By Ken Burns
I had been to 3 previous table reads to get to understand the experience. Having liked what I saw I put my play Callous forward for reading on July 14 2022. Finding actors to get involved was pretty easy. Richard Lambert recommended table reads to me cos we are part of a theatre writing group run by Gary Henderson. Richard found Elizabeth Cracroft to read offside him. I know Hilari Anderson. Asked her to narrate and used one of the audience members out of the blue to read one line in the play. That was fun.
Having a small audience (about 14 people) was fine as a starter. What is on paper and what is readout/performed are 2 different things. Actors who are prepared to put in the time to be the character they are reading off the page I love. There was a lot of singing in Callous. Richard and Liz put work into making that believable. Sitting at the back and hearing the laughs come from the audience was satisfying. It made me happy. It’s what I wanted to achieve.
The online forum at the end for the audience was quick. The details were emailed to me by Rupert Green was an interesting to read. It was positive all round as was the Q/A session at the end.
When your work is made public not everyone is going to like it. You must live with that as the creator. I write predominately for theatre with some fiction thrown in. Having 90 in a theatre is ok sometimes that can drop to 6. In tv land 30,000 viewers is New Zealand not much and pretty much discounted but your work is out there. You learn to live with the one or 25 who will say online this is how it should be done. At the movies your shelf life is longer. Someone could see that film in 30 years and like it/hate it but it’s still there.
My first experience at Auckland Table Reads was a tester. I will do it again with a different piece of work and look forward to the feedback from a fresh set of eyes.