Active Audiences V: A Tale Of Two Venues

Editor’s Note: The following article and interview were conducted before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have decided to publish the article in its entirety as a celebration of Mission Creek and the wonderful downtown venues of Iowa City. We look forward to being able to celebrate with all of our patrons in the future.

In each volume of Stages, staff writer and critic Daniel Boscaljon shares insights and tips from his seat.

BY DANIEL BOSCALJON

Each year, the Mission Creek Festival releases its schedule with a different blend of musical performers, literary favorites, and community events. As the festival continues to refine its innovative offerings, one constant is that it offers far more content than a festival goer can consume. This poses a particular dilemma for pass-holders and active audience members. If you are faced with two must-see performances happening simultaneously in different venues, it can be challenging to appreciate and engage with everything that is available.

This struggle is intensified due to the overarching excitement of The Festival!, which spills into the streets and businesses of downtown Iowa City. The drive to adhere to a predetermined plan versus the desire to go with the flow pulls festival goers in two directions as they navigate a festival scene. The tension created is reminiscent of Frost’s dilemma in “The Road Not Taken”: to be “Sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler.” Choices must be made.

Knowing that life never offers guarantees, the presence of options—especially many good options—sometimes raises the fear of missing out. This can be offset by making a plan and considering; the artist, the venue, the atmosphere, and friends. Working these options in advance and feeling content with how you choose will allow you to fully inhabit the space you are in, so that you can soak up whatever beauty happens.

I experimented with intentionally approaching a similar dilemma in September of 2019, a night when the Englert presented Joseph at the Englert, and Emily Wolfe at the Mill. I was no huge fan of either but had heard good things about both. Including Deep Sea Diver, opening for Joseph, the night featured five formidable female vocalists and instrumentalists. I reflected briefly on how organizations like Girls Rock Iowa City will do nothing but encourage and empower talented women (like these, but also Soccer Mommy the night before, or Liz Moen on that Saturday) who can see what art is possible at hands like theirs.

I chose not to listen to any of the bands before the shows that night, preferring that the night remain a surprise. So few true surprises exist for us when technology’s encyclopedia of everything is so quickly accessed. The Englert’s role as curator is skilled enough that I’ve learned that its productions are worthwhile. I’ve always found that when I attend performances with artists that I don’t know–or representing genres that are foreign to me–I end up finding, at the very least, an appreciation for what about an artist or style resonates with fans. Because it becomes so easy to confuse enjoyment with gratification, I am grateful when enabled to consider what makes performances worthwhile from perspectives I do not share.

The Englert show started earlier, and so I came for the opener, the excellent Deep Sea Diver, and sat toward the back on the far stage left side. I like these seats anyway, because the floor slopes upward and allows me a clear line of sight (without my blocking anyone else’s view). The theater was not filled with people, but it was filled with life. After the opener, I ventured to the Mill to see Good Morning Midnight in a room occupied by a handful of disinterested others. I love this venue, especially its provision of tasty food (and pitchers of water) during shows; however, in this case, the loud irrelevance of a few disinterested patrons made it hard to focus on the stage. They made the room feel empty. I stayed for a few songs, then returned to the Englert to catch the beginning of Joseph.

Joseph’s stage was spartan, featuring three microphones up front, with three sisters who share duties in a charming, supportive, affirming way. By the fourth poppy folk songs, the crowd asked to stand. The band agreed. The shift was palpable. The ability to move—even constrained in the narrow aisle —increases engagement (people are more into the music) as well as distraction (you end up watching people dance). Overall, the show featured was empowering and encouraging, initiated by the band’s supportive demeanor to the crowd, city, and opener. The group is talented but not in ways that transport me.

I returned to the Mill, where Emily Wolfe was already onstage. The loud, reverberating notes announced this fact from the sidewalk beside the building, before I entered. Although the room held the same number of people, it nonetheless was full. Wolfe’s three-piece band was appropriately, not abusively, loud. I found my usual booth, in the corner, and realized that the band demanded my full attention to the extent that anyone else would have disappeared. They played the kind of blues that you hope hits the radio when driving on 80 at 3 a.m.–their glorious, powerful sound seemed capable of expanding even the expansive vastness of ground and stars. It was thrilling: I was glad to return.

The final line of Frost’s poem shows how the road “not taken” is often a story constructed after the fact, something that offers consolation in the absence of satisfaction. He writes “That has made all the difference,” exposing as self-deception, rather than empowerment, the arbitrary validation of something that seemed equal. What does make all the difference is the spirit in which you approach a performance. Even though a festival offers more opportunities, the basic choice to be present (or not) always remains. Being present at a space with a willingness to experience art requires being open to the invitations of the crowd that create excitement around you that you can appropriate until it gives you new ears to appreciate a sound that you would otherwise ignore. Being present allows you to ignore an empty room and simply hear the vast potential embodied in three talented musicians. Being present can even reveal the amount of music made between venues—people busking for change playing guitar, a person at the piano plinking out Chopsticks, music pounding out from the Union. Magic swirls around, beauty is always within our grasp—the key to being an active audience to it comes through paying attention.

Focusing on the choice of how, not what, you attend ensures that you will be available to witness what is arguably the best part of live performances: the unknown. Live performance reminds us that sometimes things go better than expected, that the temporary marriage of audience and performer and venue lead to something far greater than the sum of the various parts. Attending a performance in order to engage with the unknown and unknowable, rather than simply witnessing the expected through the phone you film it through, invites you to truly share in its magic.

Ultimately, the best way to find the road not taken is by venturing into these kinds of unknown spaces. In these cases, preserving the unknown means simply living into it and encountering it openly, rather than trying to archive it or explain it to those nearby. Just live it. And, as you practice how to be present at the show you’ve chosen without worrying about what else is going on, especially during Mission Creek Festival, keep some of the following considerations in mind:

• What are elements of this show in this venue that are unique to this circumstance?
• What are people in the audience focused on? What are they overlooking?
• What aspects of the crowd, or the performance, invite you to become more immersed in this environment? What factors push you away, or make you restless?
• What parts of the performance seem most powerful, or at least potentially compelling? Is it possible to focus on this in a way that overpowers distractions?
• How does it feel to focus on one part of the room and really pay attention to it?
• As you become more deeply engaged with the performance, can you start to anticipate how the performance will affect the crowd?