A Snake in the Grass

My colleagues and I writhed in our seats. Muscles tightened, we coiled, ready to strike. 

Hisses of laughter, muttered rejection and arrogant murmurs twitched through the small gathering.

In years past, the appreciation of a professional performance has been undeniable - students hanging onto every word of the Bard, impressed even with themselves that some semblance of Macbeth’s vaulting ambition had lingered in their memory. They’d been in absolute awe of the actors who could insight such reverence and clear understanding. 

Yet, where once they had sat transfixed, this time students could not set their gaze. 

Like sensing a snake in the grass, they weren’t at ease. They couldn’t move beyond the danger of having to give in, to allow the performance to fully constrict them.

But was it the discomfort of a room of a hundred sixteen year olds, ill experienced or ill equipped to be a live audience, that lurked in the bushes? Or have audiences actually changed altogether? Is live theatre harder to watch than ever or have we simply lost the will?

We all know that Shakespeare can be challenging to grasp, even for the most mature of audiences, which is precisely why Bell Shakespeare’s travelling company narrows his plays down to a one hour show of key moments, analysed in humorous and ‘teen friendly’ ways. 

It’s clever. And very useful for teachers. 

But after my experience this week, I wonder if the next generation have lost the ability to give their full, uninterrupted attention to anything for more than a few minutes…or as long as a TikTok video.

It’s fair to say, though, that there have always been rude audience members.

In community theatre we often cater to the elderly. There’s always that one old guy who falls asleep in the front row, the couple who relay the dialogue to each other because one refuses to wear a hearing aid or the weird dudes who call out or laugh at highly inappropriate, not funny, verging on traumatic, serious moments to ward off their own emotional discomfort.

But I have seen an undulation. A slippery, slithering towards cynicism, sarcasm and a stubbornness that could change audiences forever. 

In London’s West End recently, Cynthia Erivo, arguably one of the world’s best talents at the moment, stopped the entire performance of Dracula to berate an audience member who was filming her with a phone.

Actress Lesley Manville recently spoke out against audiences filming the curtain call, claiming it is disrespectful and distracting to actors, and urging audiences to let performances “live in their souls” rather than becoming a document of their own existence.

Phones and the desire to share every experience on social media certainly have strangled some of the joy out of audience engagement. But I think it may go deeper than that.

There is a belligerence. That if audiences have paid good money for their ticket, they somehow have ‘rights’ to the performance.

I’ve experienced this first hand, particularly during a moment of audience participation and interaction. As Sister Amnesia in Nunsense, I had to conduct a game with audiences. Semi-scripted, it was both frightening and exhilarating to see how audiences would react and respond each night, and I would have to improvise as I went. 

Most people, who probably hated being picked on, were good sports and had a laugh at the Catholic jokes. 

But I do recall one woman who simply volunteered in order to trip me up. Her droll responses mocked the pleasure of the moment as she seemed to want to prove me wrong. 

Her venom wasn’t toxic and had no real effect, but her fangs had certainly been out, hoping that I would falter and she would somehow become a star for a brief moment, having broken the fourth wall and bitten into an actor’s ego. 

This was similar to the behaviour of the few teen taipans who attempted to poison Shakespeare for all. They simply didn’t seem to care that the actors could hear them talking or see them sniggering or that their teachers had gone to a lot of trouble to bring this incredible encounter to them. 

And I guess it is to be somewhat expected of those so young who probably haven’t been a live audience to much more than a rowdy football match. 

But it’s still not good enough. 

I think we have become less apologetic for our behaviour outside of our own homes. Post-Covid, we expect to be entertained, but we don’t realise the part we play as an audience in that entertainment. 

We have become selfish. 

Self is everything. And self is hard to do in a dark room with a lit stage and hundreds of other selves.

Exposure and experience are definitely key to learning to place ‘self’ in a seat, telling it to shut up, shut off and simply watch.

And it, unfortunately, has to be a very stoic performer who is willing to tolerate the serpent in order to catch the rat.

As a teacher, watching those students unable to settle their scales for a bit of simplified Shakespeare was infuriating.

But we must not allow the viper that is the ‘culture of me’ to poison theatre experiences for all. 

As mortified and frustrated as us teachers were, the actors still performed. They still soliloquized. They still monologued. They still became witches and envisioned daggers and feared ghosts. They still made us laugh and made us think and made us question what it is to be human.

And in the end, for the most part, they still caught their prey. 

Despite the selfish snake in the grass.