Live performers need audiences the way plants crave the sun:
They unfurl in the warmth of the approval — or the heat of the scorn, as the case may be.
It’s the energy they desire, the feedback, the sense of an immense, churning, palpable presence against which they can push.
But even for artists who don’t perform on a stage, the audience is a factor they must consider.
We asked creators in a variety of genres to ruminate about the role of the audience in their work: Do they have an ideal audience in mind when they create their work? Do they ever change works because of audience reaction? If there were no audience, would they still do their work?
What follows are excerpts from far-ranging conversations about the audience.
JANET BEVERIDGE BEAN
SINGER
Bean, 36 and a Chicago resident, and high school pal Catherine Irwin handle the harmonies in the 11-year-old Freakwater, a hillbilly-folk band. She also co-founded the local rock band Eleventh Dream Day.
If you’re up on the stage and you catch someone’s eye, there’s this inevitable thing where you’re going to look at them 100 times during the course of the show. You see somebody and your eyes just go there. And for some reason every time your eyes open, there that person is, and then you’re kind of awkward about it because you don’t want them to feel like you’re giving them that look.
How would I describe our audiences? “Misguided and downtrodden.
I don’t know — all kinds of people, some of whom I’m sure I’d love to have lunch with. And some of them, maybe not.
As sappy as it sounds, I try to go in the same place in my head. I try to just well up the same sort of feeling I had when I wrote the song. I’m just thinking of the sound and listening to the monitors and to the way it sounds.
I don’t really get so nervous anymore. There are still odd moments. I’ll just get a sense of nerves during the middle of the show. Generally it’s not so bad. I like being on stage and there’s probably a reason why I keep going. My ego needs to be fed that way, I guess.
I have a hard time reprimanding somebody — “If you’re too loud, I can’t go on.” It’s a bar and you choose to play there and part of that element is alcohol and people don’t always behave. But I really don’t think of the audiences that much–except when you go to a show and they’re not there. And then we just say, “Oh, the jails are full tonight.”
DOUGLAS FARR
ARCHITECT
Founder of Farr Associates in Chicago, Farr, 43, specializes in town planning, historic preservation and environmentally conscious architecture (known as “green building”). Recent projects include the Lake-Pulaski CTA station, the Midwest Center for Green Technology and the renovation of the Bronzeville commercial district.
Our practice is split 50-50 between town planning and green building. With town planning, the audience is quite literally there, because we hold meetings before we start to get input — slide shows, aerial views. The ability to have feedback has been one of the great inspiring, revitalizing areas of development in terms of urban design and town planning.
We draw out of the audience things they like and things they don’t like. We call it “robust public participation process.” It ensures that there won’t be people coming out of the woodwork six months down the line to say, “You never asked me, you never told me.” It’s an insurance policy. But on the flip side, you also need it to draw your plan.
We agitate, we cajole, we educate.
Our practice has many layers. On the green architecture side, it’s adding ways a building will function and perform. In some ways, those are straitjackets if you choose to look at it that way.
Every constraint is an opportunity.
Coloring within the lines isn’t our first order of business. We’re serving a lot of masters — but you have to think beyond the masters sometimes. You have to be moved by [the architecture].
You hear feedback in project meetings. We hear it more contractually than impressionistically. We did some neat projects in Bloomington, Ill. I get, “Oh, you did that? Oh, I know that one!” You can sometimes tell in the tone of voice what they think of it.
Our audience for our work is ourselves, more than anybody else. We’re very harsh internally. Anything that emerges on the page has been through some knock-down fights.
CRISTINA GARCIA
NOVELIST
Author of “The Aguero Sisters” (1997) and “Dreaming in Cuban” (1992), novels that employ a soulful, whimsical version of magical realism, the Cuban-born writer, 42, worked as a journalist for 10 years before writing novels full time. She lives in Santa Monica, Calif., and recently visited here to give a reading at Northwestern University.
I try not to think of who may be reading my book. If I start thinking about the audience, I feel the hot breath of someone over my shoulder.
I think you have to stay close to your own obsessions. I have a full plate on my own.
I wonder sometimes if the comments I’ve gotten for other novels, for marginalizing men, has gotten into my bloodstream. But it’s probably my sense of the complexity of identity.
It’s nice that one has an audience. But writing “Dreaming in Cuban,” I was so ignorant of the way the whole publishing business worked, I never allowed myself to think of having more than one reader.
I have some friends who read my work in progress, and I read theirs. Peer editing along the way really helps. I absolutely count on their sensibilities — and their tact.
I know about how books affect me. I’ve always felt I’m living in three realities: my day to day life, my writing, and whatever I’m reading.
I don’t get hung up on labels. The books go out into the world. If they get categorized and deconstructed, that’s beyond my control.
I’ve had audiences in mind lately because I’ve been working on a theater project. I’m adapting a Garcia Lorca play, “Blood Wedding.” It’s the first time I’ve worked creatively in collaboration with others, and they’re always talking about the audience. I’m having trouble with the writing, because my collaborators keep saying, “No, the tourist from Kansas won’t get it.”
I don’t think that way.
JANICE MISURELL-MITCHELL
COMPOSER, FLUTIST
Misurell-Mitchell, 54, teaches at DePaul University School of Music and has been co-artistic director of contemporary chamber ensemble CUBE since 1989. Her works have been performed on National Public Radio and throughout the United States and Europe.
I wouldn’t say I write for an ideal listener. I write for a critical me.
Often people will give you some kind of metaphor for how they heard the piece, what they thought it might be about, and you haven’t thought about that. Other times, they hit it dead on.
On the whole, I usually feel I know most of the metaphors that somebody might derive from it. There have been misreadings, because of the title. They read it one way and I meant it in another.
Audiences vary. We’ve found audiences who are very clued in to the visual arts are more open to contemporary music, even though they may not have a strong background in it. They just kind of delight in the sound. More traditional audiences not schooled in what you’re doing have preconceived notions of what they will and won’t accept.
If there’s something the audience can relate to — if they don’t know new music, they may know jazz — they’ll accept it. They need some thread, some way in. They have to have some sense, something they bring to it.
If you’re an ensemble, all of you have to feel it. Sometimes you feel the audience is with you. Usually you see some eyes, see if they’re fidgeting or quiet. Sometimes you feel you have to sell the music to the audience. You have to maybe exaggerate a little bit more, gesture a little bit more. Be more physically reflective of what you’re trying to do. Some verbal things — people might be laughing or applauding. Once I held out a note, holding it and holding it. They started yelling and applauding. It’s like the relationship with a jazz audience.
That’s an ideal, where your audience is actually yelling out, “Oh, yeah! We really like that!”
Sometimes you really feel an audience’s indifference, and that’s when you perform for yourself and posterity. You don’t get into the selling, because there’s nobody buying. The reward is something for yourself.
MICHAEL K. PAXTON
PAINTER
Paxton, 47, who was born and reared in Clay County, W. Va., moved to Chicago 17 years ago, but continues to paint the scenes of his youth: mountains, working people, wild animals. His work has been displayed in the Chicago Cultural Center and the Evanston Arts Center.
There are levels of audience in visual arts. One is an academic audience: the art people. Then there’s the audience that comes in and buys work. I’ll meet people who bought my work. It’s not like a nameless rich person. You see them as individuals. The third level is just a general audience in a museum setting. You get all different types of people.
As you’re doing your work, you don’t really think you’re doing it for one group or another. You’re just doing it for yourself.
The more specific I become, the more the audience finds something of themselves in there.
I’m a rarity to some extent. I love to hear what people think about my work. I’ve come to a gallery and stood back and pretended I was just looking at the show. I’m not so sure art is about what I’m trying to say. I know what I’m trying to say. Most art, if it’s any good, lives on a lot of levels. It transcends. My concerns become living things. It informs me about what I’ve done. Everybody gets their vote.
I don’t think I’d change anything because somebody said one thing or another, but somewhere, deep down inside of me, I’d have that filed away.
A lot of artwork is done very subconsciously. It’s not so much building a bridge. It’s like cutting a path until you know where the bridge is.
I have no idea why people like my work more now than they did 10 years ago. I feel like, if I take care of my business, the communication will be there.
I have to trust the audience. What’s my alternative?
I put it up there. I’m a showman. I want people to buy it, I want people to enjoy it, I want people to learn from it.
It lives outside of you.
Mike Nussbaum
Actor
Nussbaum, 76, has been acting professionally since 1960. The Chicago resident works often in film and television as well as in the theater. On stage, he has appeared in productions such as “A Life in the Theater,” “American Buffalo,”The Infidel” and “Endgame.”
While waiting to go on stage, I spend the five minutes in the wings, listening to the audience, trying to remind myself of the connection. These are different people; they haven’t seen it yet. It really helps me keep it fresh.
Once you’re on stage, it’s amazing how audiences truly participate in the work. When the audience seems to be really with you, and really listening, it works better. You rise to the occasion.
I don’t think any actor would disagree with the statement that there is no play without an audience. The actor requires the play to complete the process.
It’s a great high to know that you’ve communicated with the audience.
Film and TV have never been satisfying for me because you can’t adjust to the mood of the audience. You don’t get that sense of continual discovery.
It’s never boring on stage. You’re in danger.
I find the danger attractive in stage work–the missing prop, the lost cue. The script goes out of your head: How do you solve that problem? The adrenaline rush is part of the charm. Enormous tension and fear. “Are they going to like it? Is it going to work?” If I could climb mountains, I’d climb mountains; I don’t, so I go out on stage.
I firmly believe that if an audience doesn’t like a play, they’re entitled.
Diane Alaimo
Standup comedian
Chicago resident Alaimo, 44, has delivered her standup routine in every state except Vermont, Hawaii and Connecticut. She also has traveled around the world, opening for comics such as Rosie O’Donnell.
The very first time I walked out on stage, I wasn’t even aware of the audience. I just don’t remember them at all.
You seldom see the audience because the lights out there are so dim. I try to remember to look out at the audience — “Hey, I’m looking at you!” But I’m not, really.
A good audience is people who want to play along with you: “We’re here for the ride.” Not just people sitting there with their hands folded across their chests.
The audience becomes an entity. You consider them as one. You work off their energy. I come out and give them all the energy I can, but it’s them.
Sometimes, they have no energy at all. For some reason, the late show on a Friday night is the hardest show of any night of the week. They’re exhausted. Trying to get any energy out of them is like pulling teeth. On stage, you’re on automatic pilot. You try and you try, but after a while, it’s like, “OK, this is just too much work.” Sometimes I tease them and say, “Oh, have you guys been working? I’ve been watching those `Judge’ shows all day long and that can tire you out, too.”
Once in a while, you get an audience that just stares at you. You think, “Is this coming out in another language?” Sometimes you just don’t click.
The longer you do this, the more you learn how to take the audience with you, more or less. You lead them a little bit. You wait for them to build up steam.
It’s very hard, now, for me to sit through someone else’s show, if the audience isn’t with them. You think, “Oh, I know exactly what this is like.”
Rick Jarvie
Wigmaster and makeup designer, Lyric Opera
For 17 years, off and on, Jarvie, 40, has sent opera performers out onto the stage in wigs and makeup. He has worked also worked for the Goodman and Steppenwolf theaters, Chicago’s Shakespeare Repertory Theater, the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the San Francisco Opera.
We flesh out the design. We realize the design. Our job is to make the designers’ characters come to life. They tell us, “This person should be dark, this one should be blond.”
Our relationship with the audience is a strange one. In a very real way, if the audience doesn’t notice our work, we’ve done a good job. Our job is to go unnoticed. You don’t want them to see “The Great Gatsby” and say, “Look at all those 1920s wigs up there!” We don’t want the audience saying, `Wow, did you see all those wigs?’ The less we do, the better. The audience will fill in the blanks with their imagination.
Sometimes we’re asked to do something shocking or bloody. We want to fool the audience. But you have to do very little, because the audience is right there with you.
If the people look like people, and look natural, we’ve done a good job.
When the audience says, “Hair,” we know we’ve done it. If they say, “Wig,” it was too obvious.
We try to do the best kind of makeup job we can do. But out in the house, especially in seats way up in the back, all you can really see is the costume. We often say, “We’re making up for the mirror.” We want the actor to feel good. But the makeup doesn’t really read from the audience.
Clearly, without an audience we wouldn’t have a job. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
