Headline: The Audience

 Arts and Ideas

Fall, 2001 issue

Audience

After attending a performance, most audience members wander off into the night discussing the relative merits of the show, comparing it to others they've seen and what was the part they liked the least and so on.

Meanwhile, back at the theater, the producers and performers and staff are discussing the relative merits of the audience, comparing it to others and discussing who they liked the least and so on.

Discussions about the key elements of the performing arts often omit the audience, taking it for granted as a tabula rasa to be manipulated via lights, sound, performance, and composition. In reality, every audience has its own personality which touches the working lives of everyone associated with a production.

Off to the Market

In part, audiences represent money. They buy tickets, and many also donate money to help keep arts organizations afloat. However lofty the ideals of those presenting the arts, it's always somebody's role to act the businessperson and see the audience filing in as a promenade of dollar signs. Dollar signs that may enjoy themselves and encourage other dollar signs to come. If nobody comes, the organization fails financially (as well as functionally).

Presenting arts programming that is new and original is, let's face it, bad business. People are suspicious and nervous about the unknown, so it's hard to get people to come. Better to do Neil Simon plays, CATS, and the Nutcracker.

So the audience that comes to new and exciting stuff is a measure of one or more of the following:

1) The reputation of the presenter to bring in great shows

2) Good marketing

3) Excellent educational outreach that makes the programming less mysterious

The more that audiences rely on item number one, the reputation of the presenter, the less the presenter has to spend on advertising, and it can divert those funds into more expensive shows or lowering ticket prices. Most people would prefer that their ticket money went to artists, not advertising.

Good Housekeeping

"I hope if you ever have a child it's stillborn and nobody helps you!"

It sounds like something twenty pages from the end of an overwrought Southern drama, but in reality it was what an irate woman actually screamed at a student House Manager outside of the Mainstage Theater at UCSC.

When patrons arrive late for a show, a House Manager is typically stationed outside to let them in at appropriate breaks in the program. These breaks are set by the producers of the event, not the House Managers, but try telling that to a late SBM (Show Business Mother) who is missing her son's dance performance. This is the arts equivalent to the Little League Parent (LLP).

House Managers, working with their ushers, are the main interface between the audience and the event. They often bear the brunt of audience frustration, whatever the cause. Part security guard, part diplomat, part nurse, and part sheepherder, the House Manager is the one expected to finally do something about the man snoring in section 2, the parent with the noisy baby, and the guy with the rainbow stocking cap who keeps trying to talk his way into the sold out show, claiming to be the brother of the sax player.

"There is no sax player in this performance sir. It's an early music ensemble."

"Oh, I meant the drummer."

They deal with car alarms, parking shortages, spouses of performers who are irate because nobody saved them a VIP seat in front, people who bought tickets for one performance but came to another, people taking photos of the show (SBM's, often) altercations between patrons ("I need this seat for my coat, it's wet, dammit!"), and the kid who ran out of the theater and barfed in the lobby exactly one minute before intermission.

They take the fall for mistakes made by others, too, like the ticket office that may accidentally print two tickets for the same seat, or the lighting designer who put a light where it's shining right in somebody's eyes, or the sound control console that has been placed across 8 previously sold seats.

All this to say that House Managers and ushers have a difficult job, partly due to difficult people. Veteran House Manager Jenni Meyer claims that it takes ten especially nice people to make up for one mean one. House Managers often enjoy taking care of things, but grow weary of the public in general, which explains who so many of them go on to satisfying careers as lighthouse keepers.

Peer Group

The House Manager can only protect you so much from annoying people seated around you. Whether you find audiences a necessary evil to make an event economically feasible or a great opportunity to enjoy the sense of community that we're supposedly all craving in this day and age, you have to admit that sometimes you are sharing the room with people you'd rather stayed home: the woman whose nose whistles when she breathes, the person who laughs just a little too loud, and the man behind you who is covertly eating a big stinky burrito.

It must take some real effort to reach the level of self-absorption that allows people to feel that they can in good conscience talk to each other throughout a live performance. This habit seems to correlate closely to those who have yet to master the whisper. These could be the same people we've seen at the movie theater who not only leave their cell phone ringers on, but actually answer them.

Often people don't realize they're doing something annoying, and they could benefit from your notifying them that they have been tapping their foot against your seat all night, or that a single nose blow is superior to an hour of sniffling. Unwrapping a cough drop wrapper slowly makes more noise than any cough ever could. An occasional cough you can hear and dismiss; but listening to the slow unwrapping of a cough drop creates a little story of its own, and you can't help but follow it: Will they get it open before they cough? How long will it take? Once it's in their mouth, will they click it against their teeth? Will it suddenly smell like cherry in here?

Scents are another good way for audience members to torture their neighbor. People who like to wear perfumes often spend the day adding to the dosage as they become acclimated to ever higher levels, finally topping off just before entering the theater. It may smell mild and pleasant to them, but all around them eyes are watering and programs are fanning.

Monkeys in the zoo

If you work with performers long enough you hear a lot of interesting stories about adventures with audience members, ranging from the drunk heckler at the modern dance concert demanding "more leg" to people who were actually hauled off by police during the show.

Looking out to see the reviewer, or worse, Mom, reading the program or doing their nails during the show is tough, and it's a wee bit difficult to concentrate on your performance when a large group in the audience is wearing flashing buttons supplied by the conference they just attended, but it has happened. "Lighting the future of our industry," they read, flashing at slightly different speeds so that they form random yet maddening patterns.

Performers will often sum up the crowd before intermission. "Tough crowd," they might say, or "Great audience!" These summations aren't always measured by the applause, but by the sensation that the audience is really with them, understanding what they're trying to say. It is a genuine pleasure for them to work for such an audience. Other audiences sit with their arms crossed, practically daring the performers to do well. "You probably suck, but I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself," they seem to say. The performers will of course do their best, but in reality you get a better show when you are encouraging to those on stage. When the energy at a show is a two-way street, when the audience and the performers push one another to new heights, the ideal of live performance is being reached, and everyone involved may remember that one special night for the rest of their lives.