TV and social network streams have spent the last 24 hours buzzing about last night’s live performance of The Sound of Music. I watched nearly all of it and monitored the Twitter reaction for about the first hour or so.  What struck me from last night’s performance has less to do with production mechanics and more to do with what the audience’s reactions reveal about American culture.

This post got a little long, so I’ll summarize my main points to help you decide if you want to read it: 1) Harsh responses to mistakes discourage people from taking risks; 2) We shouldn’t be so obsessed with perfection; and 3) We should want good for, and from, others. I don’t believe I’m breaking any new ground here, but some things are worth repeating.

I am a big “Sound of Music” fan, particularly the movie version starring Julie Andrews. Silly as it may sound, much of the initial attraction I felt toward my wife was that, in the performance in which we met, her appearance, mannerisms and voice were remarkably similar to Ms. Andrews’ Maria. We own the blu-ray version of the film and our children were taught to watch and enjoy it from their earliest years. For an amateur, I have a pretty extensive background in theatre – having performed in or directed around two dozen shows.

Part 1: The Culture of Critics

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
– Anton Ego, “Ratatouille”

Before last night, though I knew her name, I couldn’t have picked Carrie Underwood out of a lineup. I don’t believe that anyone could equal Ms. Andrews’ interpretation of Maria, and what I appreciated about Ms. Underwood’s performance is that she didn’t try. She wasn’t playing Julie Andrews, but Maria, a character in the story. Unsurprisingly, many responded to last night’s performance by pointing out that Ms. Underwood was not, in fact, Julie Andrews. Likewise for several other of the characters who are beloved from the film version.

That being the case, I think it’s important to commend all those involved in the production for having the courage to put it out there. This is especially true for the actors, who knew a significant percentage of the audience would judge the entire performance with only blunt comparisons to their film-version counterpart. An especially hearty kudos are due to Ms. Underwood. A sizable portion of the audience would not have been pleased no matter how well she performed.

The scariest part about doing theatre is how you are left entirely vulnerable to the audience’s critique. Many think that actors, because they enjoy the spotlight, are self-confident androids with nerves of steel. Perhaps some are, but the ones I’ve known bring to the stage a certain degree of insecurity which can only be remedied by an approving audience. While I wish the cast could spend the rest of this week on a social media fast, I doubt that will happen. They will put on a strong facade in interviews, but I assure you the words of unrestrained criticism they read hurt deeply.

There are broader implications here for all of life. It’s currently quite en vogue to claim that we want our children to do hard things: to take risks that might result in failure. This is a great correction from the “everyone’s a winner every time” ethos of the previous decade, but I wonder if we’re serious about it. If we are, and we’re going to create a culture that encourages people to take risks, we’ve got to also create a culture that doesn’t humiliate people when they mess up. I wonder how many of the mostly-anonymous internet critics would ever, even given the opportunity, subject themselves to that kind of vulnerability. I also wonder how many young people, reading the vicious critiques of the performers, were dissuaded from ever taking a similar risk?

I don’t think we should reward failure. I don’t think we should praise that which is not praiseworthy. Ms. Underwood’s acting performance wasn’t very good, her vocal tone was inconsistent and she broke character a few times. We don’t need to praise that, but we also don’t need to dwell on it or verbally assault her for it. Let’s praise that she had the courage to take the role, that she has a marvelous voice, that she invested significant time and energy into doing something for our entertainment and that, in several key moments of the show, she was believable and heart-warming. The same could be said of every performer on the stage last night, and, if we will actually say it, we might well encourage many others to take the risk.

Part 2: Our Love/Hate Relationship with Authenticity

If there’s a king of the cultural buzz-words for the 20-tens so far, it has to be “authentic.” We want our food, our churches and our relationships to all possess this wonderful, and nearly undefinable, trait. The problem with the authentic is that it’s nearly-always imperfect, and imperfection is an attribute that most claim to love until it’s actually encountered. This is why the women on magazine covers must be airbrushed, why every scene of a movie requires dozens of takes and why even most “live” albums have undergone significant vocal and instrumental editing. We like perfection far more than we like authenticity.

I don’t want to criticize perfection – I long for the day of its coming. We aren’t there yet. My objection is to our seeming inability to enjoy, and to be satisfied with, something less than perfection. A significant number of the tweets I read last night could be paraphrased as: “[Insert comparison to film version here.] Turning it off now. I tried.” I confess to having a similar thought early in the performance. The answer wasn’t to reject the imperfect, but to re-frame my way of thinking and consider what about the performance I was already, and could continue, enjoying.

Allow me an analogy from the world of baseball. What percentage of pitching outings result in a “perfect game?” Considering there are about 5100 opportunities for one every year and it’s only happened 21 times since 1900 – not many.  Are there still many, many pitching performances that, while imperfect, are worthwhile entertainment and worthy of commendation and enjoyment? Absolutely. So it is with many things: we risk missing out on something truly entertaining or enjoyable because we’re too focused on what it isn’t. I used to see this all the time counseling college-age men and women about potential spouses. Most were, to use the familiar expression, allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

At the end of last night’s performance I didn’t go to bed thinking, “That was the greatest production I’ve ever seen,” or even “that was the greatest production of The Sound of Music I’ve ever seen.” I went to bed thinking, “that was fun.” I’m convinced that part of the epidemic of discontentment in the culture today stems from our inability to enjoy what’s right in front of us because we’re too busy obsessing over what we might be missing. Parents don’t watch their kid’s game because they’re producing the perfect family film keepsake. At Disney last year Daphne and I observed moms and dads screaming at kids for wasting time (having fun) playing in fountains or parks while they were supposed to be (having fun) riding rides.

We need to be more aware of the consequences of our obsession with perfection. Maybe our airbrushed women and our eviscerating commentary on anatomical imperfections are connected to eating disorders, certain cases of depression and the “if you aren’t in the gym 90 minutes a day you aren’t trying” guilt felt by many moms. Maybe our instant audio access to the best preachers and worship music of our time is connected to our inability to be satisfied in a particular congregation. Maybe being inundated with self-help, self-improvement, pop-psychology and relationship comparisons are connected to our divorce and infidelity rates.

Part 3: Why Aren’t We “For” People?

There was at least one moment last night when I stepped over the line into the realm of theatre-geek: Kurt’s high-note “goodbye” in “So Long, Farewell.” Knowing it was coming, I waited with an unreasonable amount of anxiety, even praying for the kid to “nail it.” Talk about taking a risk – he was about to do something that was not only difficult, but that he had never done before. Sure, he’s hit that note a few hundred times, but he’s never done it with a live audience of several million and only one chance to get it right. And he did. He nailed it and I jumped out the sofa with a fist pump and a loud cheer.

As I sat back down, I wondered why I don’t do more of that. As I checked the Twitter response, I wondered why we all don’t do more of that. Many times we seem eager to see other people fail and we hardly even acknowledge their successes. It’s a dark cynicism and jealousy that I presume to be born of our deepest sinful insecurities.

Part of what made it so easy for the critics to be negative last night was that they don’t really know the performers. When you do community theatre, or college theatre, it’s largely a friendly audience. They want you to succeed and they look for opportunities to praise those successes. Those people last night, whom we didn’t know, had an opportunity of which we were jealous. As a culture, we rejoiced not in their successes, but in their mistakes.

We’re very selective in our application of this, and that’s why I’m confident our behavior can be changed. Generally speaking, we pull for those people we know: our family and friends. Likewise, we pull for people on “our team,” even if we don’t know them: our sports heroes, politicians on our side and even the products and businesses that we’ve chosen to identify with. Generally speaking, we pull against everyone else. What would be the harm in being “for” more and “against” less? Why shouldn’t we have been pulling for the entire cast last night to succeed? Why shouldn’t we praise the successes and accomplishments of those around us?

My wife had a roommate in college who epitomized this behavior (positively) and it’s a trait I wish I worked harder to imitate. The truth is, even the people who we’re “for,” like our closest family and friends, probably don’t hear praise from us that often. In their case it’s not even that we want them to fail and yet we still downplay or outright ignore their successes. I’m not talking about praising life-altering successes here but about praising a job well-done on a small task, or that they were particularly considerate or even just that they said something clever or did something creative. I shudder to think how my near-5 year-old would answer the question, “Is your dad for you or against you?”

Conclusion

I thought the cast did a good job last night. I enjoyed watching their performance and their interactions as a cast. I identified with those knowing looks between actors when someone missed a line or put it in the wrong place. I share the horror of coming in a bit flat on your opening note to a song and appreciate the necessary conviction to push through it and hit the next one.

I hope they put more live theatre on TV because I think it fills an important void that exists between traditional TV programming and reality TV and because it might get more people interested in theatre in general. While reality TV (the least authentic form of entertainment imaginable) generally reinforces the negative behaviors critiqued in this article, theatre provides great opportunities for entertainment that can promote personal growth and sanctification for both the participants and the audience.