in this video we will finish our discussion on theater as performance and work and one thing I think is very important for us to understand is audience members is that theater is one of the few art forms that has actually performed live right now people who write poetry or compose music or paint or so forth don't usually have that issue you know somebody composing music it doesn't announce that he's going to go to a stage or go to a mall or to the parking lot and sit down and try to put notes on a piece of paper at 7:30 on a Friday night so gather around and watch me do this but if you work in the theatre yeah your art unfolds in real time live right now that is the exhilaration for theater goers if you're an actual audience member who loves the theater who loves art who loves performance part of the exhilaration is that it is taking place in real time right before your very eyes why is that exhilarating because anything can go wrong at any one given time mostly the things that can go wrong just cause severe embarrassment on behalf of the production company not be having the performers sometimes the things that could go wrong can actually cause harm to the performers and that is highly exhilarating think about going to a circus you know when you're at the circus you watch the guys on the flying trapeze and they're swinging back and forth and backflips and they're catching each other and stuff and there's a net to catch them that's the safety net we're in awe of their ability we're like wow look at how acrobatic they are look at how well-timed they are their skill their strength their you know they're fluent motion and all of this kind of stuff because there's a safety net something goes wrong and no big deal but sometimes you go to these / these circus performances and those people certain SLA is the the best that I know of doing this and there's no net under them the exhilaration is ramped up because not only are we admiring their skill and their ability and their fluency we're admiring their guts and we know that any moment they can fall to their death which does happen sometimes in such performances because it's happening live now think of a tightrope walker who walks the tightrope between skyrise buildings you know if there's a net under em or her that's one thing if there's not a net our hearts are pounding unless what we're watching is a pre-recorded video of that walk if we know the guys succeeded and we're watching an on video it's no big deal how many of you have ever watched tried to watch a ballgame that was recorded can you really watch a pre-recorded ballgame with any excitement I'm gonna tell you right now the answer is no I mean we've all tried it I remember in 1985 that's when the Bears played the Patriots in the Super Bowl I was a college student at the time I was a newlywed the college student we had these fancy devices in her home called VCRs I'm embarrassed to even bring that up you know they ought to be in a museum someplace but there were VCRs and we had one it was cheap but we had one and that was as high-tech as any American living room could get and I had to work the night of the Super Bowl and our local pizza I you know how it works you you kids are doing the same thing your bosses usually work with you during the week of finals or midterms and stuff like that and they help you out with the work schedule in that regard but just payoff the payoff means that way you're going to school we're gonna work with you on your tests and stuff but you have to work holidays are Christmas or Super Bowl or World Series something like that and era was I was paying the fiddler and I had to work during the Super Bowl on Sunday night and I thought to myself no big deal I've got a VCR I said to my wife I said record this game don't tell me anything about it don't call up and give me an update on how the Bears are doing it so I was rooting for or anything like that we're not gonna have many customers it's the night of the Super Bowl nobody comes and you know nobody and anybody who does obviously isn't interested in Super Bowl so I'm not going to have to deal with that I'll come home this game with excitement and exhilaration I couldn't wait to get home it shift ended we cleaned the place up flight home I turned that VCR on to watch this Super Bowl you think I watched it I didn't get halfway through the first border why because it had already happened the exhilaration of a professional sporting event is the very fact that it is happening live right now right before your eyes and you know as you're watching it the direction of this game can change at any point somebody can get hurt somebody can have a record-breaking play anything like this could take place you also know something as fans that you you sports fans don't know this but the repeat sports fans that share this passion with me you know if that game is going on in real time you can't change the outcome of that game you can scream and holler and kick and cuss at that TV screen loud enough to backhoes a kid Oquendo off that plate so he can finally break that 22 game hitless streak and not get in the winning run of a playoff game I did it I was screaming so hard at that guy he had missed 22 game 21 22 games straight he didn't hit that thing and I do it's cuz he was crowding the plate finally I had enough one night and I screamed at that thing and I threw a shoe and I said get off the plate he did and he hit double brought in a game-winning run we know his fans we can do that right he can't do that if it's pre-recorded I was watching that game that 1985 Super Bowl and I got halfway through the first quarter and I said to myself what's the what's the point it's already happened there's nothing I could do to help Jim McMahon or Walter Payton or anybody out so I said screw this I said tell me who won and she told me and all of that if you understand that as a sports fan that transfer that to being someone who loves the art live theater you can't watch a play on video you think you can people say that me all time oh I couldn't make that play sure wish you would video it I don't want you saying it on video and you don't want to watch it on video plays are meant to be seen live Moo these are to be seen on video they are made for that venue they are made for that format now a play obviously is scripted is it it is a written plan and there's a debate in the theater on how we should treat a script some people in the script say oh it's just it's just a guideline it's just a stepping stomach you from one place in the story to the next you ought to be able to change the words here and there maybe change the name of a character or you know cleaning it up or update the time frame you know take it out of 1950's and put it in the year 2000 or whatever the case might be my question to you is what side of the debate are you want do you think we ought to be able to manipulate that script or you like some of the other folks who think then know that script is the Bible s script is like the Constitution you don't alter one bit of that you should stay true to every ounce of the playwrights work what do you think which one would you go with I'll tell you which one I subscribe to I don't think you have changed playwrights work I don't think you ought to change the language I don't think you ought to update update the time period I don't think you ought to write certain characters out of the script or change the gender of a character or any of that stuff and if you disagree with that that's fine then it doesn't make you wrong just means you're on that side of the debate but I'll tell you I'll ask you this especially those of you paint or write poetry or write songs or something like this what about a painter let's say a painter paints something that he or she is so proud of its the greatest masterpiece of the career and they come to me I own an art gallery and they say hey I'd love to put this thing in your gallery for a couple of months so that people could see it and you know maybe purchase it or whatever the case might be and I say sure I love it that's beautiful I'd love to have this in my gallery but you know what I think this guy right here your principal character needs a goatee I'm gonna put a little goat I take a little paintbrush or magic marker or something I put it go team let's listen and all what do you think you think I had to have the the artistic Liberty to do that with someone else's painting we all know the answer to that no you don't do that let's say I'm a I'm a singer I'm dying so don't assemble a recording artist and you write a song you poured your heart soul into this song and you come to me and you say hey I'd love to collaborate with you I would love to give you my song but let you record it we could share the proceeds and stuff like that and I say oh great hey I love this it's country song right and I say but you know what I'm gonna change it to a reggae so I'm gonna give it a reggae beat I'm gonna change the name to girl I'm going to move this first down here I'm gonna get rid of this verse completely I want to repeat the chorus here my change keys here are you good with that probably not artists don't want their work tampered with and guess what that painting or that song probably took a few weeks month maybe to produce but now we have a script something that somebody's worked on for a year to maybe five years of their life it's a two-hour long or more product and you hand it the little squirrely people like many little amateurs and all of a sudden we have the right to change their stuff we know we can't do that with your painting but we think we ought to be able to do that with someone else's script see I don't think that's right that's my side of the debate I don't think that's right you might say well what if your audience doesn't like the language shouldn't you do that I don't think it's the right thing to do however I'm gonna stand before you right now and tell you I'm the world's biggest hypocrite because I do it yeah I don't think it's right and I do it I'll be the first to admit it here's what happened when I first got out of college I had a principle and that principle was I'm never gonna change alter the playwright's work I'm gonna respect the playwright's work just like a new other artists and so forth we have a family-based theater a group-based theater so we're gonna choose shows that kind of satisfy their the need for their type of entertainment and I looked real hard to find a script it took me a while but I found one it was a perfect it was funny it was clean I put that thing on the stage we did a great job within our crowds were very happy with it second time I did a play same thing I look hard it's a little harder this time couldn't find women found women finally put together audience loved it and so forth third time it was just all I could find that write script I find clean scripts I just couldn't find him that I thought were funny or that my crowds would like or something like that and before you know it I started change his stripes I started doing something that I was against doing I would find a script that was pretty decent but had some things and sometimes I find a script that was really pretty bad and I would start to clean it up and I adopted a new philosophy well I'm not going to change the playwright I might change the playwrights work but I'm not going to change the playwrights intent that's what I thought you know I might clean up I might give her the f-word I might get rid of this stuff but I'm gonna change the playwrights intent so I'm kind of justifying my hypocrisy and I started doing that as a matter of fact I talked to you about grease in an earlier video truth is I'm not that fond of that show it just doesn't it's not my kind of place not my kind of thing and it's great for paying the bills when you when you're getting a hold you want to pay your bills you produce grease or The Wizard of Oz is sell million tickets and all of a sudden you're out of the red alright and that's pretty much why I did it the two times that I did as a director and one of those times the first time I ordered the script I've never really even watched the thing in its entirety it just wasn't interested in it but everybody wondered everybody want to see grease young and old everywhere I went oh you need a do grease so I purchased the rights to do it they sent me the script and the score stuff and I started flipping through that my chin hit the ground because for the first time I started listening hard reading the lyrics to these songs in the storyline if you ever really paid attention to the lyrics of greased lightning holy smokes and it's one raunchy song I thought I mean all I ever heard was greased lightning go greased lightning go it sounds cool it's 50s everybody in town once we say I'm looking at that so I'm rewriting just about every lyric increase like the only thing in Greece lightning in my production that sound like greased lightning was the chorus gravy slide bingo recently everything else looked a little bit different all right and I had to I gave what I would call the Southern Baptist church camp version of grace however in the final scene our actress she was 17 year old girl from doniphon Missouri she had a voice that was out of this world I cast her as Sandra Dee and she comes out in that final scene dressed in the leather with all the pink ladies buyer Chi she's all made up and she's got the cigarette and I didn't even make her smoke a cigarette I had it lit she took one puff and immediately put it out you know after the pink lady's hand and in the tour and all of this and she hos tell me about it stud and they go on that big dance number where you know the the greasers the Thunderbirds would throw her all around and you know and she's kind of seducing them and all of this kind of stuff after putting that cigarette out we go to the handshake line and the lobby I'm ready and we had good production of it and I can't wait to see these people and have those folks wouldn't shake my hand half the older people would even look at me finally I say hey is there something the matter they looked at menacing I can't believe you did that with their pretty little girl from Donna from Missouri that was just nasty that was just terrible to me what are you talking about I mean I changed all the dialogue I cleaned it up but I couldn't change the outcome they wanted to see grease I gave them grease I couldn't change the playwright's intent I couldn't have Sandra Dee come out the final scene painting New Testaments to the Thunderbirds and converting them all to Christianity that doesn't work that was my opinion be very wrong to do to the play right so I thought I did a good job cleaning it up and this was the thing that the people requested they didn't like it and I don't know what it is but for some reason audiences see hometown people as real people and they see people on screen or on the big stage as being something larger than they forgive a great any sins compared to the ones they do on our little stage but I couldn't change the playwright's intent so I have adopted a hypocritical philosophy that says I won't change the words I won't change the dialogue but I will I will change the words and I will change the dialogue but I won't change the outcome of the story in my opinion that would be the ultimate wrong thing to do now we also say that theatre is work and theatre is work in every aspect it could take anywhere from six weeks to a year deep in five years to produce a play the norm is six weeks but it does take a little longer so I think the spider-man on Broadway took two years in large part because they broke a lot of bones there was a lot of swinging around on cables and crashing in the walls during rehearsal process but the norm is six weeks and when we say six weeks in this class ultimately we're talking about the professional theater not the the amateur theater we're talking about six weeks that go far beyond an eight-hour day it's you might see 1214 maybe even 16 hours of work on that day for six weeks ninety hour work weeks possibly at our level we still go six weeks but we might go two to three hours five days a week so the work we put in doesn't even come close to the measure of the work that they put in at the professional level it could be like I said ninety hour work week that work involves hundreds of people hundreds in full-scale big productions of cats and leaves and phantom the Opera and Beauty the Beast you know most of them in the form of actors acting or singing actors singers dancers performers designing you have several designers you might have a crew of set designers for the various set pieces you have costume designers lighting designers props designers directing running when we say running people those are the people who run the show people pulling all the various ropes on the counter counterweight system on a fly system people in a booth with light boards and sound boards people running around with headsets backstage to keep people in place and pushing scenery and all of this and always creating always creating and that actually is the toughest part of the theater s toughest part of my existence people don't really understand that but go back to one of the earlier notes in this lecture you know we're on the clock we have to create whether we feel creative or not and that is a headache sometimes I get into a panic every now and then it's like man we're about to start the rehearsal process and I don't have a concept yet I don't have a design concept I don't have a staging concept I don't have you know any true passion for how you know how dark I want to tell this story or how light or comedic I want to tell this story and your because we're on the clock we have to get there by certain deadlines and that is actually real real work however all of the stuff that I've talked about at this point and all of the stuff that I'm going to talk about later in this course really is unnecessary so you're taking a course that talks about a lot of things that really aren't that necessary if you're going to have effective theater you don't have to have all the lights and the sound the props of the costume that's just the stuff that makes production fun and makes it exciting for an audience but there are only three things you ever have to have in order to have effective theater and those three things are the actor the audience and the place if you were to leave a store and go out into the parking lot and there's somebody holding a script reciting Shakespeare and you and two other people even one other person or even by yourself you're not gonna find me there by the way you stand around and listen to this guy recite Shakespeare for an hour we have theater those are the only three components you have to all this other stuff is the stuff that brings artists from every discipline on board to put together this full-scale effort known as a collaborative production that we know as theatre thank you