O, malignant and ill-boding audience!

Theatre actors sure do have it hard.  They spend weeks preparing for a role, they suffer through tech (including the stinging barbs of stage managers who would dare to suggest that actors can’t find their light), and when all of that is done they have to suffer through the rude behaviour of the average audience.

In the last several months there have been several high-profile examples of actors getting annoyed at audience behaviour: from extravagant outbursts by Patti Lupone, to chiding diatribes from Daniel Radcliffe (lo, a true stage veteran), to debates over the use of Twitter mid-spectacle, to reprimands for sending text messages mid-show (blame Patti Lupone for this one, too… which makes me wonder if the problem isn’t really just Ms. Lupone…), there are tales all over the internets that bemoan the lack of etiquette of theatre patrons.

Hey. Actors. Suck it up.

Think back 400 years, to Elizabethan times, when theatre ticket prices were about on par with cinema ticket prices now; when a whopping 10% or so of the London population attended the theatre regularly.  In those times, vendors sold food and drink to the crowd during the show (although I believe the use of hot dog cannons was prohibited).  Patrons used the theatre as a social gathering place, often paying almost no attention to the work on-stage because they wanted to catch up on the latest plague gossip from fellow audience members. Most theatre took place in the afternoon (because no artificial light was used, and the theatre had no roof over the stage), so on top of all this, patrons wore hats and jostled for good views of the stage.  Actors were occasionally jeered or had things thrown at them.  Although accounts of Elizabethan audiences are likely embellished, it is safe to say that today’s actors have it pretty damned good, by comparison.

So. Why the snobbery?  My brain cannot reconcile the fact that the theatre community moans and wails about the decline in audience numbers while simultaneously waxing sanctimonius about the lack of audience members who exhibit ‘proper’ behaviour. Here’s why.

When a production is doing well, and has good word-of-mouth (which is forever and always the best form of publicity), it attracts patrons of immense, incalculable value: those who do not normally attend the theatre. These are the only people, by definiton, that can grow the theatrical audience.  And these patrons, in large part, are unaware of theatrical etiquette.  How dare we expect them to know all the rules?  If these patrons behave ‘badly’ in the theatre, they do it out of naivete, not malice.  To respond to this innocence with punishment is to drive them away again, in the same way that one bad experience in a retail store is enough to make a customer vow to never return.

Some stage actors have a ridiculous sense of entitlement when it comes to audience behaviour.  I don’t know any experienced stage actor who doesn’t have several stories about distracting audience antics; however, I get incensed at actors who scoff or rail against that behaviour as being unconscionable. Are you annoyed that the audience isn’t paying attention to you? Work harder. Your job is to make them pay attention. It is hard for me, sometimes, to keep from getting annoyed at audience distractions, but I am training myself to think that such occurences represent the behaviour of someone I want to see again in the audience.  For the umpteenth time on this blog, I reiterate: our job is to serve the audience… NOT the other way around.

There is a reality about changing audience demographics and audience behaviour that the theatre community tends to ignore in favor of reminiscences about the halcyon days before the invention of the Internet and the middle class.  An old piece of farm wisdom says that you can either cut a path through your field and then watch the cows make one of their own, or you can watch where your cows wander and then cut the path under them.  I think we do our art a tremendous disservice — rendering it inaccessible — by setting up a system where audience members feel they have to take a class on how to go to the theatre before they go to the theatre.  Just get them in the frickin’ door. Once they’re in, then, carefully choose your reaction to the odd text message, candy wrapper, or mumble from the crowd.

Let me finish with a nod to some folks who are Doing It Right.  Last week I saw a Fringe Festival production called “Countries Shaped Like Stars“, from Mi Casa Theatre.  These Ottawa artists created a delightful piece of theatre that not only makes you feel like you’re at home, in your own living room, but actually encourages and celebrates the kinds of fourth-wall-breaking behaviour that snob artists find unbearable. Any human being who walks into that show not knowing what “theatre” is about feels welcome, at home, tickled, and encouraged to come back; theatre snobs like me are reminded of how we get it all wrong. What a rare and delightful feat.  And although I didn’t experience it myself, I’m sure that the cast would have acknowledged a text-messaging audience member with a wink and a cookie instead of a crude removal at the hands of Patti Lupone.