699: Fiasco!
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What happens when a small-town production of Peter Pan goes wrong?
I don't think she had ever directed. and she claimed to have acted, and it was never really quite clear just what her credentials were. But she had managed to convince the local theater department of this college that she should direct a production of Peter Pan.
When he was in the 10th grade in 1973, Jack Hitt saw her production. And like everybody else in town, he heard about it for weeks beforehand.
Slowly but surely, you know, you began to hear, you know, sort of rumors about this production. For example, I know that they had spent a lot of money... renting these flying apparatuses out of New York. And apparently there's like one company and a handful of these apparatuses. And so to get them was a major coup.
This is a story not just of a mediocre play or a terrible play. When it comes right down to it, it's not even a story about a play. This is a story about a fiasco and about what makes a fiasco. And one ingredient of many fiascos is that great, massive, heart-wrenching chaos and failure are more likely to occur when great ambition has come into play, when plans are big, expectations great, hopes at their highest.
And what you have to understand is that everybody in this sort of community understood that there were And there was certainly a sort of air of everyone sort of reaching beyond their own grasp. Every actor was sort of in a role that was just a little too big for them. Every aspect of the set and the crew. And, you know, rumors had sort of cooked around. You know, there was this huge crew. There were lots of things being planned.
How does ambition lead to chaos in performances?
See, but this, in fact, is one of the criteria for greatness, is that everyone is just about to reach just beyond their grasp because that is when greatness can occur.
That's right. That's right. And maybe greatness could have occurred.
Well, today on our program, what happens when greatness does not occur? What happens, in fact, when fumble leads to error, leads to mishap, and before you know it, you have left the realm of ordinary mistake and chaos, and you have entered into the more ethereal, specialized realm of fiasco.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What happens when a small-town production of Peter Pan goes wrong?
0:54–2:36
2
How does ambition lead to chaos in performances?
2:36–8:59
3
What are the signs of an impending fiasco in theater?
8:59–16:48
4
How does the audience react to a live theater fiasco?
16:48–45:53
5
What role does human error play in creating a fiasco?
45:53–55:55
6
How do fiascos become memorable experiences for audiences?
55:55–59:54