It’s deadly difficult to predict how many people will arrive for a particular show or performance.  For anybody familiar with Douglas Adams, it may be a little like Bistro Mathematics – the realm where numbers become mysterious and stop obeying regular laws and principles.  Some nights you expect nobody, but it’s the mad crush of a full house.  And some nights you’re thinking a rush, but you get seven.  All of which must be maddening to those involved.  No wonder so many theatre people (and restauranteurs) might get a smidge daffy.

But the audience is the most essential part of any performance.  If no one goes, there’s really no point in putting the show on, except maybe for practice.  Trees falling in the forest and all that.  The only reason for the show to exist is to attract an audience.  The customer is always right.

The audience is at least half-essential because some part of the reason we go is to watch each other.  The audience is an important part of the show.  When I go to a performance or a happening, it’s always fun to see who else is there.  Yes, there’s some simple joy in people-watching, but there’s also a good opportunity for some old-fashioned, pre-net social networking.

It’s probably a good assumption that I’d have at least something in common with a person who would buy a ticket for a Friday night performance of Theatre Downtown’s version of Proof.  What exactly is that something, I don’t know, but it’s probably a good start.  Do we like plays?  Math?  The Birmingham Aids Outreach?

Internet services from Facebook to eHarmony to JDate all try and take advantage of matching people’s common interests.  “Here,” they say, “fill out this list of what you like and who you like and we’ll try to find other, similar people.”  It’s almost like I could send in my list of internet bookmarks – or maybe the last forty websites I visited – and some service could forward along a list of people who were most closely matched.

To match someone for me maybe, who would also be at Proof, at UAB’s Festival of Ten-Minute Plays, watch some major league baseball and some premier league soccer, be considering seeing the Walkmen at Bottletree, and interested in some way in reading and writing?   Other than cleaning the house and walking the dog in the (oh-my-god-is-that) sunshine,  that was pretty much my weekend.  So who’s got a just-like-me friend that I oughtta meet?  Could it work as easy as that?

That’s one reason it’s fun to go to events and talk to people.  It’s got to be the best way to make new and similar friends.  On my visit to Theatre Downtown’s Proof on Friday, I think I briefly talked to (or annoyed, depending on your viewpoint) everybody in the audience.  I still wonder: why are they here?  Are you related to someone in the cast?  Did you see Alec Harvey’s five-star review (at this link)?  Were you looking forward to it ever since you watched the Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jake Gyllenhaal movie version?  Are you just cool and know what to do and where to go?

Because if you see this version of Proof, it proves that you’re at least a little bit cool.  You might know that the play is serious enough to win the Pulitzer, yet entertaining enough to have been picked up by Miramax.  You have to be paying enough attention to know about the production or hear about it from somewhere, because the Theatre Downtown advertising budget is probably nonexistent.  You also have to either know where Birmingham Aids Outreach is or be brave enough to adventure out and find it, trusting that it’s really a place someone might stage a play.

You’re also a little bit cooler because this version of the play is so good.  All four actors are excellent and superbly cast by director J.J. Marrs.  Lauren Cantrell, Ron Dauphinee, Stephen Wade, and Hannah Wilkerson work extremely well together and no character too far outshines, outperforms, or upstages any other.  In particular, I think Stephen Wade has been watching back episodes of Beauty and the Geek for lessons on how to act clumsy, inept, enthusiastic, and sweet all at once.  The tension between the sisters is well-managed and rarely one-sided or simplistic.  I love the moment where the fussy and well-mannered sister, Claire, takes the time to put out a carefully-prepared, intricate breakfast, but it’s swept away by the stage crew between scenes to make way for messy sister Catherine’s favored world: a bunch of empty and half-empty bottles of Natural Light.

If you the kind of person who would go to this show, I’ll bet we’d have a good head-start towards being friends.  And maybe you’ll also wonder about the mom in the play, who she was, and where she might have gotten off to?

Thanks to Theatre Downtown for putting on an excellent show.  I’m looking forward to Equus – one of my very favorites.

I hear Birmingham often accused of a lack of interesting things to do.  Sometimes, it’s right from my own mouth.  The entertainment diet of a great many people seems to consist mainly of church, kids, and football (though not necessarily in that order).

There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m somehow cursed with a restlessness.  I’m always looking for more options.  Turning over rocks, flippin’ through used CDs, and keeping my ears open for hints of a new cult classic movie.  Maybe I’m just high maintenance.  Or special.  But I’m always on the lookout for the coolest stuff.

Your life is busy.  You don’t have time to check everything out looking for the cream of the crop.  You’ve got kids, church, and football to worry about.  And when you feel like going out to do something special, you read the Birmingham News (which may have the worst website on the internet) or the Black and White.

These outlets, though, are – to put it nicely – too egalitarian and equal opportunity.  Well, in reality, they’re just capitalist and tied to advertising money.  If you flip through ‘em, the space for advertising entertainment or cultural events far outpaces any space devoted to suggesting what might actually be good to go see.

Thems that pays the most earns the most space.  If you can’t afford advertising, there’s not much chance you’ll have them spend column inches talking about you.  So there are always splashy ads for overrated BJCC Broadway touring shows, but almost no space devoted to criminally underrated organizations like the UAB Theatre Department.

I’ll have you know that Birmingham Verse gets zero ad revenue.  And unlike many (barfing) mommy blogs, I get no kickbacks for product placement.  Rihanna didn’t pay me to cover Umbrella.  Clay Boyce didn’t pay me to cover his version of Taming of the Shrew.  No Artwalk painter paid me for a namedrop.  They’re covered here ’cause I think they’re cool.  It’s a badge of pride that the opinions here are as unsullied as Mary Poppins’ panties.

So I’m here to try and tell you about the best stuff happening in town and – no doubt – you’re missing out if you don’t already know about the Festival of Ten-Minute Plays done every fall by the UAB Theatre Department.  I think this is the eighth year and I’ve been for at least the last two years.  It’s a true highlight on my calendar and maybe one of the coolest things that happens in town all year.

For this, their first performance of each season, the students take a stab at writing ten-minute plays all loosely based around a central theme.  Eight of the plays are then cast with students and produced to run over a weekend.  Some students also get a shot at directing.

I say this every year, but it’s true every year.  As you’d expect from student performances, they can be hit or miss.  But the hits are always fueled with gleeful enthusiasm – and the misses only last about ten minutes.  Plus, this year it’s just THREE DOLLARS.  You paid more than that to see the last Indiana Jones movie, the Transformers sequel, and X-Men: Wolverine or whatever-the-heck that was – and you know they were all stinkers.  These should sell out.  Go ahead and get tickets.

My favorite of these ten-minute plays were Darcie written by Richard Taylor Campbell, Bag Boy by Daniel Martin, Gratefully Challenged by Kirsten Casella, and Nice Guy by Alex LaFosta.  In case you’re wondering, three of these were laugh-out-loud funny.  And the other was jaw-droppingly unexpected.  Don’t expect a full evening of theater-y death, famine, pestilence, and war.

Brenton Bellamy and Trista Baker are particularly fantastic in Darcie even before they say anything.  Smile-inducing on facial expressions alone.  I almost wished I could’ve experimented with pushing a “mute” button and re-watching it to see if it would’ve been just as hilarious.  The same is also true of Jereme Lewis in The Romantic Adventures of Harrison Jones.  Catie Cole brings a different and remarkably good energy as the consultant in Gratefully Challenged.  Brittney Michelle Williams and Bradley Foster stood out for me in Happy Birthday, Grandma, and the whole show might’ve been stolen by wide-eyed, enthusiastic, lisping Kirstie Crumly as the Katydid Scout in Bag Boy.

So why is this the coolest thing happening in Birmingham?  If this was music, it would be a battle of the bands.  Without cover bands.  It’s all originals.  Written fresh, probably within something like the last two weeks.  And then the authors get to see their work performed almost immediately, while the enthusiasm still percolates.  That almost never happens.  These are the world premieres of plays and performances by some pretty talented people.

I’m honestly not sure why they couldn’t or wouldn’t do this more than once a year.  It would be fun to provide young writers with a consistent venue and ask (or force) them to write new stuff that might stand a legitimate chance of being performed.  The writers would be grateful for the actors and the actors would probably be grateful for the writers.  The audience might be grateful to them both.  It would be fun to watch the talent, themes, and shows evolve over time.

Thanks to Melissa Christian and the rest of the UAB Theatre folks for putting on this show.