Post
by Stephen Whiteside » Mon Jan 28, 2013 6:44 pm
Thanks, Heather.
I was quite stunned with the response, to be honest. I was half-expecting to be performing to the proverbial three men and a dog, but that's the risk you always take in situations like this.
I started to realise something was up when people started filing in well before the show started - and they kept on coming!
In the end, it was standing room only, with a small crowd in the doorway. I'm told the venue seats 80, so we must have had close to 100. I asked for a show of hands before the show as to how people had heard about the show. Most were festival ticket holders from Melbourne, but a significant minority were locals who had responded to my efforts to advertise in the local press - ABC Central Victoria breakfast radio, Castlemaine Mail, Castlemaine community radio.
The audience gave everybody a real lift, and also led to a productive competition between performers. Martin did do 'The Play' (it's the only Dennis he does) and was his usual brilliant self. People said it was his best ever. I've seen him at least as good once before, I reckon, but both performances were terrific. Geoff said he responded to Martin, and felt he performed the poems the best he ever has, and it was also the first time he had done three together in one show.
We did go on a bit long. I had never done the show exactly this way before. I reckoned it would go over an hour, but I dropped one poem, and had to race a bit towards the end and we still went for over an hour and a half. The performers were milking the words for all they were worth, and the audience reaction was also quite time consuming. It's very hard to factor all this stuff into the planning. I suppose you get better at it with experience.
The feedback was fabulous. In fact, the general feedback for the spoken word component of the festival was excellent this year. I was given the challenge this year of trying to make it work, because it has struggled in the past in what is essentially a music festival. It's a matter of getting the balance right, and I think we're pretty close to it now.
The big test was a 90 minute show on the main stage at 5 pm yesterday of "poetry and song" - 6 acts with 15 minutes each, with myself as MC (I also did a couple of poems - one as a filler when a muso was a bit slow to get on stage). Some did poetry, some did song, and some did a bit of both. The overall balance was about 1/3 poetry and 2/3 song, I would say. We didn't lose anybody, and the feedback was again extremely positive, so I reckon that's probably the way to do it - at least at this festival.
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