Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

A conversation with an audience member

After a performance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

By the Brilliant Tom Stoppard

-       Did you enjoy the performance?
     No

-       Why?

I didn’t understand the play.

-       That’s your fault.

Why is it my fault?

-       You didn’t get it because you’re not smart enough.  You’re not smart enough for this play.  Many, many people have gotten this play but many, many other people have not gotten it and those people were stupid and the people who did get it are smart.  I’m sorry you’re not smart, but a theater cannot base what shows it does on what stupid people would like to see.

Well if you’re going to talk to me like that then I won’t come back here.

-       Good.  That last thing we need is a stupid audience.

I’m not just an audience member, I’m also a donor.

-       Oh.

In fact I work for [Name of Wealthy Business That Gives the Theater a Lot of Money] and my father is [Some Guy Who Plays Golf a Lot, Hates Television, and Has a Wife Half His Age].

-       Well then, we should never have done this show and we will never do anything like it again.  We will find the playwright and kill him and everyone in his family.  We apologize sincerely.

This is what it felt like

This is what it felt like

Whenever we’d have to do these…

(Great, big sigh.)

Audience

Engagements

Where we’d mingle

And chat

And get feedback

From the audience

If they were just Regular Joe and Jane Audience Member

Tell them you appreciate their support

But that their input can’t always be integrated

Into what they see onstage

If they’re a donor or someone who could be a donor

Then you have to kiss their ass

And report everything they say

Back to the business office

Who will report it to the artistic office and the Board

Where it will be taken under serious consideration

In some ways, people who think theater is all politics

Are correct

In this way, it is entirely like politics

And just as frustrating

And for us, the acting company

We wonder

Well, I guess we wonder

Why we don’t have a say

Or why our say is met with ‘Fucking actors’

‘Fucking actors with their opinions’

Our opinions somehow mean less

Than those

Who ‘see theater occasionally’

And ‘did it once in high school’

And love quality programming

Like what they see on—Brace yourselves—television

And by television

I mean shows where somebody finds a body at the top of the hour

And discovers it was the stepfather

By the end of the hour

These people

Have valued opinions

But more than that

They have

Checkbooks

So they speak

And we listen

And they give us

Their checks

And if they don’t

Fuck ‘em

They don’t know anything

And if everybody in the audience

Starts to look the same

Like one big breathing blur?

If you see them that way

Then congratulations—

You’re one of the lucky ones