From the “watch what you wish for” file. Last Friday I was driving home pondering the fact that far fewer people purchased tickets over the phone or in person than they did even five years ago. As a result we have lost an opportunity to speak with people and gain clues about what their impetus was for coming to the show and what sort of experience they expect. Certainly, we can speak with people in the lobby before the show and at intermission, but both our ability and time frame in which to act on things we learn is impaired. We also aren’t getting information like “my wife asked me to call for tickets for our friends and ourselves…” to learn who it is that initiates the attendance process.

Technology allows us to provide information and an opportunity to purchase 24 hours a day. However, I being to feel that the communication stream between our patron base and ourselves is increasingly one way. We provide the information telling them about the show on our websites, emails and stories but we get relatively little back from our community. If they didn’t buy tickets, we might not get any sign of response at all. Lack of purchase may not necessarily indicate lack of interest, just use of the wrong communication channel to reach people.

So as I was driving home Friday, I started pondering making today’s entry an open letter to our communities telling them they needed to be partners in the communication process to let us know if we were meeting their expectations.

Then came our show on Saturday.

We had advertised the performance everywhere noting that it was for mature audiences only. You couldn’t buy tickets online without seeing an image of the brash performance group making crude gestures (crotch grabbing, etc). We didn’t hide that the show might offend people. We warned people we suspected might be upset by it, including mentioning that it might not be suitable for their kids. We made a similar announcement before we opened the door that night.

Within 10 minutes people walked out and asked for a refund. I gave it without question because there was worse than that to come and I didn’t want to be accused of manipulating them into sticking around. More people walked out at a particularly intense scene. One woman threw her program book down in the row in front of me and criticized the choice of the performance while the show was continuing on stage before storming away from me. (This was the person who had come in to buy tickets and we cautioned against bringing her kids.)

Let me just say at this juncture that the show, while quite unsettling, wasn’t providing an extreme experience. There is far more coarse language concentrated in the first 10 minutes of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. The subjects being covered frankly and with some profanity, were not pleasant ones as you might imagine. I started to realize that people may be confusing being made very uncomfortable with actual obscene acts. Far more violence and sexual situations can be seen on television and in film but there is nothing to mediate the experience when it is live.

I admit that the show made me uncomfortable as I knew it would and I approached the lobby at intermission and the end of the show with some trepidation. But I guess everyone who hated the show had already left because no one approached me with complaints.

-One woman praised me for being brave enough to present the piece. She said of the four people in her group, she liked the show the best. She also said we gave her group something to talk about on the ride home. They were one of the last people to quit the lobby that night.

-Another woman told us that she was amazed at how far the performers went with the subjects. She noted that most of the time, groups were afraid to really commit themselves to fully exploring tough subjects so she was amazed when she realized they had reached the point people usually retreated from were going to just continue on. She said something to the effect of “I have had these conversations in private before and was flabbergasted that someone was saying them aloud for all the world to hear.” She said she was going to blog on the experience. We told her we hoped she would and asked her to send us the link.

-One of our students said his perspectives had changed.

-This weekend the performers forwarded comments attendees had left on their website. The commenters repeated the sentiment about the show giving them a lot to talk about.

I was surprised that we didn’t receive any negative emails or calls about the show over the weekend. The woman who complained to me in the theatre during the performance did call today to continue her criticism. I mostly just listened and let her talk. She told me how the show was inappropriate for the type of organization she perceived we were. Even though I didn’t agree with her about the type of places these shows should be performed; the responses of other audience members clearly showed there was some value in broaching the subject, I didn’t mention any of that.

This was the conversation I was yearning to have with my audiences on Friday. I didn’t necessarily want to have a criticism infused discussion, but I was getting what I had wanted–an audience member telling me how she perceived our organization and what she valued about it.

I really don’t have any desire or ambition to upset my audiences to elicit these sort of conversations from them. I would love for them to say these things to me all the time. But even if I was having rich, meaningful conversations with my audiences all the time, I would still present challenging work that made sense for us when I had the opportunity. Conversations on those subjects are desirable as well.