Why We Don’t Use Microphones

Rags To Riches theatre for young audiences does not use electronic supplementation in performance because Theatre is supposed to be a live, spoken word, acoustic art form. In this day and age, adults use microphones and amplifiers to shout over the noise that young people make.

Theatre is supposed to be one of the ways that we are taught to listen and it is to that end that we strive. There is a certain immeasurable something that happens when a whole group of people in an audience are listening to actors who know how to resonate on a stage. The shared resonation between actor and audience is of primal importance. We are certain that it is an important something that we are not allowing our young people to experience.

If you are coming to a Rags To Riches performance or we are coming to your facility, please prepare any young people by telling them that this will be an experience in which they will be asked to participate. Participation will include any of the environmental cues that the audience will be taught prior to the show. Also included in this process is listening in those times that we are not actively participating. We hope to share the acoustic, live performance with our audience. We refuse to shout it at them through an amplified system.