The home-town audience for work made by young people can be incredibly generous, ready to ignore flaws and support every youthful indulgence with laughter and applause. So determined are they that the cast succeed, that even the quality of the production itself can feel like it doesn’t matter, as if it’s just a byproduct.
The atmosphere can be so partisan that anyone in the audience without a vested interest can be left feeling thoroughly confused by the reactions of everyone around them, as if they’ve strayed into some not-so-secret society. Worse, the audience’s misplaced generosity can do unwitting damage to the young performers themselves: they emerge post-show feeling thoroughly rewarded for a performance that the creative team then has to delicately unpick to improve on its faults and failures.
We can’t expect friends and family to hold back their praise, nor should we assume that their reaction is somehow disingenuous. But at the New Wolsey, where I’m associate director, we’ve had to learn to recognise that the typical demographic of the audience for the young company’s work isn’t enough to educate our young performers about the needs of an audience. How will they ever fulfil their potential as artists and theatre-makers without that understanding?
Increasing the run of performances from the usual five or six makes a difference, as does introducing the participants to work beyond the limits of their knowledge or taste. But when the only audience they’ve ever played to has always patted them on the back, the biggest impact we can have is to put their work in front of people ready to judge it solely on its merits. In front of strangers.
The young people know they have our confidence, it’s in the implicit contract between them and us as their professional mentors, directors and facilitators, and despite our professional distance we’ve shared so much of their journey they can’t help but sense our bias. But it’s the confidence of others that’s transformative – the validation of people who only need to care about the quality of their own experience, who don’t owe the cast anything. When they make the effort to offer comment it can mean so much more.
Two years ago we followed in the footsteps of Ontroerend Goed, and others such as Junction 25 and took a production made by young people for young people called Party Piece up to the Edinburgh fringe. Our young cast had set their sights on a few people stopping them in the street with a positive comment or two: what they left with was three award nominations, 5-star reviews, incredible feedback and the validation of their peers – but more than that they had the permission to confidently identify as artists.
Audiences can sense that confidence too. The work has become more robust, while retaining the unabated, unconstructed quality of someone who wants their turn. It’s exciting, and for theatregoers who want to take a risk it’s full of surprises, with cheaper tickets too!
And we get the benefit of so much more – all of the advice we’ve given suddenly makes more sense, you see them recalculate their assumptions, and they begin to manipulate their performances to meet the needs of the audience and the space. They don’t need mum and dad in the theatre any more.
• The New Wolsey Young Associates present Frequently Asked Questions, a 10-step guide to adult life by teenagers, at Battersea Arts Centre, London, as part of A Nation’s Theatre on 29 March 2015.
