Hey, has anyone been missing William Redfield's Opinions? Because guess what I found 3,829 words of on the Internet Archive. :D It starts on page 20 of this issue of P.S., a very short-lived magazine. Or, read it below!
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The Audience is Dead by William Redfield
At the curtain of Clifford Odets’ electrifying “Waiting For Lefty” the cast shouted “Strike! Strike! Strike!” and so did the audience. They were alive, then, those shouting savages. Half of them stood four-square against unions, but the evening’s drama had grabbed them where the hairs are short and they responded. They had never heard of hip or the big beat. They were gullible, emotional, excitable, and faithful—the audiences of the 30s. Their counterparts of the 1960s, to put it bluntly, are over-sophisticated bores.
Nearly all the wits and critics who comment upon the Broadway scene have spoken tirelessly on What’s Wrong With Today’s Theatre. Plays, actors, box-office men, ushers, and even concessionaires have had a thorough working over. But the audience—the ticket-buying group which sits to watch the play—has been largely ignored. What Oscar Hammerstein II called “The Big Black Giant” is perhaps the least understood factor in the theatrical equation as well as the most crucial. Has audience response changed in the last 30 years? Yes. Has that change anything to do with the decline of Broadway? With all due regard for other elements involved, the answer is Yes again.
In September of 1936 the brothers Shubert presented a farce-comedy at the Booth Theatre entitled “Swing Your Lady.” It was about as distinguished as Ann-Margret’s latest movie, yet it ran for over 100 performances to chuckling audiences. The plot concerned a professional wrestler (female) and her brood of hillbilly children. Would there be an audience for such a play today? The question is inwardly rhetorical and outwardly absurd.
In 1931, the Group Theatre produced a play called “1931”—which seems fair enough—but on Opening Night, one audience member stood up in the balcony to shout: “Hooray for the Soviet Union!” The cast was basking in curtain calls at the time and Mr. Franchot Tone, ignoring the leftwing implications of the play, stepped forward and shook an angry fist at the offensive balcony. “Hooray for the United States!” he shouted back. Politics aside, can you imagine such an exchange in a Broadway playhouse circa 1965? You can? You must believe very theatrically in civil rights.
In 1928, Eugene O’Neill’s “The Great God Brown” ran for eight months on Broadway despite luke-warm reviews. Even a bad rifleman could have dispatched elk in the orchestra at every performance, but the balcony seats went consistently clean. In other words, people of limited pocketbook were buying the play. Highbrows were low on it but middlebrows and lowbrows thought it pretty hot stuff. At one performance, Mr. Lawrence Langner overheard two young ladies discussing the play. “It’s awfully dramatic, isn’t it?” said one. “Yeah,” said her friend, “but it’s good.”
Both girls spoke with Bronx-ish accents and both were dressed as cheaply and plainly as thirty-a-week shop-girls. Mr. Langner was deeply impressed and so am I. Where are such playgoers now? I wish I knew, as does every producer in New York, but I’m willing to bet that the same two lower-income ladies also saw “Swing Your Lady” in 1936 and even “1931” in 1931. Perhaps they didn’t like them very much, but they saw them. Today they are doubtless stay-at-home grandmothers watching “Bewitched,” “Bonanza,” and “The Andy Williams Show.” For a certainty, neither has seen a Broadway production since “The Hot Mikado.” But worse than that, their grand-daughters haven’t either.
Broadway’s old-timers and middle-timers grumble a good deal about modern acting (“They scratch and they mumble”); modern plays (“Four letter words and fags”); and modern tickets (“Too expensive and too hard to get”). These are perfectly good grumbles but being a young old-timer (I’m 38), I would like to add a further grumble of my own: the modem audience. It too has changed and very much for the worse, nor am I entirely persuaded that the chicken came before the egg. Apropos of chickens as well as churns, today’s Broadway audience is composed largely of butter-and-egg men who want the dancing girls brought on as soon as possible and who cannot understand why there are so many dancing boys. These partially dead salesmen are enticed to the theatre by fearless flacks and PR men who have seen everything but monkeys making doughnuts and wouldn’t pay cash money to see Mandy Rice-Davies in Richtofen’s Flying Circus unless it meant a contract to promote World War III. The overwhelmingly tired businessman has been so heroically publicized lately, one wonders why he doesn’t go back to his hotel and to bed. Tired or not, the businessman is also drunk. Both buyer and buyee have dined anywhere from Pavilion to “21” to Toffenetti’s, depending on the size of their corporations. They have consumed from three to six cocktails, a bottle of wine, and enough well-seasoned food to put them into a state of near-catatonia. Ethel Merman and a brass band might succeed in keeping them awake but a serious playwright can hardly hold their attention for the better part of Act One.
Harsh of me? Yes—since “A Man For All Seasons”; “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”; and the Gielgud-Burton “Hamlet” have all been put on successfully within the past four seasons. Add “Luther,” if you wish. Very well. Four serious successes in four seasons. It begins to look as though Bored-way has room for one serious play per season—perhaps as a sop to culture. But up to the time of World War II—and even for a short time thereafter—was there not room on Broadway for not only serious theatre but for any sort of play which did not depend upon loud music and semi-clad showgirls? Yes, there was—because the audience still contained a goodly portion of shop-girls and shoe-clerks, to say nothing of head-waiters, 7th Avenue models, and sailors. The issues of cost and convenience have been much discussed and there can be no denying that many people cannot now afford either the price of an orchestra ticket or the inconvenience of purchasing a cheaper seat in the balcony, but a glib run-down of the change in prices will leave a number of sophisticated questions unanswered. For example, it was possible to put on a first-class Broadway production during the mid-thirties for as little as $15,000 when an orchestra seat was priced at $3.30. The same production today would cost $100,000 and up while the seat is priced at $7.50. In other words, production costs have sextupled while the ticket price has little more than doubled. Producers will love me for pointing this out, but it will not help them to drag John and Jane Doe back to Broadway. For the real truth is that the carriage-trade audience (orchestra seats) has never been the heart of a healthy theatre. Up to 1941, it was possible to see any non-musical play—big hit or small, comedy or drama—for 55 cents. Moreover, such 2nd Balcony seats were available on short notice. First Balcony tickets cost $1.10 and up, but not up very far. Recent attempts to woo the common audience back into Broadway playhouses by making balcony seats available at prices relative to motion picture prices have been admirable but only semi-successful. The hard truth is that Mr. and Mrs. Doe of New York City and Toledo are out of the theatre-going habit and it will take no less than a major sea-change to seduce them back.
During the lamentable meantime, Broadway audiences have become lazy, mindless, and bored. They simply do not supply the high-voltage response necessary to an incalescent performance. The performance of a play staffed with living actors changes from night to night, and these changes take place in direct relationship to the audience. No two performances are ever exactly the same, which is quite as it should be. Any theatre audience receives excitement and stimulation in direct ratio to its participation in the events on stage. Down through relentless time, actors have commented upon the dampening effect of a “dead” audience as well as the exhiliration provided by a quick group eager to share the dramatic experience. The connection between an audience and a cast of actors is so similar to the connection between a pair of lovers that a well-bred Protestant could practically blush. Many years ago, I attended the Broadway opening of a failure called “Brooklyn Biarritz” (Coney Island) which was no more tasteful or interesting than its title. The climax of the Second Act showed us a man killing another man beneath the boardwalk of Brighton Beach, the killer adding insult to injury by cursing his victim while strangling him. Sonafabitch was shouted several times and there was much gurgling appropriate to crime at the Spa. One young lady who was seated next to me stood up and cheered as the curtain descended. Tears in her eyes, she then turned to her companion and said: “Oh, I think this is just terrific! ”
Aesthetic considerations aside, I envied that young woman and I still do. Certainly I have never seen anyone, bright or stupid, drunk or sober, behave in such a way at the showing of a motion picture—not even a great one. But I behaved that way when I saw Marlon Brando in the stage version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” as I also did when I first saw Laurette Taylor. So does every theatre-goer sooner or later, because thrills and excitement belong to the living theatre and the finest movie ever made will never generate such an open-hearted response. A truly electric communication between the viewer and the event takes place only on a real stage with live actors.
But today’s Broadway audiences do not lean forward in anticipation, hoping to be thrilled, uplifted, or enlightened. Instead, they lean back apathetically as if to say: “Show me.” There are individual exceptions, but such individuals cannot keep even the average Broadway production running for more than a month. Not only do we lack a significant body of stage-struck ticket purchasers, a great majority of our population has never seen a play at all and couldn’t care less. And I am speaking of the population of New York City, not Austin, Texas.
Today’s theatrical audience has misplaced vulnerability, naivete, and—more importantly—the ability to listen, to participate, or to be moved. Some observers, Mr. Howard Taubman included, have said that really good plays will bring the serious audience back to our playhouses. I fear not. What little serious audience is left to us does not need bringing back. They stand at the box-offices like so many ravenous dogs, anytime they are given half the chance to be genuinely engaged. They loved “A Man For All Seasons,” just as they loved “Virginia Woolf” and even “After The Fall,” but they are a shrinking group. I do not believe that the widespread success of the first two plays indicates a resuscitation of widespread interest. I believe that it indicates critical acceptance followed by a mass of bored, but status-seeking snobs. The relative success of “The Deputy” strikes me as parochial and guilt-inspired rather than as a manifestation of serious theatrical interest. Finally, I am convinced that should there be more than one “Seasons” or “Woolf” or “Deputy” in a given season that Drama #2 would fall on its financial face, critics and public defenders notwithstanding. The expense-account audience is prepared to enjoy “Hello, Dolly!” and to put up with “A Man For All Seasons” only because it is necessary to tell the neighbors that they saw Paul Scofield act.
The terrible truth is that Broadway audiences are not an isolated phenomenon; they indelibly represent a national trend. That trend recklessly careens toward disinterest, lack of engagement, and an inability to be thrilled by anything less than Frank Sinatra singing at The Sands or a roller-coaster ride steep enough to frighten a test pilot. Neither experience is worth an aesthetic pin but both are flashy and “in”, while anything less or even different is irrevocably “out”. Should these same people literally see Laurette Taylor, they would begin to look with a jaundiced eye upon Sinatra, but if they don’t see her, they will never know. Those who do see are so drunk or so tired that they can only be reached by fire-works and so the vicious circle completes itself, to the wasting of life.
Today, I can see the “big deal” in every human eye and I can see it wherever I look. Our society has managed to glorify cynicism, lack of participation, selfishness, and “I’m gonna get mine” to the exclusion of the perhaps puritanical virtues on which this nation was built. This is progress of a sort, for puritanism contained many repressions, but we have also paid a price and that price is reflected clearly in the modern Broadway audience. For every step of social progress, a price must be paid, and the New York theatre pays that price today. Not being a qualified social philosopher, I dare not carry the implications of this notion too far but theatre audiences indubitably reflect the trend at which I wag my finger. Modern Broadway audiences refuse to work. They refuse to listen. They refuse to participate in the emotional event which takes place on stage. One can only conclude that unrelieved self-interest (and social laziness) leads eventually to a breaking down of the emotional and intellectual muscles six ways from the Jack, and that today’s young people (and old people) want life and pleasure and entertainment brought to them, with the least amount of effort and sensory participation on their own part.
To watch a motion picture or a television show demands no effort whatever. It is no more comparable to watching a theatre performance than reading comic books is comparable to touring the Louvre. Even a serious film moves quickly, contains little verbiage, and causes its audience to think only indirectly. The modern art film, which supposedly substitutes for the sort of live theatre once attended by culture-buffs, rarely demands of its audience what was demanded by “Death Of A Salesman” or even “Our Town.” Films are visual rather than verbal. They are dream-like rather than real. They are easy rather than hard. They are also entirely unaffected by the audience, be it good or bad, dead or alive. A motion picture is in the can: over and done with, unaffectable, inaccessible. And like all things stuffed into cans, it is less alive than something fresh, even if it tastes good.
Our audience has become film-going rather than theatre-going because our audience is half-dead and mortally canned. What is worse, our audience remains dead even when they do go to the theatre. The only encouraging note is the wild peal of laughter heard now and then at plays directed by Mike Nichols and written by Neil Simon. Such laughter is a touching echo of what I heard thirty years ago from people closely resembling human beings. We have become, by and large, a nation of spectators rather than participators. But a really alive theatrical audience must be made up of individuals who want to participate and are capable of identifying with the pleasure and pain on stage. They are not drunken night-clubbers, capable only of identifying with a rock-and-roller’s latest vocal innovation or lyric distortion; they are humans wishing to identify with a human experience which surpasses the gimmicks of modern success. In other words, they wish to respond to the works of an artist, rather than be titillated by the tricks of a fake.
A bored gentleman twisting the dial of his television set, trying to weigh the relative merits of “Bonanza” and the “Million Dollar Movie” alters the shape of neither. Whatever his choice, both products will remain the same. Why? Because they are products, rather than works. But let a theatre actor catch sight of a seat-holder trudging up the aisle toward a door marked EXIT and his next few lines will show at least a tiny bit of strain, I assure you. The theatre actor is affected by his audience, individually and collectively. Audience and play are inevitably one. When they are not, the evening will be—to one degree or another—a failure.
I recall a New York performance of “A Man For All Seasons” during which a ticket-holder in the first row began groaning and mumbling with displeasure before the play was five minutes old. His behavior was noisy, distracting, and upsetting to both cast and audience. Was he drunk? Was he crazy? Was he a hatchet man for David Merrick? Was he—in fact—David Merrick?* I discussed the matter with George Rose who, as the Common Man, addressed the audience directly through much of the play and could therefore be most understandably annoyed by any unruly behavior. Mr. Rose merely shrugged when I declared that the fellow was driving me batty. “He’s just bored,” he said. Such an attitude is both professional and sophisticated, but rest assured that the evening’s performance was far from being one of the best our company delivered. In choosing so depressing and negative an anecdote, I hope to apostrophize my conviction precisely: the very relationship which makes it possible for a single member of the audience to disrupt a theatrical evening is the self-same relationship which should be cherished and protected by anyone who loves entertainment in any form whatever.
*(The play was presented by a rival producer named Robert Whitehead.)
Years ago, Broadway actors dreaded matinee performances because they were usually half-filled and often with children and their governesses. Today, the afternoon performances are among the best given in New York. Why? Because the audience is more attentive. The housewives, stage-struck little old ladies, teenagers, drama students, and would-be actors who attend the daytime shows are in their seats neither reluctantly nor as status-seeking snobs. Instead, they are in love with the theatre and cannot find comparable excitement elsewhere. They are, in fact, the final, decimated residue of the shop-girl, shoe-clerk audience for which I so achingly yearn. In other words, they are human beings. They are neither drunk nor tired; they think Frank Sinatra is a clown; and they need neither Olsen and Johnson nor semi-nude girls to keep them awake. All they do need is a good play, properly put on. In fact, the play need not be a masterpiece to please them. It need merely be a live theatrical experience which surpasses the pre-digested, bloodless pap which appears on our ubiquitous silver screens.
Can something be done about all this? I doubt it, but it is surely worth noting that such social phenomena as bored and indifferent audiences are symptomatic of a larger illness. A theatre audience, though it is composed of individuals, is not an isolated group breathing rarified air. It is a cross-section of human types which reflects the immediate pre-occupations of a particular society at a particular time. It is entirely possible that audiences, as well as people in general, have lost a certain squareness. The salt, in fact, seems to have been sifted from the earth and “square” is now a dirty word. When an entire society becomes hip and cynical, it also becomes harder to reach and engage. A motion picture such as “What’s New, Pussycat?” intrigues its audience precisely because it takes hipness and cynicism a few steps further than even the audience dared hope.
The audience I cry for so plangently is not necessarily a hip group or even an intelligent one. In fact, they are sometimes less than discriminating, which is perfectly all right with me, since I have found that discriminating audiences tend to be wrong as often as they are right. They will reject “The Great God Brown” because it’s a bore, darling, and accept “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” because it’s camp. But the undiscriminating, unhip, and possibly unintelligent group has a healthy distaste for camp, whether High, Middle, or Low. It is more accessible than it is snobbish; more emotional than it is intellectual; and quite a bit more ready to shout its approval than to nod its acceptance. What I prize in an audience, regardless of intelligence or sophistication, is an appetite for participation and a capacity for emotional response. Mr. George Bernard Shaw was surely an intelligent and sophisticated man, but Hilaire Belloc said of him: “Mr. Shaw is so determined not to be taken in that he remains forever out.”
So does our current audience. It is hip, you bet, but I wonder if the hip are happy? Sometimes I even wonder if they are in. For this very reason, I have blithely ignored the off-Broadway movement, which has practically dropped dead from in-ness. Despite some noteworthy achievements, such as “The Connection,” “The Fantasticks,” and “The Threepenny Opera,” off-Broadway has suffered from a lack of “square” audiences. Now that the ticket prices are almost as high as they are uptown and the seats almost as comfortable, off-Broadway has developed all the symptoms of creative asthma. It is breathing hard and heavy and can barely be distinguished from its moribund brother uptown.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith recently unburdened herself of a fascinating battle-cry. “What this country needs,” said the lady, “is more squares.” She added that there had been too much glorification of the confidence-man, the corner-cutter, and the goof-off. Perhaps there has also been too much ironic laughter, too much easy tolerance, too much, black humor, as well as too little earnest participation in the issues of living. Hardly a more tiresome adjective than “earnest” exists in the English language, and the fellow for whom “life is real, life is earnest” has long been a figure of fun, but when I was a small boy—and I really was at one time—I saw cheaply dressed young ladies and gentlemen arriving at the Belasco Theatre for performances of “Dead End” and, later, “Golden Boy” whose eyes were lit up with earnest anticipation and eagerness. Maybe they were a bit too earnest but they also managed to be a long way from complacent. They were surely not drunk; they had surely not eaten at Pavilion or even Toffenetti’s. Most likely their pre-theater supper was ingested at Nedick’s and consisted of one hot dog and one orange drink. No doubt they saved fifty cents that way, which was close to the price of the ticket. “Dead End” and “Golden Boy” were good plays, as were “Three Men On A Horse” and “Born Yesterday.” But they also played to good audiences. What the old professionals call “live ones.”
Oh, you beautiful shop-girls and shoe-clerks and low brows and middle-brows, fling away your pop-corn and your boredom and come back to the living theatre where you belong! Yesterday might turn out to be tomorrow. If you can pay $2.50 to stand on line for “What’s New, Pussycat?,” why not pay the same for a balcony seat to “The Odd Couple”? Believe me, it’s a funny play. And, just like you, it is alive.
