Community Theatre - what does it mean?

I have now been in charge of the Midland Community Theatre for 12 years - prior to working here, I ran the Salina (KS) Community Theatre for 2 years and the Mansfield (OH) Playhouse for 3 years. Thus, I have been working in a leadership role in community theatre for 17 of my 42 years. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to run a small (Mansfield - 1 full-time employee, 1 part-time), a medium (Salina - 4 full-time and 2 part-time) and now a larger community theatre (MCT - 12 full-time and 10 part-time). Although I am still learning, I also feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work on many different levels in community theatre and gain the experience I can put into practice on a daily basis.

I remember in my early days at MCT reading a letter to the editor about our production of Das Barbecu asking whether the "community theatre" was meeting the standards of the community. After all, who do we (Midland Community Theatre) serve - especially with the word "community" in our title? I have always believed that community theatre has a unique position in the theatre world. In professional theatre, they serve the audience - they can hire the directors, actors and technicians to do the shows, and only need to convince the audience to attend their shows. In academic theatre, they serve the participants - the student actors, directors, technicians - and an audience attending their shows is a bonus. In community theatre, we serve both worlds - we must convince the volunteers to participate in the shows (actors, technicians, front-of-house) and we must also convince the audience to attend (and support) our shows. In other words, the decisions we make must serve two groups who sometimes have different agendas.

Play selection is one area where the diversity of needs of these two groups often comes into conflict. At MCT, we have a committee of five people who work on the slate of plays for the next season - the Executive Director, a staff member, a Board member and two members-at-large. Over the last couple of seasons, we have taken a "risk" with the opening musical - The Producers in 2008 and Les Miserables in 2009. In both cases, we knew that there was not the broad appeal to the non-theatre audience with each of these musicals. With The Producers, we knew that this was a more "adult" musical and this reduced the overall appeal of this musical last year - this was reflected in ticket sales. This year, we knew that many of the non-traditional theatre crowd had at least heard of Les Miserables - maybe they read the book in high school or at least had heard about the musical version. However, we also knew that there were some negatives associated with the show (it's long, what's it about?, it's depressing and everyone dies).

From a volunteer point of view, Les Miserables has been a great success. We had a tremendous turnout at auditions, and cast many new people in the show. In addition, we have had many people step forward to work on the show backstage, and I could not be prouder of the people working on this show. They have all poured their heart and soul into the show, and anyone attending can see their talent and dedication.

From an audience perspective, we knew that word of mouth would be important to sell-out future performances of Les Miserables. Opening weekend was full - we expected that with the demands of our biggest supporters and the friends and family of the cast we would fill up this opening weekend. This week, the Box Office has been busy, indicating good word of mouth from the opening weekend crowd. Unfortunately, the Midland Reporter-Telegram review on Friday was not positive - the reviewer complained about the length of the show and was not enamored with several volunteer performances as well as the work of the Musical Director and myself. Certainly, it is the reviewer's right to have their opinion and to share this opinion with their audience (newspaper readers). However, I find it strange that this particular reviewer - who has complained in the past about MCT only doing "safe" shows and not doing any serious work like O'Neill and Shakespeare - would then write a review about the show with information that has nothing to do with our production (after all, the original novel is long, the original musical production was long, and our production is no longer) and in general tear down the efforts of volunteers and staff at a community theatre to produce serious work. Again, reviewers are entitled to their opinion, but can you have it both ways - criticize us for not doing serious work, and then criticize us for doing serious work that is long and melodramatic?

In the end, you learn one important lesson in community theatre - ignore all of the other issues and ask yourself the most essential question - are you doing what's best for the theatre? In the end, I strongly believe that the volunteers and audience in Midland will say that it was important for us to produce Les Miserables. You understand that there are going to be detractors at every step of the process - people who simply want to criticize the theatre for not selecting the show they wanted, for not casting them in the show - whatever the reason. Fortunately, the cast and crew of Les Miserables has responded very positively in the face of this review, and are looking forward to this weekend's slate of performances.

I will update you on Monday with a report on the Friday and Saturday night performance. If you have not seen the show, please attend over the next three weekends - contact the Box Office (432-570-4111) or visit our website.