As emotions rise and tempers flare...

The talk back.
A strange element of theatre that I didn't have much contact with until college. Certain people love talk backs. They believe that they are informative, intellectual, and help people appreciate theatre more. The other school of thought feels that talk backs are condescending, time consuming, and essentially if the audience didn't understand the "point" just from seeing the show then there's not much else that can be done.
Personally I'm still going back and forth over if I like talk backs or not. Obviously a lot depends on what the show is. As a high-schooler I never enjoyed them because the majority of my questions were for the backstage people or designers and they were never present at any I ever attended.

For Spinning Into Butter we had 4 talk backs. There were huge differences between them all. The show deals with some very heavy topics, most notably racism. Some talk backs felt very pretentious, others were flat out boring, and then there was even one where an audience member stormed out (his dramatic exit was ruined however when he had to come back in and get his keys from his girlfriend). The talk back with the angry participant was on Thursday night. That talk back was the most interesting of them all to me. There was a lot of talk about institutionalized racism versus individual racism.
Friday before the show I went to call house open in the greenroom and came upon the cast having a somewhat heated discussion about Thursday night's talk back. It was one of those times where I didn't know what my role was as a stage manager. I felt that the situation didn't call for me to stop the discussion or anything of that nature because everyone was still being polite and whatnot. I was unsure of if I should get involved or not. Obviously I have my own opinions on the matter, but as the stage manager I felt that I shouldn't "take sides". One member of the cast is particularly passionate about the subject since he keeps getting stuck with "as the only actor of color in the cast..." questions at the talk backs. For the most part I agree with his opinions even though almost the entire cast disagrees with him.
I find it hard enough to figure out socializing with casts outside of rehearsal (particularly in a college setting) let alone getting into a moral or political debate. It's difficult to try and define the lines between cast and stage management sometimes, especially when it's a small cast and a long run.

Oh well. It's the last performance tonight and I'm excited. I'll have 17 days between the closing of this show and auditions for the next. Bring on the pre-pro!!

~Marley