HOUSE MANAGEMENT: Do you spill the beans about your famous audience members?

[ben.bavington]

I make it a case-by-case decision.

In a smaller company, I usually know everyone's preferences and comply accordingly. For a larger company (usually musicals) I keep it to myself as word travels quickly and inevitably someone who doesn't want to know will overhear. Either way, I never make a point of announcing if someone is in the house, I wait for someone to directly ask me or bring it up.

Interestingly enough, I find straight-play actors almost never want to know, and musical theatre actors usually want to know. Both however, always ask about house size.

[MatthewShiner]

House size is one of those odd things . . . If I know a house is oddly small, I sometimes feel okay giving a cast a heads up (especially if the first few rows are empty). 

If there is a school group, I usually let the cast know that as well.

[Dee]

Both however, always ask about house size.

Ticket sales is one of the only things I don't have to deal with at my current company, So unless we are oversold or there is some type of major problem I usually don't know house size until I'm in the booth looking at the house.  When an actor asks me about the house size I usually reply with something like "there will definaitly be an audience this evening, congratulation! you've now exhuasted my knowlage on the subject."  If they press the issue I will go check but usually I tell them as long as there is an audience, "size doesn't matter"

[MatthewShiner]

If they press the issue I will go check but usually I tell them as long as there is an audience, "size doesn't matter"

Ah, the most infamous lie ever told . . . size doesn't matter.

But, for certain plays, for certain productions, size does matter . . .  ever play a comedy to 100 people in 1,000 seat house?  It's an uphill battle. 

[SMLois]

While I am happy to relay the house size to my casts (it is information that FOH usually gives me at the half hour), I definitely try to keep any special guests in the audience to myself until after the show. 

I recently had an experience where one actor knew that some director & choreographer friends from out of town (well respected folks) were coming to see our production.  He was very excited about this and went around broadcasting it through the dressing rooms.  While some cast members didn't mind, others were quite upset about having been told those people were in the audience and I can honestly say that some of their performances suffered for the fact - one actress psychosomatically lost her voice.  Following that incident I went around and spoke to everyone about not revealing audience members to the rest of the cast and while it worked for a while, a couple of months later in the run the same actor took it upon himself to tell everyone about another group of audience members.  At that point I sat down with him individually and reminded him that there were members of the cast who did not want to know about these audience members and that for the sake of the show it was best to keep his knowledge to himself.  He was good for the remainder of the run, but I think I was just surprised that he didn't seem to get it prior to our chat, despite the protests of his cast mates.

[Balletdork]

I don't tell-- usually the cast is mixed about wanting to know, so you can't tell one, without all of them knowing.... it's a downward spiral.

And, once upon a time, I used to keep knowledge of when family was in town from some of my dancers!! They could keep calm & cool for Baryshnikov; but her Mom really freaked her out!

 

[nick_tochelli]

Some real "fun" comes when you're working in a very small house (lets say 60 seats in the round), and you have cast members who have to be preset onstage from the house opening. It's hard to convince them that all the "Reserved" signs that are around the room are just friends and not, say, reviewers from the New York Times, or Vanity Fair.

The best method I've found for dealing with those situations (big reviewer in the small space) is, if asked, to lie about who's coming preshow, and then come clean to that person post show. That way, if they blab to someone who doesn't want to know it should hopefully not rattle their cage. Some days it will just be a few random small .com reviewers that isn't worth being worked up over (thus helping the ruse when I use it in the future), but every once and a while, it's a guy from Playboy...seriously, I got a show reviewed in Playboy. That was hard to keep under wraps from anybody

[Balletdork]

I realized this weekend that there are situations where I do give the cast a heads-up about who is in the house.

I always let them know when there are dogs in the house~ we get a lot of seeing eye dogs, and since our house is so small, they always are in sight from the stage. Also, we have one patron who is a little person- not quite 2 1/2' tall; rather than have the cast surprised and stare during the show our Artistic Director asks that the cast get the heads up.

And, of course, if it's a bought corporate house or a school show we give fair warning!