Casting by TV
So some London producers are annoyed that the BBC is unfairly promoting Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can’t blame them: theatre audiences are finite and if shows like Any Dream Will Do attract audiences to see Joseph or whatever production is being hyped, it means they are, at least in part, an audience lost to other shows.
But my objection to this kind of theatrical “reality” (What a misnomer! There is nothing “real” about an audition strung out over weeks in front of cameras and watched and voted on by millions of people!) is much more fundamental. And not only is it not “real”, it cheapens the whole audition process.
Actors may moan about auditions, that in some cases they are not given a proper chance to show what they can do, and it has to be said that some auditions are pretty perfunctory affairs, at least for those who don’t get called back, but, generally speaking, directors have a pretty good idea of what they’re looking for and can recognise it when they see it. Not to be recalled is not - usually: there are bound to be some exceptions - a comment on the actor’s talent or skill but a recognition that (s)he does not fit the profile the director is looking for. If the actor does not fit the “look” (or perhaps “aura” might be a better word), then (s)he will not fit the vision the director has of the finished piece.
How can this happen in a reality TV show? Do the millions (or whatever) of people who vote have any concept of what goes into selecting the right person for the role? Of course not. They go for looks that please them and a voice they like.
In any case, who should the public have a say? Do they have a say in selecting the local hospita’s consultant brain surgeon? Of course they don’t: they rely on the selection board to choose the right person, bearing in mind the many variables associated with the position which only they know about. When non-experts have to make the decisions, more often than not they get it wrong because they make their choice based on the wrong criteria.
I said the reality TV route cheapens the audition process, but actually it cheapens the shows involved and theatre in general. And no one can tell me that Andrew LLoyd Webber is not aware of this: he is far too shrewd an operator. But the publicity is worth millions and if, in the end, the wrong Joseph (or Sandy, or Danny) is chosen, he can be quietly persuaded to leave the show at an early stage.
May 5th, 2007 at 05:02 pm
It has been revealed by Whatsonstage.com that the producers of “We Will Rock You” have been approached to allow the show to be sued for one of these reality series.
“We were asked,” said Brian May. “But we said no. We all feel that TV auditioning would be contrary to the spirit of our show. It’s actually an appalling lowering of standards, this whole TV-dominated culture. I promise you will never find us on some panel bullying and ridiculing young performers – I personally detest that kind of thing, and I think it’s a shame that the public puts up with it.”
Good for him!
May 6th, 2007 at 06:01 pm
I agree with a lot of what you say here but I think there are two aspects where I would offer an alternative view.
Firstly I don’t really subscribe to the “theatre audiences are finite” belief and generally believe people will see shows tehy want to see rather than deciding which one show to see a year. There is also the hope that shows such as this actually bring new audiences to the theatre who otherwise simply wouldn’t consider seeing *any* show, and if they like what they see they may well see another.
I also think it is a little naive to think that these shows leave the choice to the public. While there is a desire to see a “popular” winner I don’t think we can really assume that these shows are any more “reality” TV than “Big Brother”. An enourmous amount of influence over the eventual winner is gained from on-screen portrayal and editing, song choice and arrangements, running order and many other techniques to ensure the “right result”
Unquestionably from an actors viewpoint these shows are a disaster but they do provide entertainment and arguably increase general interest in musical theatre which can’t be that bad a thing.
May 7th, 2007 at 06:05 pm
I agree with View From The Stalls that this kind of ‘reality’ TV is good for encouraging those who may not go and see such a musical to buy tickets and tell their friends, because they feel they have some vested interest in the creation of the production. I also agree that audiences are influenced by the choices the TV producer makes in terms of editing and such.
However, I also agree with Peter that I would rather a panel of experts chose my brain surgeon than choose him/her myself based on my serious lack of knowledge about brain surgery (and, presumably, at a time when my brain isn’t working all that well).
But I do have faith that the spread of the public’s ability to choose that has been generated by the current incarnation of the internet (about which music, videos, news articles, and so on are worthwhile and which are not) will also result in the public being able to make more and more informed choices due to the similarly wide-ranging amount of information made available by the very experts who have been making the choices up to now.
More than that, the experts are not always purely interested in the enjoyment-value of a song, or the informative content of a news article. In many cases, online, for the public, that’s exactly how we make our decisions.
I’m not advocating a lessening of the value placed on an expert’s opinion. But we must remember that the audience of a musical ARE an expert at being an audience. Any theatrical presentation would not be a theatrical presentation without the presence and collaboration of an audience. (There is no sound when no hands clap.)
This is the same for me as librettist having an opinion about casting, even though I am not the director, whose job it is to ultimately make a call about casting. I would be outraged if the director of a first production of a brand new show completely ignored my opinion on the characters and cast totally against what I thought I’d written. It is, in fact, fairly standard with many theatre companies producing a new show to allow me a clause in my contract that gives me right of approval over director, and I wouldn’t work with anyone who had radically different ideas to mine. However, if they collaborate with me and take my intentions into consideration, I will always fight for their right to make that final call. It’s a collaboration.
Andrew Lloyd Webber presumably HAS the ability to tell the TV producers that the way the public is voting will result in something that would actually be harmful for the production, at which point something would be done. We may not find out about it, but I guarantee you he’s not investing that much money in a production and then letting the public have absolute say. Long-runners are where recoupment happens. Reality shows won’t guarantee an audience indefinitely. As was pointed out, after a few months they can fire the person hired and re-cast anyway.
I was just discussing these TV shows with a friend of mine who is studying to be a musical theatre performer. He’s writing a paper on the ‘triple-threat’ actor, and I suggested that the state of arts funding is directly responsible for the kind of skills a performer requires to work in musical theatre.
When companies choose to do musical revivals to guarantee them an audience through affection and product-recognition, they produce shows that were written in an era when being a triple-threat was the norm: Carousel, The Sound of Music, West Side Story. Thus they require a cast with those abilities.
When companies choose to do small-scale productions for budgetry reasons, and have a cast of actor-musicians, they require a triple-threat of a different kind - and perhaps even a quadruple threat, unless we wish to lose dancing from musicals entirely. They cast those shows accordingly.
When companies choose to do cross-genre productions that include another performance skill (eg: the puppetry in Avenue Q or the roller-skating in Starlight Express, or even the drumming in Stomp) because the novelty of it will attract more bums on seats, they require perfomers with even more skills. Admittedly, they have production ’schools’ for these during rehearsals… but if you already have some knowledge of that skill as a performer, plus you’re as good at everything else as other people auditioning, who gets the part?
So, effectively, as in the old days when you learnt to sing, dance and act equally well, and to the best of your ability, the state of funding in the arts is having a direct effect on the amount and variety of work available to performers, the amount of training they have to do and skills they have to perfect, and therefore the pressure on drama schools to include as much as possible into the curriculum and hire more members of staff who are experts in more disciplines.
That money has to come from somewhere, and as per tradition in the arts because of lack of funding, the people who are the most vulnerable are hit the hardest. As Peter so rightly said: the foundation of the pyramid is the one that gets chipped away. More productions start to require actor-musicians, so actors pay money to learn an instrument that they can add to their resume. Drama schools have to charge more, so they put the fees up. Producers have to recoup their investors’ money, so they ask the writers to waive their royalties. Record companies are stung by online file-sharing, so they put outrageous clauses into artists’ contracts.
I don’t think triple-threaters are a bad thing. I love being able to include dance in my musicals. I didn’t hesitate to write puppetry into my current show, and wouldn’t hesitate to write in any other skill I thought necessary to enhance the storytelling. But there are consequences of my doing that: people have to spend more money learning skills, or I immediately disbar some actors from ever being in that show, or I create a situation in which my producer asks me to waive my royalties. The consequence of my writing choices is not, and has never been, that the government offers me and my team financial support and encouragement to expand and experiment with the artform.
So what is Reality TV doing for my artform? It’s expanding the popularity of it - which is fantastic. It’s enabling the public to have more choice, and to potentially make an informed choice by learning what the experts on the panel say - also good, in many ways. But the fact that these shows are revivals draws in a big TV audience - and yet also forces us to produce shows that require triple-threaters, which puts pressure on the industry in many ways. Not a bad thing, except for the fact that the industry cannot, or does not, entirely support itself.
In their defence, I note that the money from phone calls into the BBC’s Any Dream Will Do will be used to fund a musical theatre bursery “with the intention of helping aspiring young performers to further their career ambitions in the area of musical theatre”. I would imagine it’s quite a lot of money.
I can’t imagine it’s enough to completely redress the balance.
May 22nd, 2007 at 08:06 pm
Not for me to comment on reality TV, but theatre TV isnt only on tv anymore and its open to more than the likes of the BBC and ITV..there is a new wave of TV theatre related channels on the web including the likes of www.theatre247.tv where they are showing a more lighter look at theatre with programs and good on them for taking a an unbiased view on it all