It’s said that theatre crews have done their job well when the audience forget that they were there. In that case, should we be breaking the magic of the theatre by formally acknowledging them on stage, or should their recognition also hover in the background?
In most professional productions, theatre crews only receive formal acknowledgement in the programme where they are usually listed after photos of the cast members. Personally, I think that they deserve more recognition, especially as nowadays programmes are often pretty expensive, so people are less inclined to buy them. Moreover, unlike the cast members, crew members rarely have their photos included so the audience can’t put a face to a name.
Similarly, orchestra members are also usually afforded only a brief mention in the programme, although some professional shows do include a gesture to the pit during the curtain call. However, recently, I saw the touring production of Come From Away where the musicians came to the centre of the stage after the cast had taken their bows and they were able to really showcase their talent for the audience. Personally, as a musician myself, I really liked this because I think that it is really important to remind audiences that the music that they are hearing is live.
I think that sometimes audiences tend to forget this since nowadays people are much more used to hearing recorded music, so when they hear the music that they’ve heard beforehand on Spotify or YouTube, people sometimes assume that they are listening to a backing track, especially if the musicians can’t be seen.
Contrastingly, amateur productions tend to try to publicly acknowledge the crew more than professional productions do. As well as gesturing to the orchestra, they will typically also gesture towards either the wings or the lighting box as a way of recognising and thanking them. This is seen as being more important when the crew isn’t being paid, since they are working hard to allow the performers to put on the best show, they can without being remunerated. In amateur and school productions, there is also the idea of everyone being part of the production together, so they are viewed as deserving the same recognition as the cast.
On the other hand, because crew members are paid in professional productions, lots of them don’t want to be publicly recognised. Lots of the people who work backstage have chosen to do this because they love theatre, but they hate being on stage so having lots of attention brought to them is their worst nightmare. Oftentimes, they prefer to be thanked by the cast throughout rehearsals and performances and are also very grateful for positive references.
Crew members are often celebrated and thanked at opening night parties and in closing night speeches, with design teams, who do most of their work before the show opens, being included in these. Although it might sound lovely to recognise and thank crew members by calling them up onto stage to take a bow, this is generally very impractical. This is because they are still needed backstage to work the lighting and sound during the bows, and, also, the crew is often very large so it would make the bows too long.
Nevertheless, I think it is necessary to recognise crew members more than we do now. This is because being part of a theatre crew is a job that people often forget exists so children do not realise that it is a job that they can do. Therefore, I think that making crews more visible, whether this is through adding their photos into programmes or gesturing to them during curtain call, is one way to inspire the next generation of theatre crews.
