The Run of Beggars Would Ride

I haven't written anything here since before we opened-- why IS that? I guess I was too busy watching to see with bated breath, as they say, how things would turn out on the market end of things. You go on for week after month after year, planning, workshopping, writing, casting, collaborating, rehearsing, designing, amending the designs, etc, and then you have to turn your thoughts to seeking an audience; to selling a product. This is no fun; at least, it's not MY idea of fun.

We got into the theatre very quickly, but without any real hitches, and got the first show up and running remarkably smoothly. The show LOOKED ravishing, and the actors were wonderful. The preview, performed with ONE tech run, looked smooth as silk, mostly!

We had a good opening, but with lots of no-shows, which always bugs me: if I say I'm going to go to your opening, I'LL BE THERE! We had hoped to pack it out, but that theatre seems to resist packing-out, except under the most unusual circumstances. As Itai says of the Waterfront, "The house is too big and the stage is too small!"

We got mostly great reviews, including an absolute rave from Peter Birnie in the Vancouver Sun, and I thought we'd have a huge bulge in sales the next day, and over the weekend. But it was not to be. Hope springs eternal, I guess: one keeps forgetting that in this city having great reviews doesn't necessarily mean anything at all, and I don't think it did. Although, who's to know if we might not have done WORSE without them? But we didn't manage to make even our VERY modest box office target. The lesson here is not to get one's hopes up; attachment is the source of all suffering, advise the Buddhists: how true.

The run of the show was therefore very successful artistically and critically, but not so much as a theatrical product for sale in a very busy marketplace. And this may be the key: while we had hoped to capitalize on the PuSh fest, implicated in it as a satellite show, we didn't really take into account how much overall activity we'd be running alongside, competing with international shows for the limited theatre-going audience in Vancouver.

Now I'm mostly writing cheques with crossed fingers-- hard to do-- and trying to find ways for this show to go on to a new life or lives.