The role of the audience
Saturday, April 5th, 2008Is it time to consider classes in how to be part of an audience? Mobile phone incidents - especially involving an exploding Richard Griffiths - are now part of theatre history. Following jokey newspaper features, blog fury and huffing stalls inhabitants (some of whom, enjoying the moral high ground, make more noise than the original tinny rendering of The William Tell Overture) such incidents are fewer.
It is the texters who now need to be “civilised”. Little lights go on down the row and intensity is diluted, partly because it is clear that we are not all sharing the same moment. I’m not talking about a desperate search for distraction when the activity on stage has become tedious, which might at least be understandable. During a recent performance of the riveting production of Dealer’s Choice at Trafalgar Studios two people simply could not stop fiddling with their twinkling mobiles. They seemed to need to have something else to do. Has multi-tasking (or half concentration) become ubiquitous?
I realise I’m on dangerous ground here. An experienced middle class theatre-goer, I can’t help wishing for utter commitment from everyone else. But I don’t want theatre-going to be an exclusive activity either. It would be nice if people could be persuaded to put aside technology for long enough to discover the full enjoyment of sharing a theatre visit with a roomful of strangers. Perhaps - just possibly - those texters were telling their mates what a great time they were having. Perhaps they were accessing office memos (it was a matinee). Perhaps they simply didn’t realise this was meant to be a shared activity, that the role of audience member is vital and quite different when the players are there before you as opposed to on a screen.
Any actor will tell you that an audience can be read, smelt, sussed in the first seconds of a performance. In our darkened ranks we are individuals, but we also make a whole, one thing. Which brings me to the misguided experiment taking place at the moment at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Sitting on the theatre’s roof terrace and observing a drama unfold in the offices opposite, the audience is fragmented, individuals isolated by the necessity to wear ear phones. A joke cannot be shared, tension is reduced. The collective animal is neutered.
By contrast, when the Globe season opens later this month it will be impossible for spectators not to be part of the group. The physical circumstances - everyone can see everyone else in the same light; if it rains several hundred people are united in coping - contribute to a sense of cameraderie. While this obviously can’t be replicated everywhere, something might be learned from the fact that this audience cannot be passive recipients, that being in this place at this time with these particular people makes every visit unique.