OBSERVER: Theatre Etiquette
A quietness descends as the lights fade. The audience settles in anticipation of what’s to come. There is the ubiquitous ‘welcome to country’ along with a reminder to turn off one’s mobile phone.
But many people still observe this overture as something to be ignored, something that doesn’t apply to them, as something that’s an imposition on their individual right to expression. I despair.
It seems an ironic conundrum to me. Theatre is a forum for social connection where we collaborate as a community to listen to ideas, admire spectacles and witness artists plying their trade.
As one, the audience almost breathe with unity to the heightened passion, the comic absurdity, the artfulness of a soliloquy well expressed.
You can feel the electricity. Great performances have the capacity of bringing us together as one.
Performers strive to achieve that sense of holding the audience in the palm of their hands and shaping a collective response. It’s a form of social media where everyone feels and responds with unanimity.
But now, within the digital age, we have social media of another kind which demands we respond, not collectively, but individually to the feeds that come through randomly interrupting that collective consciousness.
The member of the audience I sat next to the other night texted on her phone during the performance. She had it on silent. The screen was darkened. But it was still on. This is disturbing behaviour.
Some seem to think they cannot afford to be out of touch for an instant lest some feed comes through that is vital to their existence.
More often than not, those feeds are trite. If something is pending that takes precedence which requires one to be on the phone, then you shouldn’t be attending the theatre.
Feeling the need to text fails to recognise that there is a more immediate form of communication taking place around you.
The buzz should be in the house amongst those attending and not something electronically generated by the technology in your pocket.
Curiously, digital media is not necessarily social media. It is misnamed. There are times when it is completely anti-social. We have one of the greatest forms of social media when an audience comes together.
We help build and shape a collective understanding through performances given by artists plying their trade, through authors sharing their writing and actors imparting their interpretation of those words.
Would it be too much to take seriously the appeal of theatres to turn off your phone and be a genuine part of the real society that surrounds you rather than paying obeisance to the contrived society one finds on a digital platform?
That digital upload you think takes precedence will still be there tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.
That moment in the theatre may well be unrepeatable and exceptional because of a convergence of forces – the audience, the artists, the playwright. Let’s get our priorities right, folks.
David McLean