Curtain Call

All right, here are my thoughts about the curtain call.

I feel that if the end sequences, Large Assembly through Final March, are done correctly, if the staging is spot on, if the company as a whole is committed enough to the moment, if all the planets line up, if the tension and emotion and final release are all in place, then I think the audience will spontaneously burst into applause and stand up and cheer, or at least sit in stunned silence, perhaps wiping a tear from their eyes. I remember when it would be so back in The Fred Chappell Show. Not every night but often it would happen.

And of course there are the two very obvious reasons not to have a curtain call.

1/ Their disappearance is the mystery of the piece. All the pageantry and pomp, all the struggle, all the passion and desperation, it all just vanishes! I don’t know how many people are in Final March – 60? 70? They gather up every set piece and prop, every hope and dream that brought them to the New World, and take it away with them and leave nothing but an empty stage with the flag fluttering over the chapel. I’m not explaining this well – those of you who’ve been in it know what I’m talking about.  It should leave the audience slack-jawed staring at the empty stage, feeling the mystery. Where did they go? What happened to them?

2/ The author of the play did not want a curtain call.

In rehearsals the director noted the controversy about curtain call and gave as one of the justifications for including it the fact that modern TV-watching passive audiences don’t even know that they’re supposed to clap. And this is true - I agree completely with that point. An average Lost Colony audience isn’t a theater-going audience. The Lost Colony is not so much a theatrical event as it is a tourist attraction. Most of them have never and will never go to a “play.” They don’t know how to respond.

At the first Company meeting (only about a month ago – seems like years) the Designer William Ivey Long gave a brief talk about how live theater seems to be dying. As you know he is at the top of the live theater heap in New York. I personally am a rinky-dink producer in my home town. And he was saying the exact same thing I have been realizing over the past few years. It is dying. We who are committed to it find ourselves working for free or even paying for it ourselves just to keep it going to smaller audiences, older audiences; and we ask ourselves how do we get the younger people back into the theater in the age of YouTube and streaming video and instant gratification for entertainment? Mr. Long and I had a brief exchange after the meeting and a moment of gestalt – from New York all the way down to small town community theater – it is dying.

Trickle down – Why are New York theater professionals dominating The Lost Colony (or other places – I see the same thing happening in smaller venues like Raleigh)? Because the theater scene in New York is dying, there is less opportunity to practice their craft, and earn a living doing it, so they are going to where the work, the art, is.

But I digress … I think my point in including that brief lament is that we have to train the modern audience how to respond to live theater. Hey folks! Now you’re supposed to clap! And I think that was the director’s point as well. Maybe some young people who’ve been dragged to see The Lost Colony will like it so much that they’ll take a chance and go see another play sometime.

Anyway, my base feelings about the curtain call haven’t changed. I don’t like it. It blows the mystery, it shatters the mood that we’ve worked so hard to create. Where did they go? Oh, there they are. They didn’t wander off into the wilderness – they were lining up backstage for the curtain call.

But I’m just an actor here. They pay me. I have a great deal of respect for the director Robert Richmond. I think he has done an excellent job with The Big Show and I would happily do the curtain call standing on my head if he told me to do so.

And y’know – it is growing on me. As noted – I’m an actor. I sort of like taking my bows. There is something magnificent in seeing the entire acting company lined up on stage, receiving their kudos.

And they are your kudos as well. (uh oh – here he goes again) If you’ve ever been in the company, if you’ve ever dragged yourself through the heat and the sand, ever acted like you’re freezing when the sweat is pouring off you, if you’ve ever given your whole soul to create the moment of mystery, if the sight of the flag over the chapel touches your soul – I’m taking a bow for you.