Offending the audience

The rules of play for the theatre audience have shifted dramatically over the past decade. Vast numbers of shows are now described using one of the two ‘i’ words, ‘interactive’ or ‘immersive’. The nature of engagement has changed, but have the rules of the more traditional auditorium been left behind?

Last week I went to see Edward Bond’s ‘Saved’ at the Lyric Hammersmith. Having studied the text in various drama courses I was looking forward to finally seeing the play on stage. Ironically this experience was ruined by the school groups that outnumbered other theatre-goers in the audience. Granted it was possibly my own fault for going to a matinee, but do we really want it to be the case that certain performances are avoided due to the auditorium being filled with ‘youths’?

Having suffered through the rustling, eating of McDonalds, kicking and talking about how “that girl looks like your mate” I am now wondering about the rules of theatre-going, and the teaching of theatre in our schools.

Talking in the meant-to-be-tense silences, talking through scene changes and eating fast food whilst a play is going on. Are these signs of a generation bred on too much TV and not enough theatre, or of a theatre that hasn’t caught up with the times?

As I tutted to myself about the lack of respect shown, both for performers and other audience members, I found my thoughts drifting to the Elizabethan theatre, a raucous place of entertainment and drunken debauchery where silence certainly wasn’t a code of conduct. As times changed so did theatre audiences, until it became a much more solitary place – a temple for the appreciation of art. It is such an attitude that has influenced the view of theatre as an elitist, inaccessible, medium.

Now we come full circle back to where we started, with the theatre that tries to open itself up and break rigid barriers between audience and art. But eating McDonalds in a performance by Punchdrunk, say, would still be annoying wouldn’t it?

Do the established conventions of theatre going mark it out as elitist no matter what format it’s in? Are these conventions necessary or will they gradually be eradicated in order to ensure theatre moves with the times and isn’t itself eradicated?

The young people in the audience of Saved seemed to be yearning for direct contact with the performance, for the play itself to reach out and grab them. What’s interesting is that the play is by no means staid and is still highly relevant to the times we’re living in. The problem is, the characters and much of the behaviour portrayed can very often now be found on TV. Does theatre need to radically alter itself, becoming almost entirely immersive, in order to accommodate a younger generation? Or, does the teaching of theatre need to be reassessed and the ‘rules’ of engagement taught?

How can theatre engage a younger generation bred on fast paced TV, MTV editing and a highly stimulating environment where nothing stops even for a second. What does sitting quietly in the dark have to offer?