Opinion: The Rude Mechs on Involving the Austin Audience, Howlround.com, April 16

Published at

Making Friends to Make Shows with to Show Friends

by The Rude Mechs

April 16, 2013

We're lucky to live in Austin. We're lucky to live in a community that's creative and hard working and confident and intelligent. All this new work and all these open minds. We're lucky to live in a community where artists support one another—where we lift each other up instead of trying to tear each other down.

Because our city brings so much to the table, it's on us to bring our audience pleasurable and challenging work, and we'd be lazy assholes if we didn't let them in on the process. They are smart and they know what they want, and we are not lazy assholes, so we let them in early, and often.

We're lucky to have so many amazing creative people that can make work with us, that are interested in making new work of their own, that understand failure is a symptom of working well and working hard and working right, not a predictor of future success.

We're lucky to live in a city where the audience is well-read and has a good sense of humor and brags on itself and yet somehow doesn’t take itself too seriously. We're lucky to have an audience that wants to participate in the creation of the play—that knows it isn’t finished until they show up and bring their own associations and dreams to the piece. And yet an audience that holds us accountable—with honesty but never dismissiveness.

We're lucky to live in a city that is full of bands and reads a lot of books and likes the outdoors and knows that a creative community isn’t just the money-generating “movers and shakers” but also the teenage punk rockers and the quirky artist who build spaces from trash and the hippies with their butterfly bicycles and the students making films and plays and music and their own new thing, whatever the new form will be.

Because our city brings so much to the table, it's on us to bring our audience pleasurable and challenging work, and we'd be lazy assholes if we didn't let them in on the process. They are smart and they know what they want, and we are not lazy assholes, so we let them in early, and often. Making new works from scratch the way we do—collaboratively and on our feet—really requires that we test material in front of everyone to learn what works and doesn’t work. So we mount workshop productions when we can afford it, we invite feedback, we hold talkbacks, we survey for input, and then we make the next draft.

 

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