Lights Up on Scott Garka: Community Theatre & The Magic of Performance

Silence.  Artists may spend countless hours in rehearsals for upcoming performances not for themselves, but for the audience.  An audience’s reaction in my opinion is the most critical piece of the puzzle.  An artist makes art whether it be music, visual art, writing, etc. to share with the world.  Interaction, expression and communication with the artist and the audience is what makes the art come to life.  Art is something you feel or experience.  Art provokes emotion and it’s important to share these emotions.  Performers of course want the energy to be high during their shows- theirs and the audience’s. 

As performing artists, my cast mates and I rely on exchanges with our audiences through applause, laughter, sometimes even a gasp in surprise, to understand how our story is connecting with them which translates into a unique telling of the story for each performance.   It’s an incredible feeling to sense a room full of people hanging on to my words and actions.  I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to get it right.  In these moments, sometimes I’m worried about delivering my lines but I try to have faith in the hours of rehearsals.

I had the pleasure of performing in two productions in the past year.  Last Fall I led an ensemble cast in Henrico Theatre Company’s political comedy, The Outsider, and in May I appeared in Homefront Players’ production of Mamma Mia!.

In Mamma Mia! I could hear the energy in the crowd’s applause (or not) after each musical number.  If the crowd didn’t roar after “Lay All Your Love,” which featured the ensemble guys in wetsuits and flippers, it could be a long quiet night.  It’s that much harder to bring the energy if the audience doesn’t respond the way I might be expecting, but that’s where experience helps to discover ways to find that energy and keep going to tell the story for each audience member.  By the end of each performance, there was a curtain call encore number and the audiences were always singing and dancing at their seats, sometimes in the aisles. Making eye contact with someone in the audience during that number was priceless as I could clearly see the joy being felt in that moment.  It’s these moments of connecting with the audience in telling a story that’s one of the biggest drivers to keep me returning to the stage.

Photo credit: Homefront Players/Davis Parrish Photography

Theatre builds a sense of community by bringing people who were once strangers together to create art.  These strangers become family through the sharing of cramped dressing rooms or personal interactions during rehearsals.  There are many interwoven moments such as rituals to get energized right before the curtain goes up, celebrating someone getting cast in their next show or supporting each other through bouts of nervousness on any particular night.  This is how art builds community amongst performers and when the last show ends and the set is struck, I often miss my castmates.  Theatre also forms community by bringing audiences from across our region together for a common, compelling event that might provide some joy or peace for a couple hours, provoke a thoughtful conversation with friends or family, or change something about the way we experience the world we live in.

We have nearly 20 local theatre companies producing compelling productions or training our youth to become the next generation of storytellers.   If you find yourself wanting to experience some of this from the audience perspective, I encourage you to attend a performance at one of our local theatre companies by checking out the CultureWorks calendar at: http://calendar.richmondcultureworks.org/