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Audience Behaviour


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 @LinMM my point was the teachers didn’t intervene and wouldn’t have spoken to us unless my son had made a point of speaking to one of them. They can’t have failed to hear him ask them to sit still during the second act, it’s a tiny theatre and the staff were on the row behind the pupils. My son is a young adult and got the attention of some of the audience himself at the end of the show for speaking up - some positive comments for doing what others felt unable to do. 

 

Edited to add there are more boxes in this theatre( Theatre Royal Bury St Ed’s) than others so if taking a group with pupils known to be disruptive why not book one and staff sit them? 

Edited by Jane
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Last night, at Northern Ballet's Victoria, at Sadler's Wells, a woman (I think) in the centre of one of the front rows of the Second Circle seemed to be consulting her phone for quite a while, including the first pas de deux between Victoria and Albert - she was quite oblivious to the usher's attempts to get her to stop, or the fact that her screen was creating a pool of light which could be seen by ... whatever 90% of the capacity of the Second Circle is, I should think.  Really annoying :( 

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17 minutes ago, alison said:

Last night, at Northern Ballet's Victoria, at Sadler's Wells, a woman (I think) in the centre of one of the front rows of the Second Circle seemed to be consulting her phone for quite a while, including the first pas de deux between Victoria and Albert - she was quite oblivious to the usher's attempts to get her to stop, or the fact that her screen was creating a pool of light which could be seen by ... whatever 90% of the capacity of the Second Circle is, I should think.  Really annoying :( 

And selfish too the other audience members and cast. 

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2 hours ago, alison said:

 

Muntagirov was rather good, too ;) 

Standing in Stalls Circle, it was pretty noticeable to me that there were a lot of Osipova enthusiasts in the audience, at least at stalls level.

 

But a friend has told me that some Osipova fans in her vicinity did not consider Muntagirov merited a clap at any juncture.

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Surely paying members of the audience are free to express their approval or disapproval of a performance as they see fit? It's hardly a question of good or bad manners. Whether or not another member of the audience agrees with their reaction is irrelevant.

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On 28/03/2019 at 18:00, Douglas Allen said:

Surely paying members of the audience are free to express their approval or disapproval of a performance as they see fit? It's hardly a question of good or bad manners. Whether or not another member of the audience agrees with their reaction is irrelevant.

To clap only one person and ignore everybody else is downright rude in my opinion.

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Last night at the ROH during near the end of the first scene of Act III of R&J, at a particularly dramatic moment (just as Juliet was in the throes of deciding to leave to see the Friar) someone walked along the back of the Stalls Circle, presumably to an exit, making an almighty clunking sound with each step. I can appreciate some problem may have necessitated their leaving but you would think they would at least have tried to do it quietly.

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On 29/03/2019 at 01:43, capybara said:

But a friend has told me that some Osipova fans in her vicinity did not consider Muntagirov merited a clap at any juncture.

 

 

Ha ha ha! This is reminiscent of the highly partisan "claques" of audience members in the height of the Romantic ballet in Paris in the 19th Century - scuffles and fights between auduence members over the relative merits of their favoured dancers were not unknown 😉

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17 hours ago, Richard LH said:

Last night at the ROH during near the end of the first scene of Act III of R&J, at a particularly dramatic moment (just as Juliet was in the throes of deciding to leave to see the Friar) someone walked along the back of the Stalls Circle, presumably to an exit, making an almighty clunking sound with each step. I can appreciate some problem may have necessitated their leaving but you would think they would at least have tried to do it quietly.

I  also  hate it when people start piling out whilst the performers are still taking a well deserved bow. Then I refuse to move. I recall Lesley Garret once responding  with ' have you lot got a bus to catch'. I don't like the drink being taken into the auditorium either, someone left leaving a plastic glass in front of their seat, which I inadvertently crushed when I left.

But its good to vent and have a good moan.

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17 hours ago, Kate_N said:

 

 

Ha ha ha! This is reminiscent of the highly partisan "claques" of audience members in the height of the Romantic ballet in Paris in the 19th Century - scuffles and fights between auduence members over the relative merits of their favoured dancers were not unknown 😉

 

17 hours ago, Kate_N said:

 

 

Ha ha ha! This is reminiscent of the highly partisan "claques" of audience members in the height of the Romantic ballet in Paris in the 19th Century - scuffles and fights between auduence members over the relative merits of their favoured dancers were not unknown 😉

That sounds like my kind of performance, can we reinstate it.

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37 minutes ago, ninamargaret said:

I believe opera audiences in Italy can be pretty vocal in making their opinions known!

 

They were renowned for that in the days of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi.

I got a sense of that too when I last saw performances at the Bolshoi and Stanislavsky Theatres in Moscow.

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I remember seeing a piece of straight theatre (an Ostrovsky play) once on one of my visits to Moscow, just after the dissolution of the USSR - about 1993/4 I think. The leading lady (wearing a sash with Soviet medals) entered, and before starting her dialogue., walked diagonally downstage and took a bow, then walked back upstage (without turning her back on us), and started the scene.

 

Wonderful!

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On 29/03/2019 at 21:31, Richard LH said:

Last night at the ROH during near the end of the first scene of Act III of R&J, at a particularly dramatic moment (just as Juliet was in the throes of deciding to leave to see the Friar) someone walked along the back of the Stalls Circle, presumably to an exit, making an almighty clunking sound with each step. I can appreciate some problem may have necessitated their leaving but you would think they would at least have tried to do it quietly.

I was standing nearby and it was very loud and very distracting.  Today I was standing in the same place and a woman coughed loudly all the way through Act 2 of DonQ.  People complained to the usher, and I told him it was like being in a Victorian TB ward. She should have done the decent thing and left the auditorium.  

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5 hours ago, Sim said:

I was standing nearby and it was very loud and very distracting.  Today I was standing in the same place and a woman coughed loudly all the way through Act 2 of DonQ.  People complained to the usher, and I told him it was like being in a Victorian TB ward. She should have done the decent thing and left the auditorium.  

 

Yes the clunking was very distracting and seemed rather weird just at that moment. But at least it was over quickly, unlike  having to suffer someone coughing through a whole Act - particularly such a  beautiful one.  Every sympathy, Sim !

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A couple of days before making a rare trip to London to see 'Akhnaten' at the Coliseum I developed the worst cough I've had for decades. Despite equipping myself with cough mixture, lozenges and bottled water I was terrified I'd become That Awful Person Who Coughs All the Way Through. Mercifully, other than a minor spasm near the beginning I remained cough-free throughout the performance - only to make up for it at the hotel, where my seal-like barking caused the woman in the next room to knock on my door and ask if I needed help!

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The worst things I have seen:

 

Playing with a big phone just surfing facebook for a while during the kingdom of shades.

 

I would say it is not only rude but a crime.

 

Yes it happened last year at La Bayadere opening night with Nela/Osipova/Vadim cast at RoH. I was at Row A Amphitheater(sitting at Amphi for the shades and music!) The women sitting next to me clearly has zero interest in ballet. She took out her phone and random played the apps. I was so astonished that I did not know what to say. Two gentlemen behind me knocked her and told her stop after several minutes. To save some face, she did not turn it off immediately but continued for a minute then turned off... 

 

Then they confronted her and criticized her during the interval. She did not come back. This kind of behavior is not associated with age or race. I am holding a young friend card and the gentlemen behind us were minorities. It was just so... appalling...

 

Usually if you attend the opening night and sit in front row, you will sit next to art lovers. I don't know what happens that day... 

 

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Big disturbance mid-aria at this afternoon’s Berenice when a lady with a sides standing ticket was asked not to sit on the standing platform with her legs over the side towards the stage (difficult to explain unless you’re familiar with the set-up). She was very angry about it - I gather she claimed to have been told by the box office that there were stools available.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sounds like one of those cases where there’s no right answer.

 

I’m probably more willing than most to intervene when someone near me is misbehaving, but when there’s nothing I can do about it - and this would have been such an occasion - I’ve become quite good at ignoring even quite large disturbances. I’ve said it before here, but two incidents occurring quite close together helped me to this state: the first when I, very wrongly, found myself getting annoyed about paramedics dealing with an incident within the auditorium for the best part of an act; the other was when I - politely! - mentioned a loudly ticking watch during a piano recital and it turned out that its owner had an artificial limb, which caused the extra resonance. (She said no-one had ever noticed it before - I choose to take that as a compliment to my hearing rather than a subtle dig at my rudeness!)

 

I also try to bear in mind that reverent silence during a performance is a relatively recent phenomenon.

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32 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 a loudly ticking watch

 

At a recent performance of Romeo and Juliet I was standing next to someone with the loudest and most irritating watch I’ve ever heard. It didn’t help that they kept resting their head in their hands so the watch was basically tick-tocking in my ear the whole time. I have the hearing of a bat, though, so I put it down to that. 

On the other side of me was a girl who kept fiddling with her phone throughout. I don’t know if she was surreptitiously trying to take photos or film as she had it well hidden until all of a sudden it flashed! Then she got it out to check messages. I let it go the first time but the second time she got it out I reached for the phone and would have happily “confiscated” it if my reaction hadn’t made her quickly put it away. 

 

Other audible audience disruption doesn’t worry me so much but then I find it fairly easy to ignore; I know others don’t. There was a small child chattering away during another recent performance. I’d zoned the sound out until another audience member sitting many seats away from the child decided to shush them very loudly at a critical point in the ballet. I’m sure most of the auditorium heard it. It was that abrupt and loud reaction, rather than the ongoing sound of the child, that brought me right out of my reverie and completely ruined the moment. 

 

Do other audience members get annoyed by other audience members getting annoyed at other audience members? Or is it just me? 😤🤫😆 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Thalia said:

 Do other audience members get annoyed by other audience members getting annoyed at other audience members? Or is it just me? 😤🤫😆 

 

Not just you!

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36 minutes ago, Thalia said:

Do other audience members get annoyed by other audience members getting annoyed at other audience members? Or is it just me? 😤🤫😆 

 

 

 

I think that if you are unable to accurately throw somebody else's programme at them you should try not to end up startling even more people with your sudden outburst

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6 minutes ago, capybara said:

At yesterday's R&J matinee, the person sitting two away from me was taking photos throughout the performance. If they appear on Instagram I shall be tempted to call her out.

 

 

Several performances ago, when I had a stalls circle standing place towards the back I did see someone near the back of the stalls trying to take a phone pic and the usher spotted it pretty quickly, but the would be snapper was quite central in the row so it took what felt like ages for the usher to get their attention

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  • 3 months later...

Because of the prices (although the RB is catching up fast!) I'm watching The Bolshoi from an area of the ROH where I don't usually sit and which seems occupied by people who just HAVE to leave the moment the first curtain comes down. This is fair enough when one is on the end of a row and can do it surreptitiously but I can't get with all the pushing past which goes on around me.

OK - Spartacus is a long ballet, can overrun, and trains are calling. But Swan Lake and, especially, The Bright Stream are relatively short (only one interval), the latter finishing at least 10 minutes ahead of the website notification. And matinees - what's the rush? I don't like being 'required' to make way for people as I feel implicated in the discourtesy to the dancers. Indeed, such was the 'push' after one performance of The Bright Stream that I felt I had no alternative but to be swept out as well.

For me, sitting and applauding (and sometimes cheering) is part of the overall experience. I want to respect and acknowledge the dancers and there are occasions when I need a moment  to calm down or to reflect.  I feel that I have been deprived of that this Bolshoi season.

 

 

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I agree @capybara - it’s one thing discreetly leaving (still a bit rude to the dancers, at least stay a little bit even if you can’t for numerous red runs! But understand people have transport issues) but another to actively shove past and look annoyed at people/make others move who want to stay and clap. 

 

If you don’t want to stay till the curtain calls, I think you should book an aisle seat. Otherwise suck it up and stay (unless it is going on for much longer than planned in which case I think it’s ok to politely make a move to leave). 

 

I do think people don’t realise the way ballet curtain calls (RB in particular, I don’t think ENB ones are as long) work if you’re new. The ones in theatre productions are over fairly quickly, so ballet can seem an age for those unfamiliar. I have to say I thought the Bolshoi ones were over quickly in comparison to RB which can sometimes have numerous red runs. I have taken a friend once who complained how long they lasted and automatically moved to leave before they finished so I had to follow her and I felt really bad about it as I wanted to appreciate the dancers - but the only option was staying and letting her leave alone or ordering her to stay! (Although we didn’t have to move past people to leave at least.) Others I have taken to the ballet seem quite happy to stay till the end of curtain calls as they have appreciated the performance! 

 

I think ROH already do this but they should ensure that timing runs smoothly and end time includes curtain calls so people can plan ahead. I get annoyed when start times are delayed because people have seemingly not managed to take seats in time (although there may be other backstage things I’m not aware of) - I think of everyone is seated promptly after intervals too so the performance starts/finishes on time there is no reason why people shouldn’t stay for timed curtain calls. 

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