Watching the play that first night with the audience – it felt like I was seeing it for the first time.

I don’t know what it is about having and audience siting out there, watching you… But it’s like everything comes alive in a way it hasn’t before. There is an energy in the room that wasn’t present. You become more alert; hyper-vigilant, even: watching for their reactions, trying to see what moves them, what makes them burst out in laughter, recoil in disgust, gasp in shock. What moves them to tears.

It was so interesting to see what the audience reacted to; and it was even more interesting to notice my reaction to them. I laughed at parts I knew were coming up because the audience laughed at them. I held my breath because I knew a tense scene was approaching and I waited with bated breath to see what they would do. In a way, I felt that those of us on stage became an audience in our own right; us watching them, watching us, doing the play.

After that first week I felt I had figured out what our audience would be like on any given night. Thursday nights are slow because it’s not the weekend; Friday nights are good; Saturday night’s were even better; and Sunday matinees felt like death. But I realized after that second week that this didn’t hold. Because that second week our liveliest audience was the Sunday matinee, and the least reactive one (to me) was the Saturday night. I wasn’t complaining – how wonderful it was to end the show run with such a lively audience! – but still, it challenged my convictions, and so I had to go back and think about it some more.

And I came to the conclusion that you just can’t predict what your audience will be like. (I know to some of you who have done this for a while this might seem obvious; but it was a very interesting thing for me to learn.) I was (in a way) disappointed by them on nights that they were quiet when I expected them to be louder; when they missed jokes, when they let moments slip by without so much as a gasp of surprise. And I was elated by them on nights that they were so responsive when I thought they would be silent as the grave; when they laughed at things I myself hadn’t even picked up, when they cried out at parts I was sure they would miss. Every night the audience surprised me; and every night, I learned something new about Uncle Vanya – even this far into the process, even after months of watching it over and over. And still, there were things I hadn’t yet known.

– Jaya Z.