You’ll have to forgive me, I’m afraid, but between the final three performances of Day of Absence, a closing-night reception yesterday evening, and two shifts at my day job as well, I haven’t had time to put together much of a blog post this week. In fact, I’d thought seriously of simply typing out “zzzzzzzzzzzz…” and leaving it at that.
However, there were a few instances of something at the talk-back during the reception last night, following our (pretty darn successful) production, and it’s a something I do want to address. There were any number of people telling us which we had to either extend our run, or remount the show at a performance space in such-and-such a community. On top of that, there were any number of folks telling individual performers that we absolutely had to be in movies or on Broadway.
Evidently people believe that when we hear these helpful suggestions, we actors and producers are going to smack our foreheads and exclaim, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Here’s the thing – no matter how good we are and how diligently we hustle, it’s always somebody else who casts us. (Even if it’s a solo show, unless we’re multimillionaires, it’s somebody else who foots the bill and provides the performance venue.) And it’s a whole host of somebody elses who generate the funds for theatres to produce their work.
So why not be one of the somebodys? If you like what you’ve seen, be it NEC’s Day of Absence or anything else, make a donation to that theatre. See more work they produce. Let people know that you like such and such an actor or playwright and that you and folks like you will pay good money to see them again. You’re ultimately the ones with the power here.
I’d say more, but I have to be at work in a few hours.