Taste Vs Craft Every Show isn't for everyone!

One of the phrases I hear most often after theater is:
“Well… it just wasn’t for me.”
And sometimes, that’s absolutely true.

Not every show is built for every audience member.
Some productions operate inside theatrical languages that certain people connect to more naturally than others.

Some audiences love realism.
Others want abstraction.
Some want emotional intensity.
Others want escape.

Taste matters.

But I’ve also started noticing how often audiences use “not for me” to avoid saying something more specific.

Something riskier.

Like: 
“I didn’t believe that performance.”
“The emotional turn didn’t feel earned.”
“The structure lost momentum.”
“The writing never fully connected the idea to the execution.”

Those are not statements about taste alone.Those are observations about craft.And I think the distinction matters.
​Because if every response becomes purely subjective, meaningful conversation about theater begins disappearing.

Everything becomes untouchable.
Beyond analysis. Beyond discernment. 

But theater is built from choices.

• Writing choices.
• Directorial choices.
• Performance choices.
• Design choices.

​And audiences are responding to those choices whether they articulate it clearly or not.I thought a great deal about this while watching Penelope, a musical by Alex Bechtel, Grace McLean, and Eva Steinmetz at Kavinoky Theater.

A colleague recently called it a “cabaret musical”.

There were elements of the production I genuinely admired. The intimacy of the staging. The humor woven through loneliness. The musical precision. And the performance work of Amy Jakiel, particularly during “Drunk Iliad,” where her comic timing revealed the emotional core of the character beautifully.

And yet, I also felt distance.
I kept waiting for the emotional world of the production to rupture open in a way it never fully did.And afterward, I had to confront something uncomfortable in my own response to the piece.

Part of my distance from Penelope came from realizing that I wanted a different story than the one I was being given.

I wanted to root for Penelope more than sympathize with her.

I wanted anger.
Explosion.

A kind of emotional ferocity.I found myself waiting for the character to weaponize her loneliness and frustration into something sharper, louder, more dangerous.And that expectation had as much to do with me—my experiences, my instincts, the kinds of women characters I emotionally connect to—as it did with the production itself.

Because that ultimately was not the story I was watching.

In fact, on his website, creator Alex Bechtel describes Penelope this way:

“Penelope is a theatrical love letter to all those who wait. For someone they love. For something they believe in. And hope that the wait will end well.”

And honestly, I did feel that theme throughout the production.

The stillness.
The longing.
The ache of waiting.

The show was reaching toward tenderness and endurance more than rupture and fury.It simply hit me differently than I expected.

And that realization became important because it clarified something for me:
this was an example of taste, not necessarily failure of craft.

Not because it erased the questions I still had about the emotional progression of the piece, but because it forced me to recognize the difference between engaging with the work and trying to rewrite it in my own mind while experiencing it.

Audiences who consume a great deal of theater often begin mentally “fixing” productions while watching them.

We start imagining:

different emotional turns
different endings
different directorial choices
different ruptures

We begin shaping the production into the version we personally wish existed.
But I’m beginning to think that isn’t actually our job as audience members.

Our responsibility is not to remake the work into our preferred version of itself.
It is to understand what the work is attempting to do—and then honestly examine whether it succeeds on its own terms.

And that, to me, is where the distinction between taste and craft becomes most useful.
Because not every show is for every audience.

And not every feeling of distance means the production has failed.

Sometimes the work and the audience member are simply reaching toward different emotional experiences.

But that doesn’t mean audiences should stop interrogating their responses honestly.

Critique is not cruelty.
Thoughtfulness is not negativity.

And saying something didn’t fully connect for you is not the same thing as dismissing the labor of the artists involved.

In fact, I’d argue the opposite.

Careful attention is a form of respect.Because theater is alive.

Collaborative.
Imperfect.

And part of what makes it exciting is that audiences are experiencing it in real time, actively processing what is and isn’t reaching them emotionally, intellectually, and aesthetically.
Some productions change us immediately.

Others challenge us because of the distance they create.

And maybe part of becoming a more engaged audience member is learning to recognize the difference between:
“This failed.”
and:
“This wasn’t speaking to the part of me that wanted something else.
”Because somewhere between taste and craft is where deeper engagement begins.

For more reflections on audience response, criticism, and the complicated relationship between taste and theatrical craft, check out Episode 3 of the Standing Ovation? podcast.

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