Our audiences on festivals, and on our digital era

By Steven Leigh Morris

This is the third article in a series based on Stage Raw’s Patron and Theater surveys. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

Among the ideas floated as a remedy for the financial woes of our venue-based theater that’s locked into place by buildings and seasons is to do what they do in Central and South America as well as Europe – present live performances in festivals (annual, or more frequently), where a single show may have one to three performances before moving on to the next city.

There are some examples of that model by a couple of our more experimental local troupes: Nancy Keystone’s Critical Mass Performance Group is presenting its devised project Mariology at Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis in a few weeks, while Aaron Henne’s Theatre Dybbuk has been touring the company’s riff on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure across the Pacific Northwest. It premiered in LA at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, REDCAT has literally stood firm (across from Disney Hall) as a venue for short run performances in a festival context.

Keeping the granddaddy Edinburgh Festival out of the equation for a moment, the Hollywood Fringe, on our doorstep, has proven it may be easier to get civic and even funding support for a single, now very well attended, festival than it is for a single theater — which in LA will be one among hundreds across the region.

The ethics conundrum of the non-curated Hollywood and Edinburgh Fringe festivals is that festival staff, festival institutions and venue owners are all paid for by the artists, eager for a showcase. It’s the artist-as-producer model.

(This seems at odds with the pre-Covid indignation levied against local theater producers operating year-round venues after they paid their actors less than minimum wage for much the same opportunity. One actor filed a California Labor Relations Complaint against a producer who paid stipends to actors, but less than minimum wage, for performing in the Hollywood Fringe. The adjudicator ruled against this performer, saying that the Hollywood Fringe is community theater where professional wage expectations don’t apply.)

 Still, is it a more just system to have artists paying $2k to $5k to present their own show for a handful of performances, rather than receiving per-performance stipends for a show selected by a producer, or, as is often the case now, receiving no payment at all? In almost all these scenarios, the landlords (not the producers) make off like bandits. So where does artistic expression merge into the exploitation of that expression? That line is not as easily drawn as one might think.

The theater model we’ve been celebrating for decades, local and national, is imploding from soaring costs and the lack of funding. In LA, The Mark Taper Forum is shuttered for the time being, New York’s Public Theater has cut 20% of its staff, the esteemed Long Wharf Theatre has lost its building, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is hemorrhaging, The Actors’ Theatre of Louisville has dropped its heralded new play festival, and on, and on. Horror stories from around the country abound.

Either the feds will come in to save the day (a consortium of national artistic directors is lobbying for that; the outcome will likely depend on who’s running the government in 2025), or another model of doing business may emerge from what’s become an alarming death-by-irrelevance of the wounded, current model.

All of which is a pretty good argument for a regular network of curated festivals. The LA edition could supplement the Hollywood Fringe. Around the globe, even in regions far poorer than ours, curated festivals (and their artists) are funded by local banks and hotels, national, regional and municipal funds. Such festivals make everybody look good. They are thoroughly professional, and everybody gets paid according to local wage requirements. In the US, the landlords would still make-out like bandits, but not at the artists’ expense.

The festivals in Poland, Turkey and Kosovo that I’ve seen are pretty exciting. People, young and old, show up in droves. I’m attending my third annual festival in Kosovo this month. Kosovo is a far poorer region per capita than either the United Sates or California. Productions by local and international artists roll through there en route to or from the UK, Serbia, Italy, etc. Festival directors from Poland and Czechoslovakia and Germany show up, scouting for works to bring to their festivals.

It’s far less expensive to fund an annual or semi-annual festival than to fund dozens of theaters in a city year-round, all competing to drink from a shrinking well of funding and audiences.

And this is why Stage Raw asked local patrons how they’d feel about binge-watching theater at a local festival – which is what the Hollywood Fringe and the Kosovo festival are all about. (Both offer opportunities for local as well as international artists.) The results were not particularly encouraging, but that can change.

Almost every event at the super-nova 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival (an $11 milllion affair) was packed, in venues large and small, when the world’s best companies (from the Royal Shakespeare Company to Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil to Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata) showed up here in the same two weeks, under festival director Robert Fitzpatrick’s curation. (Fitzpatrick had just resigned as president of California Institute for the Arts at the time.) Interest dropped in subsequent festivals, curated by Peter Sellars, when the participants were less star-studded, and the curation became more Pacific Rim-regional than international.)

In Stage Raw’s 2023 survey of 152 patrons, a mere 38.8% of patrons said they’d be interested in binge watching shows during a festival, even if food breaks were included and they didn’t have to drive from venue to venue (imagining that festival transport was pre-arranged).

Breaking this down by age reveals an unexpected pattern. Interest in such a festival appears to decline as people age – to a point! And then it spikes: 37% of respondents aged 10 to 30 expressed interest. That percentage slides to 28% of respondents aged 31 to 50 (perhaps because they’re of working age?). It slides upwards for respondents aged 51 to 70: 41%. And then it soars with respondents over 71 years old, to 67%. (So much for the “old fogies” cliché.) Is this because people get more curious as they age, or because they now have the time, or is it simply that older audiences belong to a more curious generation? We don’t know.

There are also generalized and possibly inaccurate complaints about the Hollywood Fringe that 1) It sucks the oxygen out of non-festival theater for the month that it’s performing and 2) People who attend the Fringe have no interest in attending non-festival theater. The first argument assumes that people who attend the Fringe are regular patrons for non-festival shows (which we don’t know), and that their attention is diverted. Stage Raw’s survey suggests that both arguments are reductive. It turns out that people who attend the Fringe shows are just as open to seeing professional work in LA as their traditional theater counterparts.

Let’s start with people who identified larger touring productions as their main attraction. It turns out they’re very open to supporting mid-size and smaller professional theater: specifically 66.4% expressed a strong or moderate inclination to support professional theater of all sizes, but not a Fringe festival.

But that percentage plummets to 37.1% of such patrons strongly or moderately inclined to cross from Southern California’s touring musicals to see a Fringe festival.

The converse story is slightly different. Of Fringe attendees, 57.3% expressed a strong or moderate inclination to support larger professional theaters in Southern California. That number rose to 59.9% when it came to supporting Southern California’s intimate theaters. This is still not as high as the 66.4% of respondents mainly attracted to touring musicals who reported being interested in other forms of local professional theater.

 

Theater in a Digital Age, Its “Unique” Capacity to Elicit Empathy, and Our Capacity to Empathize

 

Is live theater unique in its ability to provide an antidote to the toxic aspects of our digital age? This question/assertion generated some pushback on two counts: first, that it was “loaded” (true), and the second being that our digital age is not entirely toxic. That’s also true, but it’s not what the question actually said, which was that there are “toxic aspects” to our digital age. This assertion has been verified with empirical connections drawn between social media and loneliness, depression and suicide, despite the capabilities of TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, to (a) enable users to connect with people from their childhoods, and (b) to serve as forums for the expression of ideas.

Despite the loaded nature of the question, the response was unequivocal with 86.8% of respondents strongly or moderately agreeing with the statement.

 

Here are some of the comments attached to this question:

 

• • I think a lot of the toxicity of the digital age is so much chatter about everything, creating . . . “issues.” Since the plays offered often address these issues, it’s tied into the information from the web. So, where’s the escape? Theatre has the ability to let us totally be free of all that stuff, but the choices being made in what to present are directly linked to the toxicity. So, the ability to lift us away from the digital world isn’t being applied . . .  Plus, more and more productions are using tech for projection, holograms, effects. Back to the digital world. It’s all about generation change. We’re at the major split. There’s no way to fix it. It’s going to happen; with the Xs and Zs moving up, theatre is going to be different in the future. They seem to want everything to be like the digital world in which they live; they’re already transforming theatre into more audience participation, more effects, less fantasy. It’s not going back toward the Golden Years, that’s for sure.
  • I don’t think the digital age is necessarily toxic, nor is live theatre necessarily that interactive. You can go alone, sit silently and watch, and go home without any human interaction. (Then go online and discuss the play on the internet.)
  • Live theater is unique
  • I think I am more concerned with the “toxic” elements of living under late-stage capitalism than those of the digital age. I think theatre could better afford to embrace digital life.
  • It’s one of the few chances to unplug and experience live art.
  • The in-person experience cannot be rivaled
  • Live theater is not uniformly one thing.
  • The ability to sit in an audience and experience a communal catharsis is life affirming.
  • Live theater brings people together. It leads to a greater shared understanding and sense of community.
  • Live actors are better than AI actors.
  • Live theater stimulates conversation – it’s a shared experience. Digital experience doesn’t offer the same depth of emotion and engagement with the story.
  • Good for the soul!
  • You are part of a live audience watching live art as opposed to [watching] isolating digital art.
  • No.
  • Live theatre cultivates community and real-life connection.
  • Live performances by dint of not being filtered or moderated i.e. not viewed through a lens or via a machine – provide a greater intimacy and connection between audience and performer.
  • Art sheds light where there is darkness and these are challenging times we live in.
  • There’s nothing like the feeling of the energy that’s created by the collective agreement to sit in the dark in a space together with strangers, unplug, and just be present as someone shares a story. The energy is palpable and because it’s an in-the-moment shared experience. . . that feeling can never be replicated. It’s unique and it’s incredibly special.
  • I think there is a debate to the “toxic aspects” of the digital age. But I think live performances in an age of screens are important.
  • Forces people to unplug and reflect.
  • Does this need an explanation? Being with others and breathing together creates community and empathy.
  • Well, that’s certainly a loaded question. What are the “toxic aspects”? How does theatre offer an antidote? Mostly, I see people working out their identity crises on stage in exchange for too-expensive tickets, bad neighborhoods, trouble parking, cellphones ringing, and every other problem. Seems better to take my girlfriend out for dinner, then go home for streaming. And it pains me to say that, because I love the theatre. Where are The Burglars of Hamm when you need them? Or Matthew McCray’s work. Things that are wonderful and truly theatrical and done for a reasonable price on our small stages.
  • I agree with the statement. Theatre also entertains, challenges, and moves people in ways no other art form can.
  • Digital Age is here. Streaming is here. Theatre on Streaming is here. It’s taking a lot more to have people get in traffic to see LIVE Theatre. We are competing with TikTok and FB. Comfort versus having to spend money to be entertained and maybe not enjoy the show. It’s tough BUT there is NOTHING like LIVE and we need to unite and continue to promote LIVE and to ensure people are educated about how much LIVE not only entertains but it helps the economy and builds up neighborhoods.
  • Theater is not “unique” in that. Playing with kittens could be an antidote. Cooking could be an antidote. Long walks could be an antidote.
  • The live connection and audience will never be replaced. Live connections rule!
  • Live theater has breath.
  • It’s not all that great, especially commercial theatre.
  • I came of age believing with every fiber of my being that the theatre is and should be as essential to every living, breathing, human being as much as any natural resource or ecosystem. And boom! Look how we’ve fucked up every ecosystem imaginable, in and out of sight. All that to say that, very much, now more than ever, yes, yes, yes, more more more theatre, please.
  • Live theater is unique to offering an antidote to living in a digital age if live theater can do what it does best, which to me is showcasing a life and death situation and the decisions involved in understanding how we might emerge from that situation.
  • There’s no comparison in the excitement I feel at a really good play [to] any other non-live entertainment. I think that part of it is knowing that there are real, breathing people right in front of me, and the performance can never be exactly duplicated.
  • Over dramatic statement.
  • I would first have to agree that this digital age is toxic.
  • Live theater is becoming increasingly toxic.

 

I guess it should be noted that you’re reading these comments and this article because, and only because, of the digital age and what it allows.

Finally, the question about whether live theater supports empathy (feeling for people with whom one disagrees) received an even higher (slightly) approval rating than the prior question: 87.5% strongly or moderately agreed with the statement.

Some comments:

• • No.
  • Nothing unique about it. The bit about disagree yet empathize is true, but it’s not unique. Hell, with the proliferation of streaming services and YouTube channels, the white male suits are no longer the gatekeepers of media. Diversity of point of view is available all around us and theatre isn’t special for its ability to deliver it.
  • I said disagree because I’m not sure what the point of question 23 was.
  • It’s obvious.
  • I enjoy seeing plays about people I wouldn’t normally meet in real life but not so much plays about people whose beliefs I very much disagree with. For instance, I’d probably not want to see a play centering on racists, right-wingers, etc.
  • Theater lets you get inside the head of characters with other points of view and walk in their shoes for a few hours.
  • Always has the power to make one think about something/someone fro a different angle.
  • I wish that was more often the case.
  • Any art form does the same, so it is not unique to theatre.
  • We live in an urban liberal bubble. Current LA theater productions are by, for, about and in support and praise of urban liberal values. I hardly ever see centrist values portrayed in a non-judgmental way. I never see traditional conservative ones. (The MAGA crap I can do without.) When I sit down in my seat before an LA theatre show, I know I am perfectly safe. My liberalism will not be challenged. In fact, my ego is probably going to get stroked a bit and I’m going to feel pretty good about my urban liberal values after the show ends and I walk out of the theater. We’re not putting up “American Theatre” anymore. We’ve narrowed ourselves into producing “Urban Liberal Theatre.” And I’m getting kinda bored.
  • Not necessarily disagree, more like don’t identify with. Nevertheless, I have learned about other people’s ideas/viewpoints that are different from my own.
  • As long as those characters don’t preach an agenda, I can listen.
  • Part of the human experience is experiencing intellectual confrontation with those with whom we disagree.
  • This depends more on the quality of the play than the fact that it is a play itself.
  • Shakespeare’s Richard III is the best example. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are also examples.
  • I can’t stand “sympathetic” characters.
  • All media offer the opportunity to empathize with unattractive people.
  • I’m not feeling a lot of empathy lately. Sorry. Mostly boredom.
  • You can’t just click or swipe away from live theater! You have to actually listen and engage with what’s in front of you! it challenges you as a person and it’s the best.
  • Scrooge.
  • Othello.
  • Theatre is humanity on stage. Recently I saw NIMROD at Theatre of NOTE, a wonderfully absurdist take on Trump. I hate Trump but thanks to the writing and [Kirsten] Vangsness’s marvelous performance, there was a very affecting moment in which I actually felt sorry for Trump/Nimrod.
  • To me is about learning and having agreements and disagreements with myself.
  • The Sargent in A SOLDIER’S STORY is compelling and yet so problematic.
  • I do agree with this statement but not necessarily with the word “unique” as I think movies and TV which are not live theater can also provide this as well.
  • It’s well stated.
  • I agree.
  • The question pretty much answers itself and it really should be directed at a specific production or script.
  • I think my ability to empathize with a character I don’t like can be due to acting. If the actor can’t convey certain things to me, I feel indifferent. Whether it be a villain, a lead character, etc. if the acting can’t make me feel, then I dislike them and can’t empathize.
  • In live theater you FEEL more involved then with movies or video games, it is real, right there in front of you. You could reach out and really touch these characters, you can feel their emotions, their loses and their happiness, you cannot get this in some movie theater or blowing someone away in a video game just to come back with another life. LIVE theater is the only theater that puts you in the seat staring right at the actors and them staring right back at you, you feel like they are speaking just to you.
  • I doubt any play will, in one viewing, change a person’s perspective enough to empathize. The patron might say, “I never looked at it that way,” and in the next breath, “He should still be shot.”
  • Important to see characters you don’t know, have never known, and don’t agree with. It’s entertaining to watch characters that are not like YOU. You feel like you are being let in to worlds LIVE that you would never get to be a part of. It’s not the same as watching it on a screen.