Opening Weekend

How I Learned to Drive had a successful opening this last weekend. I must commend all the people who helped with our publicity through wearing shirts, helping lay down the triangle, hanging posters, and simply telling people about the show. I will admit that it certainly wasn't the excitement of Rocky Horror, but that was to be expected being a play of more serious subject matter and with a smaller cast. I have heard from those who came to see the show that they really enjoyed it (for what that's worth...who tells you to your your show was horrible?).

On opening night we were close to sold out. The theatre professors, alumni, and other Memphis-area people joined the Rhodes student body for a great opening night. Openings are always fun but provide little insight into the success the run will actually have. Saturday night was much smaller, as was expected. I would say we had about 25 to 30 people in attendance.

One of the things I have learned from being in CODA and studying audience development is that you always have a somewhat limited number of patrons for your arts project. You can try hard to get people to come to your event but if there isn't some kind of initial impetus on their part, you probably won't succeed. In our case Saturday night we were competing with two other high-profile events that affected our campus. Joshua Bell had a concert at Germantown Performing Arts Center, and CODA sold tickets to students for $5 (and they went fast!). Then for V-Week, students were also in the final performance of The Vagina Monologues on the other side of campus. Both of these events detracted from our numbers. Hopefully those who attended this weekend will spread the word around for next week. The words "You have to see this show" are the most important for a successful run.

Even with our small crowd on Saturday night we had an engaged post-play talk, or fireside chat. Aramark provided goodies, and we had a small fire in the fireplace. Luke Branim facilitated, and it went well. It was originally my intent not to have the cast and crew present so that the audience who stayed felt more at ease to speak their minds about the production, but fearing that no one would stay, I invited the cast to stick around. We had 8 audience members hang around (and from an audience of 25, that's almost a third of the people!). They were a mix of Rhodes students, older members of the community, and students from another college. It was a great discussion with many different opinions about the play. We filmed the session, and I hope to get the footage online so that you can see how things went.

Overall it was a good opening weekend, and we can only hope for an even more successful second week!