to “keep it moving” in a manner that reminded me of airport security
• A newspaper critic sardonically tweeted and later blogged a letter, almost inexplicably routed to them, from a theatre patron dismayed at the updating of Shakespeare

I don’t provide this litany in order to embarrass or criticize any single person or institution. Frankly, I think these are a) just the tip of the iceberg and b) entirely typical of the kind of conversations and interactions that go on within producing offices and non-profit institutions all the time.

I do not hold myself blameless, though I think after more than seven years in which I am more a member of the audience than I am a theatre staffer, I have moved beyond the mindset exemplified by my first paying theatre job. That was in a box office in which we were extremely polite to the patrons on the phone (in those pre-Internet days), but thought nothing of putting a call on hold to finish a hand of gin rummy (a card game, just in case I have used an archaic reference). But that was the first of many box offices I know of where, just out of sight of patrons, a pinned up list of mangled play titles was studiously maintained for the hilarity of the b.o. staff, and would on occasion be shared more broadly within the theatre’s administration.

But taken together, the minor incidents above indicate an inherent disregard for the audience. Even when it remains largely out of sight and earshot, an insider’s game for those in the know, I have grown concerned about the “us and them” quality of these ostensibly funny moments which occur, no question, all too often if you work inside a theatre.

Something people rarely stop to consider is how little human interaction a patron can have when attending the theatre, especially now that ticket buying has become predominantly an Internet based activity. Think about it: you can buy tickets, or even a subscription, via computer; enter a theatre where your ticket (or to my dismay, your 8.5 x 11 printout from your home computer) is scanned by someone whose conversation is usually limited to “please have your tickets out and ready for scanning”; a brief exchange with an usher, who is either an employee eager to keep traffic moving or a volunteer who is handing out programs in exchange for seeing the show for free; and perhaps a bartender at intermission when speed, not cordiality, is most prized.

So let me say first how vitally important it is that the front of house people feel a part of the theatre, and understand that they are – aside from the performance of the play, which is of course at a bit of a distance – the primary personal interaction the audience has while at the theatre. They are, quite literally, on the front lines of how patrons experience a show, and just as surely as a surly waiter can effect one’s perception of a finely cooked restaurant meal, a condescending usher can immediately color a patron’s perception of a play. Even calm, swift professionalism can have a distancing effect.

But I am not writing to indict those on the front lines, who probably encounter a wider range of human interaction than you might think possible. Rather, I am writing to address the sentiments that take place higher up the org chart, in which the foibles of and frustrations caused by the audience become part of the lingua franca of theatre operation. It is that attitude which either trickles down to those we charge with serving our audiences, or which can fail to arrest such behavior when it occurs.

In an era where there is constant talk about declining audiences, rising prices and the need to attract “the next generation of theatre patrons,” I think it undermines those efforts when the staff (or our critics) take the opportunities to make sport of the people WHO ARE ACTUALLY GOING TO THE THEATRE. Sorry for shouting, but considering how hard we must all work to inspire audiences to visit for the first time, let alone return again and again we cannot afford to foster any activity which diminishes respect for the theatre patron. And even if the sheet in the box office is never seen by the audience, it is dangerous to have such a document maintained and shared, be it by samizdat or intranet, because the next time a patron flubs a show’s title, the sales representative may quickly focus on retaining the malapropism, rather than taking care of the needs of someone who has bought, or wishes to buy, a ticket to that show, whatever the heck it’s called.

Let’s face it, if we work in theatre, our knowledge of the form, of the literature, of the practice of theatre is almost immediately head and shoulders above that of many patrons, even if one is a novice in their first professional job. Our audiences haven’t made theatre their life’s work, and in many cases it’s not even a deep passion, but merely part of a menu of entertainment options. They aren’t necessarily going to know how to pronounce Marivaux, distinguish Ivanov from Platonov, remember which Rapp brother writes plays or which one was in Rent, or appreciate that the tradition of placing classics in alternate time periods is hardly new (even Shakespeare refers to a clock in Julius Caesar, set in an era when no such device existed, but that’s actually irrelevant). They’re in our theatres because they want to be; they’re calling us because they’re curious; they’re discussing drama in our lobby not because they’re experts, but because they’re engaged; they’re sending tweets, e-mails and even letters because they care and have something they need to say – and need to have heard.

Every human being can be the source of good natured fun, but when it becomes pervasive, judgmental or sport for those who make their livings off of the enthusiasm of audiences, a line has been crossed, and we have institutionalized elitism in a way that will prove damaging, no matter how innocent any single comment, tweet or blog may seem.

Let me close with a story.

For many years, I would visit the Glimmerglass Opera each summer, to see the work of a friend who was a regular director there. I went solely out of friendship, because I am not a fan of opera; it does not speak to me personally, and certainly I don’t have the emotional connection that the aficionados feel deeply. Simply put, when I am at the opera, I feel dumb, left out, and ill-at-ease. Nonetheless, I would go out of duty and dedication (which are not, admittedly, the motivators one hopes for from their audience) to my friend. I counted on the story (which I did not know in most cases) and the staging (which is of course the most “theatrical,” and therefore familiar), to carry me through.

Each summer, a small informal dinner party/picnic was thrown by one of the opera’s patrons for my friend, and he would assemble the guest list, mostly the other directors and designers, and his friends who had made the trek for opening night. One evening, some 90 minutes before Tosca was to begin, the small group began reminiscing about other Tosca‘s they’d seen or worked on. I, the novice, could do nothing but listen, as I had never seen or heard the opera. The conversation began to focus on the climactic moment of Tosca and (spoiler alert!) the group began recounting the many hilarious incidents they remembered of less than effective Tosca death scenes. After much laughter, a calm descended, and I was compelled to ask the group, “Excuse me, but did any of you consider that some of us may have never seen Tosca, and that you just destroyed the ending for me?” The speed with which they virtually shouted “No” at me and fell about laughing at my ignorance was stunning. To them, Tosca’s death was a given, known to all, and I should have known it already.

So there I was, in my annual outing, hoping once again that I might enjoy a stage work outside my knowledge base, and I became a source of humor when I spoke honestly about it. If you want people to share your love of theatre, whether you’re a professional or an avid fan, just remember that as much fun as it is to talk to those already in the tent, our peers, our real need must be on inviting more people in, on their terms, not ours, and always with respect and signs of welcome.

This post originally appeared on the American Theatre Wing website.