On Audiences' Attention Spans and the Length of Plays

Dear Editor,
    Having been involved in Austin theatre for nearly 10 years, I’ve been surprised lately to discover two of your newest reviewers continue to assert that plays more than 90 minutes long in Austin are atypical and that Austin audiences are incapable of sitting through them ["The Positively Serene Death of Sir Ritter Hans Von Wittenstein Zu Wittenstein," Arts Listings, Aug. 29; "Getting Married," Arts Listings, Nov. 28]. My experience has been exactly the opposite: Running times on most productions reviewed over the last several months have been between two and 2½ hours, and I’ve never had an experience where audiences complained about the production being too long. Indeed, with modern cinema’s current trend of the “epic” two-hours-plus movies, it seems ludicrous to suggest that our talented local actors can’t hold audience attention for as long, particularly with the inclusion of intermission.
    I’ve noticed that veteran Chronicle reviewers only mention it when pacing is the real issue. Is it that your new reviewers are younger with shorter attention spans or that they just aren’t familiar with Austin theatre?

   [Arts Editor Robert Faires replies: Neither. While it’s true that most of the theatre productions reviewed by the Chronicle of late clocked in above the two-hour mark, the entire year of 2008 reveals that shows that ran under two hours outnumbered those that ran over. And when you talk specifically about new plays, as Hannah Kenah did in the review you cite, many more time under 120 minutes. (Of the 22 reviewed, two out of three ran 90 minutes or less.) So her remark, “There is a trend with new plays that goes something like this: 90 minutes, no intermission. There is room for longer works, but you better need every second,” isn’t without justification. As for the comment made by Elizabeth Cobbe in her Nov. 28 review, it’s better examined in the context of contemporary taste for the sometimes windy rhetorical wrangling of G.B. Shaw. (“Modern audiences, especially in Austin, where many shows are considered long at 90 minutes, aren’t geared up to examine a single idea for 2½ hours.”) Quite a few local companies regularly make theatre that runs well under two hours (Hyde Park, Rude Mechs, Salvage Vanguard, Tongue and Groove, to name a few), and while their audiences might indeed be willing to sit through 2½ hours of a cinematic epic, full of thrilling action or lush romance, they might find 150 minutes of nothing but the didactic debates of "Major Barbara" or "Misalliance" will get them feeling a bit restless. The issue isn’t local actors’ abilities to hold our attention (though that can be a factor); it’s our tolerance for extended oratory – and an old-fashioned kind of oratory at that – focused on one topic. It seems fair to say that in a city where a third of the theatre runs under 90 minutes, we’re just not trained for that brand of mental marathon.]