Small Cast and Small Audience
I was talking with a colleague about one of my small-cast plays and I was trying to describe how productions were so "successful" (from an audience-interaction standpoint) while at the same time being tremendously difficult to justify economically. For my two-person drama TOGETHER WE ARE MAKING A POEM IN HONOR OF LIFE , a husband and wife navigate a support group for greiving parents in the aftermath of a school shooting. In multiple productions, the play has been staged in a "site specific" way - asking audience members to enter a small room, often in a church basement or other public space. Everyone sits in a cirlce of metal folding chairs reminiscent of contemporary support groups, and the actors enter the space and sit in the chairs alongside the audience. This staging allows for an intimacy and frankness that can be very compelling. It can also be uncomfortable for an audience to give and receive eye contact - both from actors, and from other audience members....