by Anne Marie Mortensen

Created on: December 20, 2009

Audiences are becoming less and less artistically educated, less critical and more ignorant of good art, including theatre art.

What used to be reserved as acknowledgement of superior quality has become casual, or worse, has been adopted by the truly ignorant as a mantle of sophistication. Like the Emperor's New Clothes, audiences take the lead of some unknown person who stands for an ovation, not considering for themselves if the performance rated it. It is peer pressure that causes standing ovations, rather than real appreciation.

As we move ahead, we seem to be losing the idea that some things are special and deserve high regard. We do not teach our children that everyone is not equal, and we diminish the talented and praise the clumsy. It's a good way to stop excelling, to enforce the idea that in the arts, participation is the only requisite. I'd like to see a football team choose players in that way. I'd like to see a football coach take a small, untalented player and convince everyone around him that this player is as good as the one standing next to him, who is clearly a star quarterback, but that is what happens in theatre.

Acting is much more than just memorising lines, but so many 'actors' believe that this is all there is to it. "I know my lines, and my blocking, there for I can act." they lack passion, emotion, in fact anything that would convince an audience that they are in the moment and are the character. They lack imagination.

So how can I blame the audience for handing out unearned praise, when the social structure reinforces that the performers deserve an ovation 'just for getting up there in front of people'?

Somehow, we need to begin educating audiences about what is good, and what is not.

In theatre, this is problematic, because the terminology also causes issues. The difference between 'professional' and 'amateur' theatre, for example, has nothing to do with the quality of the production or the performance. It is simply a matter of money. I have seen many amateur actors who outshine their professional counterparts in every way, however, there is still a mysterious regard that professional is somehow 'better'.

That may also be where some of the blame lies. Where I live, professionals have access to grant monies so that they can produce theatre that is commercially unviable. It is commercially unviable because no one wants to see it - it is not entertaining, it is odd, meant for a small number of select people (usually intellectuals) with a sole purpose of showing how clever the concept is. It is just plain boring, however, the intellectuals enjoy discussing it, it becomes branded as 'important work' far before its time, and the lay audience who watches gets the idea that 'good' theatre is boring. They are confused.

We are trying more and more to create 'important' pieces rather than works that people will want to watch. Shakespeare did not try to create important work, he just wrote to entertain, to make a living. It is only the test of time that tells the importance of art.

If we remove the goal of entertaining an audience, then what choice do they have but to give accolades to the mediocre? They don't know the difference.

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