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Dedicated to the author’s friend Ali, who once said to her: “You don’t realize this because you go see so many plays, but normal people do not go to plays.”
The play is and is not real.
A play is a movie that can spit on you.
A play is what that thing is in the line “the play’s the thing.”
If your friend wrote the play, do not tell her upon curtain that “the actors were really talented.” Actors are popsicle sticks painted with eyes and animated by her mind and your praise can immolate itself on a bonfire stoked with those sticks, thanks.
Just playing, we love actors; they are magicians! But did you think the people who make theater come equipped with really chillaxed, totally low-maintenance egos? A compliment to something other than the script is but the absence of a compliment to the script. This void will grow. It will become a cold hole into which the writer must needs fall. The hole never ends. The hole has amazing lighting and vivid costumes and otherworldly sound quality, and it never ends.
Also “it was really wordy” isn’t a compliment, Mom, don’t try to ret-con that.
Whatever compliments or criticism you have to offer don’t really matter; they won’t even be heard, since your writer friend’s corporeal self has already dissolved through the theater seats back into the primordial ooze.
(Obviously, don’t offer criticism.)
Not being friends with people who write plays is also allowed.
If you’re wondering which aspects of the plot the writer is responsible for, remember that the answer is: all of them. Unlike screenwriters, who are paid grand sums to write the script but let everyone else redo it, playwrights are in charge. The writer friend of yours told everyone what to do and they have to do it. It’s not like that party where she said let’s do shots! and everyone was like “meh” and it’s not like the other time when she suggested maybe you should all assign each other roles from Les Miserables and have a group singalong to the Tenth Anniversary Concert but nobody even did.
The writer friend wrote all of the characters, too, including the ones who sound different from the other ones. Just how a play is!
Yes, that gay character is still gay even if she stands next to a man.
People who write theater reviews are, in general, very, very, very easily provoked. The play mentioned race? It was written by a girl? It took place somewhere? Provocative! Manage expectations. If you came of age with YouTube, you might not be provoked so hard.
A talkback is when upper-middle-aged-and-beyond men will explain the play to you.
Ticket price and play quality have very little to do with one another, so don’t compensate with applause so as to validate your purchase. You’re cheapening this for everyone else.
Unless it’s your writer friend’s play. Clap to the brink of rioting.
There are like, twelve possible endings to plays, and eight of them are “someone’s pregnant.”
The questions characters ask of themselves or God are not meant to be answered by an audience member, but thanks, lady at the Saturday night performance of The Whale.
Usually don’t make out at a play, unless the energy is really there, which it wasn’t at that same Saturday performance of The Whale, a drama about suicidal depression and codependence and some other stuff I would have noticed more if that couple hadn’t been furiously making out.
Saturday night audiences are lawless, godless mobs.
Thursday night audiences have never known joy, or perhaps any other human emotion.
Plays are really fun, though! Go see them!
A “staged reading” is and is not a play. If you are the parents of a writer who tells you about a staged reading of her work, please stop asking her when her play is being produced. Every time she explains that it is actually just a staged reading — a “development” opportunity — it is like admitting to yet another classmate that your hot prom date is in fact a visiting cousin.
If you know someone who is doing a non-equity show in a small town west of Oneonta, it’s better not to tell all your neighbors that she “has a play in New York.”
Plays where women get lines are superior plays.
A whole play can happen without a single white person in it.
Most plays produced are by white men named David because that’s how America is. In discussions about how to change this, some guy will invariably say in a cautionary tone “a play must be judged on its merits alone,” and it’s very awkward for everyone involved because… Yikes, David. Did you think white privilege was a merit-based system?
“Yikes, David” sums up my feelings about a great many plays/everything.
A movie is a play, but in prison.
High school is about plays, college is about a capella groups, and the rest of adult life is about Netflix. I’m trying to understand why mainstream culture is less invested in theater and this is as far as I got.
A play is a screaming book.
A play lowers night cholesterol and decreases your risk of standing.
A play is eternal and ephemeral. It is collaborative. It is alive. This is an obnoxious and yet true answer for why some of us don’t like to share scripts with acquaintances. It is meant to be sensed and lived, not read, and it cannot happen alone.
Nonetheless we gladly, humbly, vampirically accept your interest in our work and shall feed on it for many nights to come.
If you wear a bulky jacket to a play, you really should take it off before the show starts. Every time you move or breathe the audience hears it crinkling. Bear in mind theaters have only two temperatures: “The Iceman Cometh” and “the air conditioning is too loud to run during the show.” But you have to take off that jacket no matter what, because that’s how a play is.
I haven’t performed in a decent while, but I remember from my music years that basically no feedback, positive or negative, ever made me feel good after a show, so “Whatever compliments or criticism you have to offer don’t really matter,” rang very true for me. Even when someone said something nice somehow it always wasn’t the nice thing I wanted to hear, the one that would be convey that they got the thing in the exact same way I did.
I think the best thing you can do for anyone whose play you are seeing is hug them a lot and then help them get drunk afterwards.
“Dedicated to the author’s friend Ali, who once said to her: ‘You don’t realize this because you go see so many plays, but normal people do not go to plays.'”
This is so accurate and true and sad for my life. I need more play going buddies. Or, you know, any. OTOH, I’ve started volunteering with a couple small companies and I sold concessions at the last play I went to and it was super fun.
come see them with meeee
One time I convinced people to go to a series of Pinter plays! Both left at intermission. It was pretty much my worst fear in terms of When I Do Things With People.
The Dumbwaiter is obviously very much of its time, but I thought it was good!
We invited friends to see a play at a small local theater we loved, and it turned out to be probably our least favorite thing they’ve ever produced. I felt really bad that it was the one time we tried to recruit new folks.
One of the great things about my husband is that he loves plays. He was actually a theater minor in college, and it is because of him that we go to so many plays. And it turns out I like going to plays!
We are in our early forties, and we are quite often the youngest people in the audience BY MANY YEARS.
Oh, also, I’ve already decided my retirement is going to be half theater volunteer and half “those people at Petco Park that make sure you don’t descend to your seat while the ball is in play.”
Move to a small town!
I live in a small but very affluent town in the Midwest and everything is terrible about living here EXCEPT there is a very nice center for the arts which puts on tons of plays and no one has anything better to do than to go to them.
Many generations of kids will grow up in this town thinking it is normal to go to and act in four plays a year and they will go forth into the rest of the world and make it awesome.
Same. Same. Except not everything about living here is terrible.
I actually felt better about reading this because of that line, because that line is me. I’m so sorry everyone. I was cursed by a witch as an infant to never be able to enjoy plays or even casual improv/roleplay due to severe secondhand embarrassment for the actors (even when they’re objectively very good at acting), it is an illness from which there is no cure.
“The questions characters ask of themselves or God are not meant to be answered by an audience member, but thanks, lady at the Saturday night performance of The Whale.”
— I laughed really hard picturing this.
“A play is a movie that can spit on you.”
— I just learned this last week visiting New York and seeing a couple Broadway shows. Luckily I was not seated so close as to be in the splash zone. For those of us used to traveling shows in middle-America-sized theaters, the teeniness of actual Broadway is a bit of a shock.
It reminds me of the delightful anecdote from Vonnegut’s Timequake:
“A similar incident happened at a performance of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra when I was a kid. It didn’t involve me, though, and it wasn’t about laughter. There was this piece of music that was getting louder and louder, and that was supposed to stop all of a sudden.
There was this woman in the same row with me, maybe ten seats away. She was talking to a friend during the crescendo, and she had to get louder and louder, too. The music stopped. She shrieked, “I FRY MINE IN BUTTER!”
For traveling shows, that line could be amended to “A play is a movie that can spit on you, but it won’t because you’re cheap and/or broke and ended up in balcony seating sandwiched between two high school groups which got a $15-off-per-seat discount when showing their student IDs while booking tickets, hope you brought your binoculars, haha, sucker”.
Once, in Houston, we let some other friends buy the tickets for Wicked and paid them back later… We were literally in folding chairs behind the last row in the balcony. D:
Oh yes, the “if some wheelchair users come we will remove these seats” seats.
So, I went on a Broadway Up Close Tour (STRONGLY recommend) which is a tour with actor tour guides. The guy who gave us our tour was in both the off-broadway and tour productions of Altar Boyz and mentioned that their comedic timing on the tour was off at first, because tour theaters are so big it would take a second for the laughter to reach them.
I have seen so many good shows ruined by oversized tour theatres. I understand the economics of it, but it breaks my heart to see wonderful small-scale shows adrift in giant barns. I’m going to see FUN HOME when it comes to Chicago in the fall, but I’m also terrified.
Yeah, I’ll for real go see Fun Home when it comes through my town, mostly because I want to see how they will make it work.
I am kind of a theatre geek and regularly go to NY to see plays and I did not know this existed. Will definitely do it next time, thanks!
Can confirm. Jonathan Groff spat on me at Hamilton.
Was it awesome?
It kinda was! Seeing how far actor spittle flies onstage is always impressive, but getting it on you is a whole ‘nother level.
He is SUCH a spitter. I was front-row so I got mildly splashed by pretty much everyone, but he is the worst offender.
My aunt saw him in Spring Awakening multiple years ago and the only comment she made on the show was “that boy in the lead sure spits a lot when he sings.”
it was even worse in spring awakening. I refuse to sit in the first five rows if he’s in the show. stop letting him go to the edge of the stage directors!!!
“Yikes, David” aka me every time I had to do a Mamet monologue in undergrad
Taking cheap shots at David Mamet is one of my favorite pastimes. It’s so juvenile, and I do NOT care.
I’ve never met a David Mamet play that I didn’t think was trash, and I don’t give a FUUUUCK
This is hitting really really really really close to home
“Yikes, David, don’t be such a Jonathan.”
“Shut up, Carl!” –David
I need to see more theater!
YES
Correct!
This is so perfect and wonderful. Thank you!
I work for a theater in this is the most amazing thing. I love you to bits for writing it and am sending it to all of my coworkers.
Also, now allow me to scream into the void: OH MY GOD THAT LINE ABOUT WHITE PRIVILEGE AND MERITOCRACY I WANT TO SPRAYPAINT ON THE WALLS OF MY OFFICE BECAUSE IT NEEDS TO BE SCREAMED AND SHOUTED AND SEEN.
Yeah, who knew that white privilege-addled people could make “quality” into a word that makes me roll my eyes?
I have never seen a play that I’ve written; to inure myself to criticism (likely fatal) I have simply made myself unable to hear words about them at all.
But did you think the people who make theater come equipped with really chillaxed, totally low-maintenance egos?
hahahahahahahahah *cries*
Absolutely perfect gif, you thatch-headed devil.
I once had a bad, boring part-time job at an Arts high school/college, and the only real perk was that I got free tickets to any performance. For about 2 years there, all I did was go to plays, and it always kind of pissed me off that no one wanted to go with me. Those kids were really, incredibly good.
We did Our Country’s Good in drama at school so my mental response to being asked to go to the theatre is always
“a play?! A frippery frittering play??!”
valid response
High school is about plays, college is about a capella groups
Our classical theater troupe once scheduled a performance of a Southern Gothic take on Phèdre for the same night and in the same region of campus as an a cappella concert. Slightly more than three-quarters of the people who approached our ticket table turned back, confused, when we told them we weren’t actually associated with the Xtensionchords.
[heavy sigh about my total lack of interest in a cappella]
BRB sending this to the playwriting prof in our department.
A musical is the same but louder and with more crinoline.
The first thing you say to an actor friend after watching a play should always be, “How did you learn ALL those LINES?” Trust me, she’ll love it. It’ll make her feel great.
Because she’ll finally have an excuse to stab you, and the rest of the cast will swear in court that it was justifiable homicide.
Not a jury in the land.
You can’t rewind a good play or fastforward a bad one. 🙁
Let me put in a shoutout for leaving at intermission! The sense of relief you feel when you realize you’re free of a bad play is so incredibly gratifying.
To quote Jez from Peep Show on leaving a play early: “This is amazing. I wasn’t meant to be out ’till eleven, and it’s not even nine. I’ve time travelled. I’ve made time!”
A play lowers night cholesterol and decreases your risk of standing.
The fact that it would involve standing for hours means I am never likely to purchase Yard tickets at the Globe. Yes, it’s cheaper and more authentic historically, but I have given up on going to gigs partly because they make my feet hurt; at the theatre, I want to sit down. (Also, I am really short and like being able to see stuff.)
Always seats at the globe! I have been to a few and after half an hour you can’t concentrate on the (normally excellent) play because your feet hurt and you just want to SIT DOWN.
Whenever I have to stand for long periods of time I find myself not concentrating on anything other than how uncomfortable I am. It doesn’t seem like the best mindset for watching a play.
Me too! I am OK at gigs normally with the bouncing about and moving (also being only 5’2 I am always on the barrier so I have something to lean on) but I was just miserable at the Globe standing.
Seats are still authentic, they’re just authentic to the experience of people who could afford seats!
I will just pretend I’m Elizabeth I.
solid plan, generally.
Everyone involved in the play secretly resents and disbelieved in the necessity of everyone else. The Props Master even.
WHO DO THEY THINK THEY EVEN ARE?
THIS PLAY WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT MY DECORATIVE TABLE SPREAD AND IF I HADN’T CREATED THOSE LOW-CALORIE PIZZAS YOUR ACTORS WOULD BE PULLING A JENNA MARONEY SEASON TWO.
I am a props master. You’re not wrong.
How could anyone disbelieve the necessity of a person who works in the basement for the singular purpose of giving presents to the production, be resented? It’s not the propsmaster’s fault that after months of wandering through backstock they’re become bent and Gollum like, and almost unnaturally attached to that 19th century silverware set that they were saving for a moment like this. It was a responsibility with which no mere mortal should be tasked. One demitasse-spoon to rule them all!
San Francisco lady playwright here. Would you be upset if I printed out copies of this and gave them to any new acquaintance who expresses incredulity/confusion/curiosity when I tell them I’m involved in indie theater?
San Francisco lady playwright here. Would you be upset if I printed out copies of this and gave them to any new acquaintance who expresses incredulity/confusion/curiosity when I tell them I'm involved in indie theater?
I just started a feminist theatre company in Chicago, and my ladycompatriots and I are DYING over this.
That is the most awesome thing in the world.
If you are who I think you are, I’m excited to see your shows!
This comment makes me feel like an undercover superhero. So, yes? I MAY BE. And thank you! We’re excited to make them!
I know I do NOT know who you are, but I have several Chicago friends who would probably love this, and I am excited on their behalfs.
http://www.thejades.org
Send ’em our way! We will welcome them all!
Indeed I will!
Is it who you thought they were?
would just like to casually ask in a totally chill normal way if I can be friends with all you guys
um yes please and thank you
Would also like to be your friend in a totally chill way. Just let me know. When you get a sec.
FRIENDSHIP ALL ‘ROUND
Saturday night audiences are lawless, godless mobs.
Thursday night audiences have never known joy, or perhaps any other human emotion.
This is the goddamn truest thing ever written and I want this on my tombstone. Effing Thursday night audiences.
Agreed. Sunday matinee audiences are pretty useless too.
Sunday matinees are for grandparents only.
Sunday matinees are WILD CARDS. One never knows what the brunch crowd will throw at you.
Goddamn lifeless Sunday matinee people, ruiners, the lot of them.
Thursdays are great if it’s opening night.
I generally see shows at fancier theatres on weeknights or Sunday evenings, since Friday/Saturday nights generally don’t have comps available. But I was able to snag comps to a rather fancy show on a Saturday night a few weeks ago and was absolutely appalled by the audience’s behavior. I guess when you have that much money, tickets are just a way to show off, rather than a way to actually enjoy theatre, and so you do not care how rude you are. It’s very sad.
YES. I recently saw a show and the audience was just dead (and it was a Saturday night, too, people!), and when that happens I feel like I have to laugh harder at every joke, which then makes me feel self-conscious because sometimes give me annoyed looks but I don’t care because THIS IS EFFING LIVE THEATRE, PEOPLE, THE ACTORS LIVE FOR YOUR REACTIONS, TRUST ME I HAVE BEEN THERE.
Thursday night audiences are the best in one case: The show is a nerdy burlesque play, all the other shows sold out, and then a Thursday extension was added that then also sold out. Those Thursday people are SO GODDAMN GRATEFUL to get to see the show they will be one of the best damn audiences you have experienced.
Well, it’s been 5 days since I last saw a play live and reading this reminded me that 5 days is too many days.
This is perfection.
Live performance usually makes me WAY too nervous to enjoy. I can kind of do dramas, and I can do things I know I will like and everyone else in the audience will like (say, Hamilton), but if it is supposed to be even a little funny it is way too uncomfortable. Stand-up comedy is STRAIGHT OUT.
I don’t have this issue, but I will say that watching performers or scripts push for laughs that aren’t coming is the WORST. My most frequent criticism of comedies is “it seemed like they were spending more energy elbowing me in the ribs, insisting how much fun I was having, rather than actually being fun”.
YES THIS. Especially if you spend a lot of money on the tickets, or (even worse!) someone else spent a lot of money on the tickets and then WENT TO SEE THE SHOW WITH YOU.
Plays are fine, even comedies (I was in a production of a shakespeare comedy that got zillions of laughs or absolutely no laughs depending on the audience and I lived) but OH NO NO NOT STAND UP. I’ve been dragged to quite a few amateur nights/free shows and the second hand embarrassment was nearly fatal.
(I remain amazed at the number of dudes who think that ‘my hometown is shit/WOMEN? AM I RIGHT???’ constitutes an original comedy set. I’ll admit it’s kind of hilarious when three of them perform one after another and they all have the same jokes though.)
WHO are these people making out at The Whale?!!?
I can only be in plays. I can’t watch them.
Tom McCamus once spit on me at the Stratford Festival (from stage, not as a derisory action or anything). I treasure this memory. Live theatre 4-ever!
Tom McCamus spit on me in Winter’s Tale at Coal Mine Theatre! It’s truly a singular experience.
In high school drama class a handful of us each directed a one-act play, all of which were written by students in the creative writing class. After the performance, my dad complimented me on the set. He liked that “there were so many things to look at”.
That is a lovely attempt at a compliment, Dad!
In his defense, though, high school performances are ROUGH. Like, my brother was so excited to show me the (recorded) show he was in, and it was uncomfortable for so many reasons, including that I couldn’t freaking understand what was being said (poor sound quality), plus I was being watched like a hawk for all my reactions, plus, you know. HIGH SCHOOL. I cringe at what my parents had to sit through.
I do not blame him AT ALL. I knew when we read the scripts that they were all terrible, I just really wanted to direct. And I was really proud of that set–as was my dad, as he helped build parts of it. It just makes me laugh to think about.
After a high school production of INTO THE WOODS I directed, an audience member told me it was “cute.”
My dad’s favorite back-handed compliment for all of the horrible plays I put him through was “wow, that sure did start on time!”
Well this is basically my life.
Hey, who else on The Toast works in theatre? I’m a Dramaturg/Literary Manager, myself.
Theater-adjacent! Work in development at a nonprofit theater membership organization.
Dramaturg too!! 🙂
I work in development at a regional theater, hoping to start my own company eventually.
I used to work in a box office, have done some indie producing, now I just have Opinions.
Mine too.
Director/dramaturg/independent theater producer.
Not for money, but I’ve done tech (mostly lights) for community theaters for 20 years. Husband grew up in a small town and got into it in HS, and got me involved when we met. Have two shows we did lights for both opening tomorrow, in fact!
I produce, write, direct, set design and partially costume burlesque plays!
Pray for me.
Voice teacher, dialect coach.
Stage manager!
I’m a reviewer with a theatre background, but it’s not like that’s my job where I make money to live.
I have a actor that I think is worth some dramaturging, but I figure I can’t do anything locally, because of being a reviewer, so I mean to keep an eye out other places (I had a play produced by a feminist company in NYC once!) But mostly I just write stories and forget to look.
Hello I am another one! Company/general management, currently doing more non-traditional stuff (circus, music) but originally from traditional theatre.
Me! Actor/director/voice-text-dialect coach
I did! I was a stage manager, on and off, for about seven years. I miss calling shows.
Wardrobe staff currently, largely for opera/musicals but also miscellaneous other things. Hoping to move into costume design not just construction/repairs/dressing.
This is the greatest.
Oh this made me pine so so very much for the summer off-campus Shakespeare club I was a part of after my undergraduate years. We would drink wine and make pasta and read a play aloud, switching characters every scene. This was while I was at music conservatory, so the inherent nerdiness was high but the love was real and fervent. Got through 3/4 of the canon before everyone went to grad school or got a job or moved away. I miss it immensely.
This just broke the theatre internet. #yikesdavid
Sitting at the window. Who can identify this little brown bird?
Drinking expensive Japanese tea and The Toast. Maybe I am hoping to get a little high from gen mai cha.
Surprise! Was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Thank-you!
I have determined to see a play. I have a coat. I have footwear.
And I can lock the door behind me when I leave.
Damn you Thursday night audiences! Also, Damn you Tuesday people who have forgotten the act of laughing.
I love theatre and don’t know any playwrights. I should change that.
Now I really want to have a group singalong to the 10th anniversary Les Mis concert…
it’s all I ever want to do
There are like, twelve possible endings to plays, and eight of them are “someone’s pregnant.”
The other four are “death.”
YEP
Some of them, these days, are “ask the relationships are broken and everyone will eke out endless days in loneliness.”
High school is about plays, college is about a capella groups, and the rest of adult life is about Netflix.
THIS. Even going to shows now, as lovely and like a breath of fresh air as it is, seems … wrong somehow. I feel like a freak. I have a group of friends who enjoy going to see a show or two every summer at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival with me, but I always feel like I enjoy it far more than everyone else. Is it the nostalgia? Am I just a weirdo? WHY CAN’T NORMAL ADULTS LIKE PLAYS???
a play must be judged on its merits alone
As soon as you say that about anything I know you don’t have the first clue how to judge anything by its merits and can only fall back on whether or not a white dude made it.
I LOVE going to the theatre alone. I L O V E IT. I buy myself a ticket right in the frigging middle right at the frigging front and I buy myself a teeny bar of the poshest chocolate I can find and I open up the wrapper FULLY before the play starts and break the whole thing into bite-sized pieces so I don’t disturb anyone with rustling during the performance and I HAVE MYSELF A MINI ORGY OF CULTURE AND INDULGENCE and don’t have to put up with anyone’s Wrong Opinions about it afterwards.
Yes yes YES! Right there with you.
Can we go together? And just smile smugly at each other after?
You’ve got yourself a date, my toasty friend.
A whole play can happen without a single white person in it.
What!? Is this behaviour allowed?
My dad's favorite back-handed compliment for all of the horrible plays I put him through was "wow, that sure did start on time!"
He is SUCH a spitter. I was front-row so I got mildly splashed by pretty much everyone, but he is the worst offender.
My aunt saw him in Spring Awakening multiple years ago and the only comment she made on the show was "that boy in the lead sure spits a lot when he sings."
I have low blood pressure and sitting numbs my legs. I love standing! Cheap and good for my health! What could be better? If only there were more of it. My ticket-buying budget hasn't changed — same pensioner's income for 12 years. But the number of tkts I can buy with it has shrunk by half, alas.
Is it who you thought they were?
In response to the couple making out during The Whale, I raise you the couple who during the sell-out London West End performance of People Places and Things, the moving exploration of one woman’s drug addiction, kept loudly whispering, speculating whether the lead actor was a drug addict in real life because ‘all arty people are, aren’t they? It’s why they don’t have real jobs’.
My foot may have made swift, firm contact with the man’s shoulder blade from the tiered seating behind him. I can’t be sure.
In response to the couple making out during The Whale, I raise you the couple who during the sell-out London West End performance of People Places and Things, the moving exploration of one woman's drug addiction, kept loudly whispering, speculating whether the lead actor was a drug addict in real life because 'all arty people are, aren't they? It's why they don't have real jobs'.
My foot may have made swift, firm contact with the man's shoulder blade from the tiered seating behind him. I can't be sure.
This is so well written, Abbey!
I have been giggling at my work station reading it. I love the theatre, and most times I do it alone. Theatre and plays are the only medium that have kept the art of story telling so intimate. I so love how the actors on the stage perform with zero retakes, and how I sit with an audience that enjoys the act as much as I do.
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