Dear Etiquetteer:
I’ve been really pleased to return to the ballet starting last year, but I’ve noticed the audiences have become incredibly exuberant during the performances. During yesterday‘s performance, whenever the dancers did anything that was particularly athletic people would hoot and holler. It’s very different from how I remember in past years. Maybe it’s a good thing for the ballet that there’s an enthusiastic audience.
However I find myself cringing a bit and feeling like some thing about the etiquette is off here. I know when you attend the symphony one does not clap until the music is completely finished. I’ve even seen conductors, and I mean famous conductors, turn around and glare at the audience when the clapping was premature. Maybe I’m just getting stodgy in my old age. In any case I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Dear Balletomane:
It may have been Miss Manners who observed that everything in America was slowly being patterned on the Academy Awards or the Super Bowl*. The performance you attended seems to have brought Stadium Behavior into the theatre. Or perhaps it is just a reversion to the etiquette of Elizabethan and Restoration audiences? Maybe the exuberance of the balconies has made it to the dress circle now?
Like you, Etiquetteer would prefer a little more Audience Reaction Restraint — a little more discernment and a little less histrionics. Performers need to earn their applause, and if it’s always there in excess, they have no incentive. Every performance can’t be standing ovation quality, can it? Interestingly, how to applaud/react to a performance isn’t one of the things covered by Broadway Direct’s page on theatre etiquette.
The headline of this piece from Theater Nook really sums up Etiquetteer’s attitude: don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Etiquetteer has never forgotten the man in the audience of the famous Sutherland Horne Pavarotti recital, who can be heard in the applause after one number honking out “Brah-VEE! Brah-VEE!” ostentatiously pluralizing “Bravo!” — no doubt to educate everyone around him. People — this is not necessary, and not really Perfectly Proper. Your reaction to a performance should not call attention to you.
That said, it feels prissy just to sit there while everyone else is losing their minds with excitement, and blocking your view with their standing ovation. Sadly, traditional concert and theatre audiences have seen their reputations move from intelligent and discriminating to snobbish and uptight.
Your question comes at an interesting time for theatre lovers. The internet have been bubbling over with commentary about Lillias White, star of Hadestown, who mistakenly reprimanded an audience member for recording the show with a cellphone. It turned out that the audience member was using a theatre-sanctioned closed captioning device. Etiquetteer feels deeply both for the audience member, who needed to use that device, and for Ms. White.
What exacerbated this situation was that the audience member was sitting in the front row, a prime location for performer distraction. The late Arthur Friedman, distinguished Boston theatre critic, taught Young Etiquetteer long ago that one never glanced through the program during a performance while in the front row, precisely because it could distract the actors. No, Etiquetteer is not going to suggest that anyone who needs to use a device can’t sit in the front row; that’s discrimination. But it does explain why Ms. White noticed it twice.
What’s really responsible for this contretemps is the selfish history of audience cellphone use for illicit recording, and the celebration of performers like Patti Lupone (including by Etiquetteer) for calling them out aggressively during performances. Etiquetteer doesn’t blame Ms. Lupone (and other performers) for demanding audience respect for their work. The behavior that needs to change first is the audience’s. Put away your blessed cellphone and enjoy the show!
*If you have the reference, please let Etiquetteer know.