Break it, John!

The Guardian has a hip and oftentimes very interesting arts blog that Google Reader gloriously brings to me every day. Here's part of an article about a recent production (at the Menier Chocolate Factory) of La Cage aux Folles and their use of audience participation:

"It can be refreshing when a production breaks down the barriers between audience and performers in this way, puncturing the fourth wall and encouraging interaction...But it needs to be managed imaginatively for it to really work, and there is a tepid quality to the way it is done in La Cage. These interludes felt a little too rehearsed - ironic in a production that otherwise has a distinctly rough-around-the-edges appeal. There was no danger, it all felt a bit forced and half-hearted. They'd tweaked the rules, but only superficially. You got the feeling that any genuine interaction with the performances would be unwelcome. It is understandable why they'd want to minimise the uncertainty that comes with audience involvement... I just wish they'd been a bit more daring and pushed this aspect of the show a little further."

Breaking the fourth wall has come up a few times for me over the past week.

I saw a show last night at La MaMa- "Fountain of Youth," a music/dance/poetry/fusion thing by Akim Funk Buddha, a (this is from his bio) "Director/Composer/Performer/old-school B-boy MC." Um, right. Fellow Box Office Gal Emma and I went, and as we ascended the stairs, we whispered to each other...."I hope there's no audience participation in this." Of course that meant there were, and for silly reasons we wound up in the front row. Withing five minutes the audience had been semi-gently reprimanded (some would say "encouraged") for not vocally responding loud enough. During a freestyle something-or-other, Akim approached Emma with the mic for a sound and she shook her head no. (I would have done the same.) In short, it was an hour of the worst, absolutely worst kind of audience participation-- the kind that is so forced that it detracts from the show and makes people, or at least me, really uncomfortable.

I was telling a recent reader of WTTAN (people write me just begging to read it, don't you know. Oh, wait. This is real life?) about how Rigg's fourth-wall-breaking came about and started thinking about the huge can of worms Craig and I repeatedly opened for ourselves during that show -- the enduring question of WHO IS THE AUDIENCE TO YOU? once you've addressed them directly. Obviously in Akim's show, we were us. In La Cage, I'd probably be someone at La Cage. So that works. While talking about it, I struggled to properly voice the eventual answer Craig and I worked out for Riggs and WTTAN-- the specters of the house, the people Riggs thinks he sees, figments of his alcoholic imagination...I don't even remember what the final answer was. And certainly no one ever agreed with our interpretation exactly-- which is of course fine. It's something I think about when I wonder what I'll do with the script and whether I'll revise it (I'd like to), whether it'll get done again (I sure hope so), and within that, how much it'll change (I don't know).

I know direct address is definitely different that audience participation, and some people might say that there is ALWAYS audience participation, even in shows where the fourth wall isn't broken. I guess that's the hope, if I'm going to be hippy-dippy about it.

Hmm.


Unrelated, here are two things I overheard the other day:


"I don't care where they're coming from, but I think they're going to hell."


"Take a walk, enjoy the weather, enjoy the girls and their sexy asses."

In-DEED.