The case of audience held hostage in the dark: Ralph Cohen at TEDxCharlottesville 2013
well as you just heard from kelly this talk is partially interactive is this a beautiful theater it's one of charlottesville's great prides but this room represents both the crime and the criminal and what i am calling the case of the audience held hostage in the dark for 23 centuries going to a play meant something different than what it has come to mean a kind of technological chauvinism has blinded us to what we lost just 118 years ago when we turned out the lights on audiences because when we turned out the lights on audiences we lost the very nature of theater for 23 centuries here are the three things you needed for a play a script an actor and an audience here is a play without the audience what was it like when plays did it with the lights on here's the oldest image i can find of an audience at a play look closely at the audience a lot of them are doing something besides watching the play here are 12 people talking to one another here is one person coming in i suppose late and there's one person leaving here are couples trying to get lucky here's a couple that actually found a room look at this hogarth painting of the beggar's opera the circles show the people who are paying attention the arrows show those who are not this is what i call ambient attention in this talk i want to argue that this ambient attention is actually a good thing not only fun for the audience but also good for the show here is my favorite example of ambient attention this gentleman a is literally laughing so hard that he's crying so he's enjoying the play but this gentleman b is having more fun watching gentlemen a and gentlemen c and d are not interested in the play at all they've gone to the play hoping to get lucky and get some oranges from the orange ladies and their lack of interest in the play is obviously bothering gentleman e who is so annoyed with the distraction of their ambient attention that his attention is ambient as well and here we see an audience at drury lane theater in in london as late as 1890 gentlemen a b and c may be looking at the show though gentleman a is is is pretty uh clearly his binoculars are pretty clearly pointed to the right and gentleman b looks pretty bored lady d seems to be watching the play but ladies e and f look more interested in finding out who's come to the play and lady g has her back turned to it entirely and lady h looks annoyed with the actors for performing or maybe she's just annoyed with the three guys behind her who seem to be playing cards so how about today here is the american shakespeare center's blackfriars playhouse in stanton it's also a beautiful theater how many of you have seen it that's great this is our bumper sticker and we have plenty of ambient attention at the blackfriars this woman appears to be picking her nails this woman is texting this man is clearly zoned out these two guys aboard silly these seem like poor conditions for an actor to work in so now you're supposed to ask how can ambien attention be a good thing i'm glad you asked because without ambient attention as the rule actors can't have the one thing they want most what actors who play on a stage surrounded by a visible audience know is that when the audience is looking at them it's not because of a spotlight it's not because the audience has no place else to look it's because something they the actors are doing has won their attention ambient intention is the precondition for the most wonderful thing an actor can feel earned attention in this slide i carefully traced the line of vision of the audience members in the back balcony their attention is not ambient they are looking at the actors actors who know that they have earned that attention their work not a spotlight created the focus and that makes them better actors for actors a visible audience means a multitude of signals about their work visibility gives the actor agency in the show it both rebukes and rewards the actors it teaches them it directs them fanny bryce says your audience your audience gives you everything you need it they tell you there is no director who can direct you like an audience here's a scene from much ado about nothing when beia beatrice asked benedict to prove his love by revenging the male ego driven humiliation of her cousin at her wedding she says famously rather famously kill claudio oops and this is what it would look like to the actors if the audience was invisible here's what it looks like when they can see the audience as you can see renee is confronting not one angry young woman but two this woman is seriously seriously channeling beatrice's anger in fact you see two older women who aren't very happy with men either sarah and renee have acting partners that raise the level of their work and here you see king lear holding his dead daughter this is how it would look to an actor without an audience at the blackfriars james keegan gave each of those nevers to another part of the house and that means that this is what he saw when he looked to his right he saw this couple and he saw that the play had moved them to hold hands for an actor it doesn't get any better than that finally here's a moment from my favorite scene in shakespeare where falstaff thinking he is alone in the tavern with his confides to her that he is old and she tells him that she loves him played in the dark without a visible audience the actors might take silence for boredom they might want to ham it up for laughs but this is what they see when they have an audience they see something better than people laughing they see people trying to see them this man trying to look over that woman's head this man this lady is with her head crooked this man trying to look over the lady's head this man leaning forward this woman leaning backwards to see better and they see people smiling and they see people touched as you can see a visible audience gives actors a multitude of signals about their work here are some we have learned to read at the blackfyre's playhouse in stanton looking elsewhere reading programs texting sleeping talking to one another laughing smiling trying to see leaning forward starting to hold hands channeling moments and characters that's a lot of information what signals do you get from an audience when they can't see just two just so what happened when did the lights go out and who done it in a word technology in 1881 the first electric lights were installed in the savoy theater in london but a funny thing happened audiences didn't like it and they put the lights back on um until 1895 when two dastardly frenchmen took the audience hostage in the dark these two monsters took them hostage where did they take them they took them into the dark to the movies and we lost so much uh because before we uh we lost so much at the movies because we have to have the lights out the movies because if you don't have the lights out at the movies it used to be at least that you couldn't see the images right and those images made us forget i think the pleasures of the playhouse the paradigm for being an audience changed we lost so much that we didn't even realize it now we have only two options in the dark we see the show or we nap the cinematic forces of darkness had captured the theater and she forgot all her delights the pleasure of knowing that the actors know you were there the pleasure of being a part of the world of the play the pleasure of using your own imagination to help create the show how do we rescue theater well we remember what theater can be we stop condescending to the theaters of euripides shakespeare lopez de vega and moliere they are not quaint we try instead to learn what we can from the past about the power of theatrical imagination we use our technologies to make actors and audiences present to one another we go back to the future we do it with the lights on let me ask you again isn't this a beautiful theater thank you you