Lucy Prebble

There are three acts of writing: before rehearsal, during rehearsal and during previews. Though each shortens drastically in length, each is as vital and thorough as the one before. The third act (previews) is defined entirely by the presence of an audience. There is a strange circularity to it. As you sit in an auditorium with an audience for the first time you are closest to the state in which you sat down to write the first draft. You are keenly aware of the lack of knowledge about what is about to happen, newly appreciative of how information is given, how realisations are made. You become the audience again.



Neil LaBute

The audience definitely influences my writing but in ways different than you might imagine. I don’t think about them in terms of “Will they like this play?” or “Will they enjoy this character?” as much as I care about connecting with them in a visceral way with the material I present (both story and character). I want to get close to them and make them feel the events in a real way – to break the fourth wall, to look them squarely in the eye, and challenge them to leave, but force them to stay (by making the work compelling, not by having guards at the doors). I care more about being true to my characters than I do to the audience, but I want to do such good work that the audience finds that they have no choice but to continue watching.

Gbolahan Obisesan and Ronke Adekoluejo in The Mountaintop by Katori Hall at the Young Vic in 2016. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Katori Hall

Oddly, I do not think too much about audience when I start writing and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I think the first audience member I seek to please is myself. Selfish, yes, but writing for an audience of one I think helps you write for an audience of many.

Quiara Alegría Hudes

I believe what Edward Albee said – a playwright is not a servant. You must not alter your core vision based on an audience’s reaction. Additionally, audiences differ – from city to city, production to production, sometimes night to night. So if you write solely to suit the audience, you’ll be chasing your tail. That being said, I study them very closely – where they laugh, where they lean in, where they “go fishing” in their minds. To me, the most telling kind of audience reaction is the electric silence – when you can feel them stop breathing for a moment. If I find myself in agreement with an audience’s reaction, then I will rewrite.

Temi Wilkey in Chris Goode’s version of Jubilee at the Royal Exchange, Manchester. Photograph: Johan Persson

Chris Goode

Audiences are specific groupings of people under particular conditions, in anticipation of and response to certain events. We struggle to meet them, especially as writers. Actors glimpse them, at best. The audience that attends a specific occasion is unique to it, and the next audience is its own separate entity. It makes no sense to talk of “the audience” in a generalised way. What we are talking about when we talk about “the audience” at the point when we are writing is, necessarily, our fear of the audience, our projection into the void where the audience will eventually convene. There are, of course, moments of practical judgment that have to inform writing. Do I have to explain this reference? Do I need to signal this dynamic shift more clearly? (The one I try to expunge from my thinking: will an audience get this?)

My rule of thumb is that there’s no reason to suppose an audience is, generally, any less intelligent or informed than I am or my colleagues are. But I guess I will, sometimes, spell something out a bit more, just to be sure, if the fluency of communication in a passage feels crucial and I don’t want anyone to get hung up on something they think they may have misunderstood. Or, alternatively – and perhaps more successfully – I’ll make it fuzzier and more hospitable, so that an audience that completely understands what I’m getting at isn’t necessarily at an advantage over one that doesn’t.

Alexander Zeldin

I write poetry and other forms of writing for myself, but I think theatre is a way of helping me and the people I’m with have a better understanding about ourselves and our place in the world. One of the great qualities of theatre is that you can concentrate time, you can look at life in a way that is increasingly difficult to do. I read lots about the origins of the theatre and in those days I think theatre was there to do good to people; to help crops grow, or rain fall, and to have a space in which every type of person can be brought together. One need only look at the architecture of certain theatres, be they Greek or Elizabethan, to notice that one of the particularities of the theatre is that a whole different range of people can come together. Theatre is for me a very effective tool for thinking and, crucially, feeling a little bit of what it’s like to be in the world now. So the audience is absolutely crucial to the point of theatre in the first instance but theatre is an invitation to think of oneself as part of a group of more than one.

Luke Clark and Janet Etuk in Love, directed and written by Alexander Zeldin at the National Theatre. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

George Brant

On a micro level, the rewriting process is all about the audience. One specific example: the life of a drone pilot is for the most part a boring one, so I knew that boredom had to be part of Grounded – calibrating how much intentional boredom an audience can handle was certainly a new and fascinating challenge.

Anne Washburn

An imagined perfect audience (curious, alert, loving, demanding, and fierce) influences the writing of the first draft. After that … I do have a weather eye out, during rehearsal and previews, for clarity and engagement but, the more you listen to what audiences are taking away from plays – yours, others’ – the more it becomes clear that attention is a very mysterious process. Chatting with people after shows, fielding talk-backs, just listening to conversations afterwards; I went to a revival, on Broadway, of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and afterwards heard a group of what seemed to be perfectly intelligent and sophisticated people discussing whether or not the child was real. So I think you can only go so far when thinking about how people are making sense of your play. And as far as interest and enjoyment and affection go … Mr Burns was a real flashpoint in this way but all of my plays, some people seem to really respond and others it’s absolutely not their cup of tea. I just throw up my hands, really, and write the play I myself would like to see, and know that some number of other people will come along and I can’t anticipate who it will be or why.