Annoying audience members in the theatre

[beverleybass]

Does anybody else ALWAYS seem to have seats right by the worst people in the theatre. I must just be unlucky.

This year saw Come From Away and was directly behind 3 women who kept chatting all the way through, including during really emotional and key moments and solos. Someone tapped them on the shoulder and told them to shush in the end which improved things slightly.

I also saw Cinderella and more chatters as well phones coming out constantly with their shining lights.

What is the point spending all that money on tickets to look at your phone or chat to people??

Anyway saw Mamma Mia as a birthday treat today and it was honestly the worst of the lot. People on my row playing musical chairs, people arriving up to fifteen mins late (and still being let in) the man to the left of me kept singing along with the songs, the people in front chatting and constantly zipping/unzipping bags and rustling noisy bags of snacks.

How hard is it to sit still and be quiet

I went to see Choir of Man recently- it was a disaster- this brother & sister didn’t not stop talking (loudly) the ENTIRE performance. The man next to me had stern words with them in an assertive yet reasonable way - I was impressed. I thought they have to stop now - they didn’t - at all. Other people asked them to stop - their dad & other brother who they were also with got up and moved away from them !!!!!! At one point in the show it was very emotional & one cast member tells his story of his dad dying during covid then sings a really emotional song - the eejits we’re laughing - it was at this point I turned around & said they were ruining the experience for everyone & told them to be respectful.

At the end of the show, their dad & brother returned - they delightful culprits ended up calling my sister a ‘c£^t’ and poured red wine on my beige coat. My sister said to their unassuming dad that she feels sorry for him. He looked utterly ashamed.

My mum also sings throughout performances at both the theatre & cinema if songs come on - I hate it & feel re uptight to the point I will no longer take her which is a shame. I really worry what everyone else around is thinking. I tell her to be quiet which lasts for about a minute then starts up again.

@Kite22

YANBU at all. There was a thread on here recently about a woman who had gone to the paper to complain about been asked to leave the theatre after ignoring requests to sit still and stay quiet at a performance of Bat out of Hell.

I think some of it is to do with all the celebrity shows and the 'find a star' type shows (Pop Idol, X Factor, etc) where the audiences are encouraged to whoop and cheer and scream when someone they recognise comes on and so forth. Then they book a show in the theatre and some don't even realise what is wrong with that behaviour - they seem to think that is 'normal'.

It has become so much more common to have people not knowing how to behave in the theatre over the last 10 years or so.

Gogglebox as well? I don't understand why people want to watch other people talking through tv programmes. Hate it when I'm watching something with the other half and he doesn't have the knack of waiting until adverts or talking when there's no dialogue.

I was a cinema usher back in the 90's and always chucked people out for throwing things, disturbing others, etc. There is a need for them in cinema and if I was a theatre one now, they'd be thrown out. Don't understand why bringing lots of food in with you is allowed either.

[quote EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]She put this to us differently: we all know that in Shakespeare's time, audience demographic and behaviour were very different

Interesting. Would you say that Andrew Dickson's account is misleading?

Spectators are likely to have been predominantly male, particularly among the groundlings, though prostitutes seem to have been numerous, as were cutpurses. Food and drink were on offer – apples and oranges, hazelnuts and gingerbread – as were copious quantities of ale.

www.historyextra.com/period/elizabethan/at-the-playhouse-watching-shakespeares-plays-in-elizabethan-england/

Or this that I read a while back and found very disturbing with its account of the kidnapping of children (boys) and their forced labour in theatre productions?

Children's troupes were often forced into performances with pedophilic overtones in seedy semi-dark theatres that attracted predominantly male audiences, according to the researcher.

"The playwright Thomas Middleton, for example, described one children's company as a 'nest of boys able to ravish a man,'" said van Es.

www.livescience.com/37570-kids-forced-to-act-shakespeares-england.html[/quote]
It's exactly the point I was making actually - theatres were spaces where behaviour was extremely mixed (including this much darker stuff) and not controlled by 'etiquette' in any way at all - that's a much more recent phenomenon.

@Lavagirl

Theatre is my line of work. A few years ago I went to a presentation by a woman whose job it is to analyse audiences. She put this to us differently: we all know that in Shakespeare's time, audience demographic and behaviour were very different - everyone went, and everyone stood and walked around, threw rotten fruit at the shit bits, talked, had sex, basically did whatever they wanted, much like we do at home in front of the tv. At some point in history, the people at the upper echelons of society decided that they wanted theatres for themselves, and dreamed up various ways of actively excluding commoners. The most effective way of doing that was to plunge shows into darkness and impose silence on everyone. It worked a treat. To this day, so much time and energy goes into trying to democratise the theatre experience, to attract a wide and representative audience instead of the moneyed few. We have to prove this in order for it to continue to be funded with public money. So whilst I agree that there's a limit to how much distraction feels ok to us as individuals who've parted with cash, I generally try to enjoy the experience of theatre as something that involves lots of other people and 'lean in' to the stuff that comes with that.

Except that’s not what happened. The first big shift was when, in Shakespeare’s day, theatre began to shift from outdoor daylight to indoor, candle-lit spaces, which allowed playwrights to experiment with using darkness vs light for dramatic effect onstage — but the audience was still lit up throughout the 17th and 18thc because people socialised, or went to the theatre to be seen. The real shift to the dark auditorium was with the invention of gaslight and the development of naturalism in the 19thc — the idea that the audience sat in silence and darkness really only got going then. And it’s not static now — immersive theatre from companies like Punchdrunk, where you’re walking around in a non-theatre space interacting with actors, is huge.

I watched Dave Gorman's tour when it was in Liverpool. Latecomers were allowed in at a predetermined point in the show and had the piss taken out of them via the powerpoint slides as they took their seats. It was hilarious.

They never got to hear the elephant joke either...

Suckers.

@DdraigGoch

I watched Dave Gorman's tour when it was in Liverpool. Latecomers were allowed in at a predetermined point in the show and had the piss taken out of them via the powerpoint slides as they took their seats. It was hilarious.

They never got to hear the elephant joke either...

Suckers.

Omg, the elephant joke 🤣. So good, thanks for reminding me!

Though my memory isn't as good as I thought, wrong large African mammal - Google tells me it was a giraffe joke

Haha, my memory is so unreliable that I thought I must have been misremembering the joke. Giraffe does make more sense though...

Years ago I saw Gregory Porter in a small, intimate venue in Glasgow before he hit the big time. It was cabaret seating with drinks at our tables and 2 men had obviously just rolled in for a few beers, not necessarily for the entertainment.

A very feisty woman interupted their incessant chatter by poking one on the shoulder

"Is your name Gregory Porter? Naw, well shut the f**k up cos ah paid good money tae hear Gregory Porter, no yoos too!" Worked a treat!

Is your name Gregory Porter? Naw, well shut the f**k up cos ah paid good money tae hear Gregory Porter, no yoos too!" Worked a treat!
🤣This is brilliant, a good way to put gabbing gobshites in their place lol

[quote TizerorFizz]@Meandthesky
I’m with you over latecomers too. The Royal Opera House won’t let you in if the performance has started. Their ticket prices are sky high and standards are maintained. Elsewhere disturbing others is seen as ok.[/quote]
I went to a screening of an opera from the ROH recently. Three rows back in the cinema and to one side were a couple who ate crisps and sweets with accompanying rustling throughout the first act. The couple next to me were not happy and we had a mutter together about it. Annoying as it was, the screening was still fabulous and it was much cheaper seeing the opera at the cinema than Covent Garden prices.

My daughter in her 20s and I were sat next to this woman and her sugar daddy thy were over 60 he had his hand up her skirt most of the first half of the show and she giggled away ,kissing and touching each other up,I made sure she knew we knew what they were doing I said to her fgs go and get a room somewhere,a young lad behind us said can you please stop its very distracting ,they left in interval and didn't return

I don’t go to the cinema because of this, sometimes I say something but the whole experience of having to be confrontational or putting up with it ruins any sense of pleasure which ever I choose. The theatre feels even worse, as it’s so expensive you’d think it would be better because it’s a bigger treat but if anything it’s worse.

Also had an experience of people being horrendously drunk at moulin rouge. When we spoke to the ushers they simply shrugged

The manager didnt care. We were offered cheap tickets because the first experience was so bad and left at the interval of the second because we were again sat in the vicinity of completely bladdered hen parties

It's a shame but it seems the market they are going for is drunk groups of women, so don't have much qualms about selling much more alcohol then other places I've seen, and are much more lenient on behaviour

If this happens to me I start by looking at them, whilst frowning. If that doesn’t work I ask them politely to be quiet as we can’t hear the performance. It does usually work!

At some point in history, the people at the upper echelons of society decided that they wanted theatres for themselves, and dreamed up various ways of actively excluding commoners.

I’m not sure if you meant this but your post seems to suggest it’s only “commoners” who interrupt others theatre experiences today. This is certainly NOT the case in my experience.

I’m not sure if you meant this but your post seems to suggest it’s only “commoners” who interrupt others theatre experiences today. This is certainly NOT the case in my experience.

I suppose most of us are commoners tbh.

War Horse, sat in the front row with a father/daughter sat behind us. She translated the whole dialogue through the first half to her non English speaking father. Didn’t stop despite glares from lots of surrounding people. At the interval I politely asked her to stop as we had paid good money to hear the show and not her. She said “my dad cannot understand it”, “not our problem, not acceptable and why would you bring him to a show he couldn’t understand. Be quiet!” Lots of ‘hear, hear’ back up from other audience members and it did the trick 👍

I paid a small fortune for ballet tickets. Front Stalls in the middle.

Couple next to me 15 mins arrived late. Massive rustling shopping bags that didn't really fit by the seats. Huge crinkly down jackets they unzipped, had nowhere to put. The the jumpers had to come off, also loudly, obscuring the vision of the people behind. This was all while holding open cups of water which had to be passed between each other with a quick "hold this, darling, I am just going to take my jumper off".

Finally settled, I came the mobile phones. Quick text to someone. Quick scroll of Facebook.

Then a quick conversation about how the shopping bags and coats and jumpers were not in the right place. More rustling.

I paid £150 for tickets. So did they, I presume. The orchestra and ballet dancers were exquisite.

It's not the funking telly!!!!

I spotted another seat and say there after interval.

Oh god this drives me nuts. My mum is one of these people and I actively avoid going to any performances with her. We were at the cinema a couple of weeks ago because I couldn't get out of it and I thought I was going to die of embarrassment. The worst of it... It's only a 19 seat cinema.

A very quiet man I know took his dgc to an open air concert as their dm was playing her instrument.. Family behind sat playing cards loudly on the grass!! He asked them nicely to keep it down.. Actually got louder.. At the end he asked them if they would be attending next year. The df said he didn't know. My friend offered up his phone number and asked they call him because if they were he would bloody well just stay home!!

Strangely when I went to see The Vagina Monologues with a group of friends from work, where you might expect to see groups of drunk women, there weren’t any. Well there were groups of women, but none that were drunk, not that you would notice anyway.

YANBU although my local theatres are quick to stop people using their phones or spoiling the performance. They shouldn’t need policing though.

@S0upertrooper

Years ago I saw Gregory Porter in a small, intimate venue in Glasgow before he hit the big time. It was cabaret seating with drinks at our tables and 2 men had obviously just rolled in for a few beers, not necessarily for the entertainment.

A very feisty woman interupted their incessant chatter by poking one on the shoulder

"Is your name Gregory Porter? Naw, well shut the f**k up cos ah paid good money tae hear Gregory Porter, no yoos too!" Worked a treat!

I love this! I was at a concert in a small intimate venue a couple of years ago and a couple near me never shut up. I just wondered why they bothered to attend. Fortunately they disappeared at the interval and didn't return.

I have a friend that sings along at any opportunity she gets. Worse, she attempts to harmonise so her voice really stands out. She’s also an over-laugher. Go to see a comedian and she shrieks with laughter at every line, funny or not, and will have tears running down her face.