With the last play I directed, a constant concern was the running time. The Flick, the Pulitzer Price winning play by Annie Barker is one hundred and sixty-eight pages in length. Generally, the rule is one minute per page, which would give the play a running time of 2 hours and 48 minutes. With a 15-minute intermission the show’s length was 3+ hours. The play is a major undertaking for the actors and the director for many reasons, but in regards to time, the author has stipulated in the script in numerous areas where the pacing should be methodical, purposeful and unhurried. In fact, in this play, a comedy of the mundane, to rush the moments is tantamount to doing shots with 18-year-old Jameson whiskey. In fact, it would be the fastest way to ruin the tone and insightful moments that happen between the characters as they go about their job of cleaning a movie auditorium.
There are numerous articles written about how adult attention spans have diminished. Research indicates that adult attention spans have dropped from 12 minutes in 2000 to only 5 minutes today. So, what are you to do as a producer or a writer? Ignore these fine works? Should you run screaming away from producing these plays, because there are no audiences able to tolerate spending three hours away from their social media worlds? What of writers that have a story worthy of this type of length? Should they abandon it or find a way to tell their tale within the boundaries of a 60 to 90-minute time span? Whenever this topic arose during rehearsals in respect to how the audience would react to the fact that the first act alone was 95 minutes in length, my answer was that we had to deliver quality. We were confident in the play, it is a remarkable piece of work; beautifully written and full of conflict and surprising emotional moments. We had all we needed to create a high-quality evening of entertainment, but could we deliver?
As a group, we had to take the personal challenge of demanding the audience’s attention for those 3 hours. We had to claim it and not let it go, and the way to do this was to stay true to the play and the characters.
Another one of our concerns was that people would stay away because of the length of the play, or even worse, would leave in the intermission. If people refused to attend, it didn’t matter how good our work was if it remained unseen. As for people leaving, there is no greater negative review than audiences leaving during the intermission. Those empty seats that were once full are the most damning silent critique of anyone’s work. It is impossible not to take it personally when a patron has declared that your creative work is not worth any more of their time, no matter what they paid to see the show.
With the usual excited nervous energy, we opened the show and waited for the reaction to our work…in the reviews we received, time was mentioned, but consistently it was in a positive light. To sum up, (links to two reviews are on this page) the reviewers worked to assure audiences that not only was the play worth their attendance, but that the 3 hours didn’t feel like 3 hours, because of the quality of the show.
The production of the The Flick at the Aux Dog Theatre received wonderful reviews and enjoyed a sold out run. So, for a play, what running time is too long? My answer is that 3 minutes of bad theatre is too long, but quality theatre…well I can never get enough of that, can you?
https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/alb/alb551.html
https://www.broadwayworld.com/albuquerque/article/BWW-Review-THE-FLICK-at-Aux-Dog-Theatre-20190414