Arts groups battle for weekend audiences

With banners, placards and home-made ticket booths, performing arts groups are pulling out all the stops this week to ensure their portion of a limited auidence for a weekend when over a half a dozen shows will play on campus. And although the groups offer differing forms of entertainment, from classical music to improvisational comedy, performers said this week they are not worried about compteing for thier audience share on Parents' Weekend. Without a Net member Brad Krumholz, who was selling tickets on the Walk earlier this week, said that student performances often overlap each other. "That's always been the case," said the College senior. "You kind of get used to the fact that there will be other shows." And College junior Ari Jacobson, who is performing in the Theatre Arts Program One-Acts this weekend, said he was confident that students who were really interested in seeing shows would find a way to schedule their time. But other students said they were upset that they would not be able to see all the shows they wanted to because of show scheduling. "Sometimes it gets to be that for two weekends in a row you're seeing three shows in a weekend," College junior Lisa Wachtell said last night. "I know that I've missed a lot of performances because I just haven't had the time." Several performers said that since their groups all need a rehearsal period of several months at the beginning of the year, the productions always pile up at the end of the semester. Financial managers said they hoped that parents could make up for an audience that may be spread thin because of the number of shows. "Everyone has two parents and a sister that they have to do something with," the College senior said. Performers noted that despite the large number of conflicting shows, most consistently draw a constant portion of their audience from the arts community. "The theater people tend to know what's going on, and also they are more interested," said Krumholz. But Penn Players member David Simon said that the overlap of shows prevents perfromers from going to all the shows they want to. "It's annoying to be in a show and not be able to go see your friends," he said.

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