A Good Audience

I've wanted to do this for the LONGEST TIME.

Have you ever gone to see a play/musical, and the audience doesn't seem all that responsive? The show might be good or it might not be, but the audience just isn't giving anything at all?

Then you talk to your friends after the show, and they say--

"The audience was SOOO good tonight. They were way better than last night."

And you think--

"What show were you performing? Apparently, I needed to see that one."

But you don't say that, because you're not rude.

You're not, I am--at least for the moment.

A friend of mine was in a show, and every performance was taped for one reason or another. They wanted to piece together the best moments of each performance to make the ultimate bootleg college production video, which, I suppose, if it ever decided to grow legs and attack a city, would only be able to be killed by the Power Rangers.

So I asked my friend to do me a favor.

ME: Are you going to watch all the performances?
FRIEND: Well, I have to. I'm the one doing the editing.
ME: And how would you say the show went?
FRIEND: Some nights were better than others. The Saturday night of the second weekend was the best though. That audience was amazing.
ME: Great. Here's my favor.

The show they were doing was a musical comedy, so it's pretty easy to determine whether the audience was that good. Just see how much they laughed, and how vibrant and sustained the applause was after each number.

Granted, an audience can love a show and not be so vocal about it, but then there's no way for performers to know if the they did, in fact, like it. So if it was determined by the performers that Saturday Second Weekers were the best audience, they must have had some evidence of that in order to make that claim, right?

So I had my friend watch the tape, and report back.

ME: How'd it go?
FRIEND: Uh, I guess they weren't that good.
ME: They didn't laugh a lot?
FRIEND: Hardly at all. There were a few chuckles.
ME: How about the applause?
FRIEND: Polite, at best.
ME: How did your friends take it?

Not well. They didn't believe him when he gave them the bad news, so he offered to rewatch the tape with them.

FRIEND: Then, they wanted to see the other tapes, because they thought maybe it was another night they were thinking of and everyone was just confused.
ME: Yes, mass delusion, it happens.
FRIEND: Exactly.
ME: How were the other nights?
FRIEND: Even worse.

That Saturday was the "best" night, but that wasn't saying much.

ME: So were they upset?
FRIEND: Well, I mean, they were more upset that they had thought it went well, and it didn't. They remembered it so differently.
ME: I think I know why.

Here's my theory.

Not every show is a winner. A lot of times, you find yourself in a production that you think is really good, when really it's just all right, if that.

When it goes before an audience, and they don't respond, you're disappointed, but rather than just say--

"Maybe this show isn't all that good."

--You instead lower your expectations for the show. So the next night, when you get a mild giggle where in rehearsals you would have expected rolling laughter, you're satisfied.

An audience that before would have seemed tepid, now seems terrific.

FRIEND: That's really depressing.

Welcome to show business.