goestoshow

So I may be a little late to this party, but I have just read Mack Male and Sharon Yeo‘s posts about their experience literally being heckled by a performer (Jeff Haslam, who is no small fry. He’s the Director of Programming at the Varscona Theatre) in the Edmonton theatre community for having the gall to review their plays and not be completely glowing in their reviews.

Obviously, as someone who casually reviews plays on this blog, this hits pretty close to home for me. Especially as someone who is not an expert in theatre, nor insulated by connections to people in the theatre community. I see the shows I want to see, I pay for my tickets almost every time, and I’m as entitled to say my piece about those shows as anyone else who does the same. I have been fortunate enough to only receive positive feedback from artists who I’ve reviewed, but to be fair because I tend to avoid plays I know I won’t like my average rating for shows I see is probably higher than most.

But I do call it like I see it when I see a play that I don’t enjoy, and while I know that reviews like that are very painful for people who put time and effort into the work they do, I feel that it’s very very important to respect your audience. Respecting your audience means accepting that sometimes they won’t like your work. And that means sometimes your play won’t do very well, because you miscalculated or because of the weather or because that glowing review you needed didn’t come in until late in the run.

To lash out at an audience member who paid you for the seat they sat in in your theatre is not respecting your audience. Though those of us who blog about our theatre experiences may make ourselves more obvious targets, what you’re telling everyone in your audience by lashing out like this is that they are not entitled to their opinion because they’re not educated enough to “get it.” These are the people who pay your bills.

I’m going to go one step further than Mack and Sharon. I’m not attending any performance at the Varscona until somehow this is resolved. Not for the rest of this Fringe, not for the next theatre season, and not at next Fringe. I’m sure my warm butt in their seats won’t be missed, because the Varscona is always home to popular shows (probably in part due to their pulling out of official Fringe venue status to become a BYOV so they can hand pick their shows), but I can’t support a theatre with a Director of Programming who apparently loathes his audience. That’s just not acceptable.

And that’s a shame, because there were things I was looking forward to seeing there still and it’s a great venue. But really, my money can go to artists who respect me.