Reading for an unexpected audience
know your target market gets complicated
Ladeez, aaaaaaaaaand Džientellmen,
Most of this post is going to be about the reading I did Saturday, but I wanted to also mention something I thought as I went to see Cabaret again (this time with Adam Lambert, last time with Eddie Redmayne) - the reason this production works so very well is because it had an idea and committed to it all the way.
The play is about the Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club in Berlin. So the theater is transformed into a club as surely as Limelight was once a club (long after it was a church and before it was a shopping mall and a restaurant).
In this particular Kit Kat Club, not only is everyone beautiful but also there is beading on the moldings near the ceiling and dripping from the tablecloths, there are butterflies in the rafters, a working coat check (word to the wise, don’t use it unless you love standing in lines after a show)—even the restroom signs are only in German. It is a clever conceit and the ushers play along, effectively meaning that the show has a whole extra hour of overture. I love it.
And this Sally Bowles is quite simply terrific.
Writing News:
The small news is I’ve started to write about Japan. I just published the intro to a series of articles about the trip Check in on it, and follow me there if you want all the nitty gritty of how my trip went - and photos!
The big news this week is that I did a sold-out reading at the Lithuanian Alliance of America Art Gallery near Penn Station with Paul Jaskunas who came up from Baltimore for the event. The place was so full (and so intimate) that I had to stop in the middle of my intro to allow a woman who came a bit late to cross the large space to the only empty chair—which also happened to be in the front row on the opposite side of the door.
It was really a thrill to walk into a place you associate with your heritage (which in and of itself isn’t something that I tend to discuss at book readings) and see people there from all walks of life. Some friends came from my old days of doing theater. Some friends came from family connections. One writer friend came all the way from deepest Brooklyn. Before the event, this was merely a joy, watching all these faces show up in a place that is associated with my most private self. But once the host passed the event over to me, all of a sudden I was overwhelmed.
How do you host an event where the audience has such variety? There were people who had no reference for Lithuania, business connections meeting for the first time with Paul’s wife whom I had never met before, and people who hadn’t read fiction in years!
But there were also the opposite: people who were fluent in Lithuanian and some who had been born there, the daughter of a friend who I met in Lithuanian summer camp as a child, and people who read widely, not only in English but multiple other languages.
And then some bonuses: a highly regarded sci-fi author, a theater director, an Italian woman from Sicily…in other words, an eclectic group.
And I was moderating. What kinds of questions would I pose that would be of interest to all these different people? I was used to having a fairly uniform group (writers who are parents) but this group was not uniform at all!
Paul read first. Then I read. The audience was fantastically attentive and hung on our every word. So I gave us each another round of time to read—what a joy to have the time! The audience was spectacular.
And then it hit me - this audience was completely engaged. Why should I ask any questions at all? I could just follow up and fill in and actually answer the questions, I didn’t have to dream them up.
So I opened it to the floor - and the conversation flowed.
Their questions were insightful and showed true curiosity—not one question was posed by a typical bombastic academician who just wanted to hear himself speak. no one was a plant to fill empty space. By the end of the hour, both of us were relaxed and cheerful! Exactly how you should feel after an event!
And here’s the best part: I sold out of books!
(if you missed getting my story collection, you can get it here.)
Random Final Thought:
The phrase in and of itself is a weird archaic thing, isn’t it? So I looked it up. Underwhelmingly, it is merely a translation of the Latin per se. Silly of us to give up per se for such a convoluted phrase. Sounds better in Latin.
Very interesting!