#audience behavior

Let’s call for better theatre etiquette without forgetting that not every disruption begins as disrespect, and that the strongest public response is usually the one that leaves room for facts, apology, and basic human dignity.

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So I’m going to review two shows together that have literally nothing in common. I went to see The Prom over Thanksgivings break with my parents and my uncle and I went to see The Cher Show musical tonight with my parents and cousin. I saw these shows over a month apart, I knew they wouldn’t have much in common, so why would I wait so long to review the first one to review them together? Because after I saw The Prom and knew we bought tickets for my Dad to see a Cher musical, I knew it would be the perfect opportunity to talk about a larger theater topic in general: how the audience can shape your experience of a show. In particular how audience expectations and behavior can influence your opinions of a show, even if you try not to let it. So first up, audience expectation. Normally I’m the one researching and suggesting shows and not my family, but they surprised me with tickets to see The Prom the day we were going to see it (they also surprised my uncle, who had an hour before we picked him up to go.) It was obvious that when they researched the show, they researched it poorly. My conservative parent thought it was going to be a parody show making fun of theater and celebrity culture. My liberal parent thought it was all about a lgbt love story. My uncle assumed it would be stereotypical “Broadway” because he literally knew nothing going in. Comparing this to The Cher Show, the expectations were totally different. My cousin had never heard of Cher but he’d seen jukebox musicals before. Everyone else was expecting the same thing in their heads when you picture a musical about Cher. One of these musicals met their expectations exactly and the other didn’t. My family at The Prom was a textbook case of how not to behave in the theater. My parents were complaining the entire show, during the scenes and the songs. The conservative one didn’t like the lgbt plot and the liberal one thought the lgbt love story would be the main plot not the subplot, and wasn’t happy that “they’re being used as a plot device rather than being treated like people”. My dad fell asleep and snored loudly for part of the show. My uncle took out his phone and texted with the loudest text noises ever. When we saw Cher they talked much less, except my mom sung along to some of the songs and got mad when she told me to sing along with her and didn’t, and my dad still fell asleep for part of it. Now all of these things affect you as an audience member. I literally missed parts of the show because they were talking too loudly in my ears. And it was harder to focus on the parts I did catch. I tried not to let my frustration with my family affect my opinion of the show, but when people are literally complaining non-stop during a thing it makes it seem more disjointed than it actually is, and puts you in a negative mood. Them singing during the show was annoying, but because they weren’t singing during the dialogue and were saying that same things as what was on stage, it didn’t affect my ability to follow the story at all. Personally, I found The Prom to be decent despite their protests, but I couldn’t fully appreciate it when you had people talking pulling focus with my ears and a bright phone light shining in the corner of my vision. I really liked the meta-jokes, and performance wise the actor playing the gay performer and the actress playing the Chicago ensemble member were hilights. The scene where the lesbian high schooler sings on her webcam I can totally see becoming the new Waving Through A Window type song. The Cher Show was predictable with its music/plot, costumes that were as over the top as you’d expect, listening to a Cher impersonation for like 2 hours straight did start to get grating. If you are sensitive to light in any way: bright lights, drastic changes in light, flashing lights, strobe lights, this is not the show for you. Tl:dr, be polite to your fellow audience

“It’s well known by now that Americans have changed the way they watch TV.  People pull content from Hulu rather than have it pushed to us by CBS. DVRs allow for shifted viewing times and skipping ads. But those behaviors are just surface manifestations of a deeper transformation in modern media habits. Consumers are now, often unconsciously, sorting every media product—from podcasts to magazine stories to video—into three categories: intentional, interstitial, and invisible. The implications of these changes are huge, especially for the people who create what we watch.“