Welcome to the blog

So as we celebrate our 25th year, I felt it was time to start dragging ourselves kicking and screaming into the modern world and start a blog.  What is a blog?  Well it is short for Weblog…A stream of ideas, discussion, a journal if you like….but all on line.  It represents only my personal views as the Chairman, and not necessarily those of my fellow committee members.  Having just returned from holiday, I find my list of Barton Players things to do to be getting bigger by the day.  Not that I am complaining, but I have been told by the rest of the committee that I need to delegate more!  🙂  I shall try to do so.

I watched a feature on the news earlier that was talking about the unusual and poor behaviour being demonstrated by many west end theatre audiences.  The theory goes, that in an effort to put bums on seats, they have reduced prices, and allowed alcohol in many of the theatres.  As a result, they have found that they are having to cope with aggressive, rowdy and drunken behaviour from their audiences.  Is this because of their relaxing of the rules, or is it perhaps more to do with the kind of shows that the West End is increasingly putting on?  Is the “X-Factor” culture creating a new kind of theatre audience that is perhaps less cultured than we have come to expect?  My gut feeling is that the shows that you put on tend to create the audience you deserve in many ways.  I was brought up to be quiet, polite and attentive in a theatre environment, no matter what the play or performance is.  I become incandescent with rage when I find myself sitting next to someone with a big bag of sweets, that they proceed to rattle and crunch and chew on for the whole of the show.  It’s not like the tickets are that cheap so for me not to complain.  I would like to see sweets banned from theatre foyers myself….am I alone?  Or should we just go down the road of dumbing down the culture that we have built up over the years, and just put on a stream of tribute acts, splitting each show into two halves by serving the audience up with giant troughs of baked beans and chips to satiate their needs?  I’m not for one minute suggesting that all musical theatre is low grade, but surely the glut of musicals in London theatres tells us something about the average theatre going public.

We recently put on two plays that would be considered out of our usual range in the form of Bouncers and Shakers.  They were both excellent productions, and I would like to congratulate the casts and crews and Directors of both of them.  It is without doubt an interesting direction for the group to go in, and one which I think we have made an excellent start with.  Interestingly though, the main concern before we put on these plays was the “Adult Content”.  The quality of the writing, the characterisation and perhaps most importantly, the moral messages that the play gives us, were all lost in a mire of discussion and in some cases outrage about the “Dreadful language”.  We received no complaints whatsoever about the language or the content.  In fact, I personally heard several people saying that they had got it all wrong about the plays.  So perhaps the message here is “Come along and make up your own mind”.  I think many people were put off and had their opinions tainted by what they had heard.  Theatre should surely be many things to many people?  In some cases, it hold up a mirror to society, and in some cases we may not like what we see.  Is that the fault of theatre or the fault of the society that we have created?  It’s an interesting debate isn’t it?  Was Oliver an unsuitable play for example?  It contained child labour, a murder, theft, a portrayal of a thief that had been construed by many as anti Semitic.  However, all of this seems to be excused because you can tap your feet to the songs.  The Merchant of Venice has been criticised heavily over the years for the portrayal of Shylock as an anti Semitic character…perhaps Shakespeare should have given him a song?  It may sound trite, but after all, it was only a few years ago that we produced Fiddler on the Roof…a musical that is essentially about ethnic cleansing.  Ultimately, seem to be living in a time that encourages complaining, in fact I would go as far as to say “Whining”.  If we had these standards over the last couple of hundred years, there would be virtually no art works, and just a series of empty, cleansed and sterile displays, that said nothing to any of us about the way we live our lives.  I know what I prefer.

What do you think?  We have a forum that has perhaps fallen into disuse compared to what it once was.  This is maybe down to Facebook etc, but there has recently been a small discussion on there about the content of plays, and it would be great to hear a few more opinions.  Pop in and register if you haven’t already, it’s very easy.  http://bartonbydesign.co.uk/players/phpBB3/index.php