What should you see today?

Something I am asked on a regular basis. ‘You’re always seeing something, what shall I see in Sheffield?’ I rarely know what to say on this. Why are you trusting me to tell you where to spend up to 60 quid on tickets? I don’t know what you like or want from the evening. Choose yourself! With such a range of shows out there, there is genuinely something for everyone. I believe that, I really do.
Perhaps the issue is two fold; that, the non-theatre going public, genuinely don’t know what’s on. What would be more dangerous however would be that the thing preventing them is that they don’t feel they can have an opinion about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to see.
To address the first issue, there are a huge number of places to look for what’s coming up in and around the city. There are mailing lists for all major theatres and arts groups. Brochures and magazines which tend to outline big things, or at least venues of interest and then there’s the Internet. Start looking at Sheffield based theatre companies (then wider too if you are okay to travel abit around Yorkshire). Sheffield Theatres program for what’s on is up months in advance online, as it is for most of the big venues in the city. National tours are planned well in advance after all. For a shorter-term view and for seeing lots of things in a smaller place, there is no better resource than Twitter. Follow your friends that see stuff, see what and who they tweet about, look at those companies and follow them. See who is posting pictures or blog posts of things that interest you and go from there. Someone might be making just the piece of work you’ve always wanted to see. As an aside, this happened last year when Theatre Delicatessen produced a show called Pedal Pusher, a verbatim, physical theatre show about cycling. I was in heaven.
In terms of having a ‘valid arts opinion’, forget it. Just go and see something. Be it a big, well publicised, name on the touring circuit or if its something you heard about that’s happing above a pub somewhere, don’t worry what anyone thinks of you going or what people there will think about your attendance. From experience the artist will be delighted to see an audience, especially one that’s new or from a different background to themselves or their normal crowd. And then after you’ve seen the performance whatever it may be, talk about it, to anyone! Say what you liked and what you didn’t, say if you’d see it, or something similar again, and say if you wouldn’t, but that you’d like to see something else. This is vitally important. The arts reflect and inform on our lives like nothing else. It can be a comment on society and it can help us make sense of the world around us. That’s why artists make work in the first place. Its how they interpret something and in sharing it, they hope you will reach an understanding too. In a program note Lucy Prebble, who went to University in Sheffield and is now very successful as a play write, said “But you are going to watch the play, I hope, and I don’t want to take up much more of your time. I hope you enjoy it. But most importantly, please go to the pub afterwards and argue and drink and be angry. Something you say might make your fortune. Someone you’re with might change your life.” She was talking about people seeing her own work and yet she wanted people to talk after, argue even, about it. If that isn’t an invitation to go and see some work and to have an opinion, I don’t know what is.
Of course this all leads onto an other discussion that is hot topic in the arts world of what is it that people want to come and see, what will they pay to do so, and who picks up the bill for the difference. But that is for another post perhaps… For now I urge you to check out the websites of Sheffield Theatres, Third Angel, Slung Low, Forced Entertainment as well as twitter and the plethora of other venues and companies that perform and produce work in Sheffield.