After seeing the rehearsal and living with the play for days or weeks leading up to the opening, preview performances allow the director and playwright the chance to step back and see the show anew through the eyes and experience of the audience. For a play that is published and has been previously produced, there is very little difference between the previews and regular performances. However, for new plays, previews are a very important piece to the development puzzle. It is truly an exciting period for the refinement of a piece.
At Miami New Drama, we schedule in only a few of these opportunities, unlike Broadway theaters which can schedule weeks of previews. It is vital to the success of the play to get a generous sized audience on these evenings, so come play your part! Some theatre directors are perfectionists, and Julie Taymor may well be one of them.
Her show Spider-man: Turn off the Dark holds the record for the most previews in Broadway history — all of them! What happened here was a complex mess, suffice to say one of the golden rules of theatre was broken multiple times : when you announce an opening night, the show must go on. Yes, one is receiving and viewing a product, but it is a bit like buying the demonstration model from the car seller. So it is with theatre previews.
Well, I should hope so! I suspect not everyone buying pre-sale tickets for The Book of Mormon in Melbourne in recent weeks knew from the outset they were buying preview tickets.
Sneaky sneaky! Divided into Greek, Shakespeare, older classics, modern era…. Phantom has long been the benchmark…. Some audiences will go out of their way to see a preview, often to provide the first word for their little slice of online journalism in this digital world where everyone can be a critic. This race to damn or praise a show via message boards and blogs is one that continues to grow with each new show that opens, making the process of previews a sometimes dangerous entity.
Had I seen the show in previews, perhaps I would have watched it through different eyes, and the end result being more positive? Instead I felt let down, when in fact I had been blown away by the staging and performances, but I felt somewhat cheated out of the experience.
The same effect can happen the other way round, as more often than not with bad reviews audiences go into a show with the mindset that it is awful. One main reason audiences may choose to attend previews simply comes down to price.
All shows offer discounts over the preview period, with many being significantly cheaper than after opening night. In many cases this makes the different between sitting in a slightly restricted seat and paying that extra bit more to have a clearer view of the stage, without feeling like you are paying through the nose.
From a marketing sense this method should pay for itself, as it is going to be a show that relies on good word of mouth to generate bums on seats. The question should then be asked, who exactly is the preview for? This is often two fold — the first being for the actors and directors to work out moments onstage that are not working in order to fix them, as well as the tech team to work out and rehearse often complicated technical issues coordinating lights, sound, an orchestra, set pieces and so forth.
Obviously the more technically demanding the show, the harder this task is. How often are these opinions referenced and collated?
What may seem clear to those close to the production may be opaque to those approaching it for the first time. Narrative may be unclear, characters not portrayed the way they are intended and genuine loss of concentration are all fixable problems that previews can help iron out. Where previews are most important is in the case of new writing. New musicals, and even new plays rely on previews as a test run, and work is continually done throughout the process from every member of the production team to act on any problems and issues that might arise.
Every production has its own stories of previews and how they went on to shape the final production. The most prolific in recent years has to be the Julie Taymor led Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark which broke records for the longest preview period in history.
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