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What is a “staged reading”?

by Scott Allen Luke, Managing Director of Rubicon Theatre Project

Today’s entry really has nothing to do with the process of working on “Becoming Ingrid.” I want to reflect on the idea of the “staged reading.” Last night while some of the other actors worked, I started daydreaming about what would happen next Monday at the reading of this new play.  What’s interesting about a staged reading is how much weight is given to it and the audience’s response to it.  Here we are, a group of theatre artists, doing our best in the time we have to put together an effective, entertaining and meaningful story that you, the audience, will hopefully enjoy.  What if you don’t?  What if you hate it?  What if you find the content or the characters or the relationships between the characters or the story or worse, all of the above, boring and just plain bad? 

After next Monday, armed with this knowledge and with this response from you, do we go back to the drawing board and try to make this story “fit” in attempt to get a more positive response from the next audience we present it to?  That’s sort of a square peg in a round hole kind of idea, isn’t it?  Or do we scrap the idea all-together and give up, chalking the whole process up to having taken a risk and failed? 

We, as theatre artists, are taught from a young age to take risks.  To risk failure.  And after we fail, to risk again.  In fact, it’s a well-know fact in our circles that this is the motto of the National Theatre Institute, a conservatory-style actor training center in New York.  “Risk.  Fail.  Risk again.” Does this apply only to performance techniques and choices actors make about a specific character?  Or does it apply to the process of playwrighting too? 

I recall a few years ago when the Neo Futurists did a year-long study (my facts might be off, so don’t rush to attack me) about what is the “perfect play” for an audience.  I participated in this study.  It was basically a long email survey which ran the gamut of short answer questions, multiple choice and True/False questions, and also 1-10 scale rated questions.  The idea behind this study was to figure out what, specifically, audiences want to watch when they go to theatre.  After all the data was collected, they wrote a play and performed it.  If my memory serves me correctly, it didn’t garnish very good reviews.  In fact, I think many of the critics who saw it called it “boring,” among other synonyms. 

The question I have, at the end of the day, is do audiences really know what they want?  Or must they be told what they want by us, the storytellers?  If you come and watch our new play, “Becoming Ingrid,” and you hate it, should that make any difference to us?  Should we alter our process or our story to suit your wants and needs as a theatergoer?  Or do we simply accept the fact that we cannot please everyone with the work we do?  I think to even try to do so would be stupid.  That being said, please come and watch our new story unfold next Monday.  If you feel compelled to respond to it, please be honest, but also be constructive, supportive and genial about it.  After all, it’s a world premiere, and we’ve had very little time to rehearse.