As Shakespeare said, all the world’s a stage. At the La Jolla Playhouse, a new program will extend that set a little.
The playhouse launched a new program July 10 called “Page to Stage,” in which a paying audience is brought in for a play’s pre-opening workshop performances.
After each show, the playhouse’s artistic staff come to the stage to discuss the play. The audience is asked for their reactions and thoughts.
“We’ve done readings of plays before, we’ve done commissions of new works before, but we’ve never actually involved the audience in the process,” explained Josh Ellis, the theater’s communications director.
The audience will be asked if anything was confusing or unclear, and if the storytelling techniques and performance elements worked, Ellis said.
The workshop performances go on for three weeks, during which time the play can be revised and restructured on a daily basis.
The first play in the program is “I am My Own Wife,” a play by Doug Wright. Wright is best known for his play “Quills,” which was later made into a movie and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Bringing in the audience at this point only costs the playhouse, a not-for-profit, an additional $15,000 for marketing, said Terrence Dwyer, the playhouse’s managing director. The three weeks of production already costs $85,000, Dwyer said.
Tickets cost from $10 to $17.50, depending on the day and whether the buyer is a Playhouse subscriber.
Adding the workshop element was a big decision, Dwyer said. “In the not-for-profit theater worlds, with your operating budgets, you have to be very careful that you’re being prudent because there’s not an unlimited amount of money out there,” he said.
