Dear cast and crew of “I Considered Smiling,” The Desert Rose Playhouse and everyone:
There is nowhere to begin. “I Considered Smiling” fails on every level.
It suffers from all weakness and no strength. There is no volume, no energy, no enunciation and absolutely no direction. It has all the life of a first-week high school drama rehearsal and numerous other problems (see “Why it was so bad”).
This is not a euphemism or metaphor. That’s what I honestly thought I was seeing.
A very wise man, George Cooper, once said, “If you can’t hear it and can’t understand it, it’s not theater.”
This was in no way a bad play. It wasn’t a play at all.
To make people pay for this, in my case $12, was an absolute travesty.
How did it ever get this far? Did truly no one realize what they were doing? Did no one have the balls to say that something wasn’t right? Did everyone involved in the project really not know any better?
The show failed to go up last year, so maybe that was a sign. There is no excuse for this. This is not a stage reading. And even if it was, you don’t charge people to watch it.
To the playwright, Theodore Jackson: If you’ve written eight 10-minute one acts, do you really have to use all eight? Some of these pieces are so unedited — conflict resolution and basic character motivations are so mangled — that I would hate to see what you’ve decided is not good enough for the stage.
Where was the oversight? At least a few of the actors should have known better. Some are members or even graduates from the UNM theater department.
What is going on?
I hold UNM to a high, professional standard. I honestly believe there is talent, intellect and power in our little desert town. With 35 theater companies and performance spaces, at least ambition seems to agree with me.
We get talented people stuck here in the basin of Route 66 from the East Coast or West lured in by cheap school and living, making a phenomenal amount of theater in Albuquerque possible.
With brilliance like Blackout Theatre or Paul Ford or the experience of Henry Avery or David Richard Jones, the caliber of theater that has been performed in Albuquerque is positively breathtaking.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
So why is it that this was allowed to happen?
Was it just the fault of an inexperienced director? I honestly thought the cast was in high school, but upon reading the program was horrified to realize many were actually older than me. There was one 13-year-old actor, (Parker Sage Smith), but he was one of the better parts of the cast. This certainly wasn’t his fault.
Is there not a Board of Directors for the “Desert Rose”? Is there not a single person who thought what was happening was wrong — that this was an incoherent, ugly mess that wasn’t just missing something; it was missing everything.
So please, take Cooper’s words to heart.
As an actor, be aware at all times of how you move, look and sound.
If you’re going to move onstage, know where you’re moving, how you’re moving and why you’re moving.
If you want to say or do something, let the audience know that you want and mean to do it. It’s the audience you’re performing to, so perform to them.
If your audience can’t see you, we don’t care. If the audience can’t hear you, we don’t care.
And when the audience doesn’t care, you’ve lost them. Then you’re not creating anything. The audience isn’t captivated. They’re just being polite.
I respectfully ask that you take the hint from a year ago and stop this production immediately. Or, barring that, you stop charging a fixed dollar amount and change it strictly to a “pay what you will” affair.
I sincerely hope you will learn from this experience so that your future performances can be at a professional level.
Best,
Graham
