No. 1 - One Thousand Sandals
I get accused of many things in the course of one day. This past week alone I have been accused of being a communist, a slugger, and taking ecstasy before rehearsals. The latter accusation came from a director I am currently working with and due to my inability to communicate properly with her, I put out the appearance of one who was hooked on that funny little pill with the hard to spell name. Ecstasy. Okay, it’s not all that hard to spell.
Communication is everything, isn’t it? Let’s be cliché for a moment. One moment, not two or five. Communication makes the world bearable. Without it, I would be dead or even worse, laying in a madman’s cave beside other conquests he daily clubs and captures. Communication is one of the very essences of theatre. “Theatre has many essences!” you may be saying. “How DARE you label any of them! I hate this column!” Trust me; you’ll hate it much more later on.
With communication comes collaboration, and collaboration is how magical theatre transpires. Theatre is, by nature, communicating with an audience. We must communicate with our audiences in order to serve them, in order to give them their money’s worth, and to get them in the door in the first place. We must communicate with the public in order to get them to come to our shows.
Have I used the word “communicate” enough? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. There, that’s annoying enough. I hope.
Let’s take a little trip south! Get in the car. Erin and Dennis sit in the back, Chris in the trunk. Ready? Let’s drive.
This past week I was in North Carolina. The sandals I currently own and love (having had them for three years) have recently broken and this embarrassed the heck out of my brilliant mother. My home remedy fix of my sandal strap did not seem charming to my mother—just like having to go through my bathroom to get to my kitchen did not seem charming to my old roommate. This began her (and my equally brilliant father’s) mission to find new sandals for me to place on my feet.
We went to a pretty decent shoe store in one of those outlet centers that my mother loves and I found that they had a few very high tech jobs that looked all plastic-y and Skywalker-y and did not at all impress me like my leather natural home remedy jobs. To another store! Let’s see what they have. Oh, the same four models. Oh well. Let’s go to another store. Same thing. Let’s go to the mall, then! Same thing. Everywhere we went, the same four or five bloody sandals! Through the course of the week I must have looked at one thousand of them—all of them the same, same, same! It was worse than when I had to shop for a writing desk three years ago… nowadays, stores only sell computer tables.
Just what in the hell does this have to do with anything?
Someone obviously has to communicate with the sandal stores of North Carolina. They are all selling the same thing. If one of them were to branch out and sell something else, what a windfall would occur! It would benefit everyone. It’s too late for my feet. But it’s not too late for you.
So how do we—one theatre company in a city of five million theatre companies—know what kind of sandals you, the public, would like to buy? We communicate with you. You communicate with us. We give you want you want, but we challenge you as well. We give you your money’s worth. We provoke you. We get you in the door, and we all go from there.
This website is the start of that communication. Send us your thoughts. Tell us what kind of sandals you think are missing from the New York theatre. Once we communicate, we can work to serve you, challenge you, and entertain you all the better.
To the ends of the earth and back,
-Brian
Communication is everything, isn’t it? Let’s be cliché for a moment. One moment, not two or five. Communication makes the world bearable. Without it, I would be dead or even worse, laying in a madman’s cave beside other conquests he daily clubs and captures. Communication is one of the very essences of theatre. “Theatre has many essences!” you may be saying. “How DARE you label any of them! I hate this column!” Trust me; you’ll hate it much more later on.
With communication comes collaboration, and collaboration is how magical theatre transpires. Theatre is, by nature, communicating with an audience. We must communicate with our audiences in order to serve them, in order to give them their money’s worth, and to get them in the door in the first place. We must communicate with the public in order to get them to come to our shows.
Have I used the word “communicate” enough? Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. There, that’s annoying enough. I hope.
Let’s take a little trip south! Get in the car. Erin and Dennis sit in the back, Chris in the trunk. Ready? Let’s drive.
This past week I was in North Carolina. The sandals I currently own and love (having had them for three years) have recently broken and this embarrassed the heck out of my brilliant mother. My home remedy fix of my sandal strap did not seem charming to my mother—just like having to go through my bathroom to get to my kitchen did not seem charming to my old roommate. This began her (and my equally brilliant father’s) mission to find new sandals for me to place on my feet.
We went to a pretty decent shoe store in one of those outlet centers that my mother loves and I found that they had a few very high tech jobs that looked all plastic-y and Skywalker-y and did not at all impress me like my leather natural home remedy jobs. To another store! Let’s see what they have. Oh, the same four models. Oh well. Let’s go to another store. Same thing. Let’s go to the mall, then! Same thing. Everywhere we went, the same four or five bloody sandals! Through the course of the week I must have looked at one thousand of them—all of them the same, same, same! It was worse than when I had to shop for a writing desk three years ago… nowadays, stores only sell computer tables.
Just what in the hell does this have to do with anything?
Someone obviously has to communicate with the sandal stores of North Carolina. They are all selling the same thing. If one of them were to branch out and sell something else, what a windfall would occur! It would benefit everyone. It’s too late for my feet. But it’s not too late for you.
So how do we—one theatre company in a city of five million theatre companies—know what kind of sandals you, the public, would like to buy? We communicate with you. You communicate with us. We give you want you want, but we challenge you as well. We give you your money’s worth. We provoke you. We get you in the door, and we all go from there.
This website is the start of that communication. Send us your thoughts. Tell us what kind of sandals you think are missing from the New York theatre. Once we communicate, we can work to serve you, challenge you, and entertain you all the better.
To the ends of the earth and back,
-Brian
Poor Brian’s Almanac