Will you PLEASE be quiet??!!
Mon, 26 Aug 2002, 09:26 amLeah Maher32 posts in thread
Will you PLEASE be quiet??!!
Mon, 26 Aug 2002, 09:26 amHey kids,
Not wanting to take attention away from the interesting three way romance developing in the "Reviewers in the Missed" thread, an interesting point has been raised way down there in the Reviews forum; what do you do about noisy audience members?
The amazing Mr Kelso in the equally amazing Copenhagen at the Octogon very recently apparently employed the simple break of character and "Would you please be quiet, the rest of the audience is tying to listen." before returning to character and picking up from where he had been so rudely interupted.
Is this the best way to go about it? Or should you just ignore it and hope it goes away? Or send a runner out in the interval to hunt down the culprits and have a quiet word? Or get the cast and crew together in the car park afterwards to make sure these inconsiderate audience members never bother another actor again?
Suggestions? Stories? Annecdotes?
Leah
Not wanting to take attention away from the interesting three way romance developing in the "Reviewers in the Missed" thread, an interesting point has been raised way down there in the Reviews forum; what do you do about noisy audience members?
The amazing Mr Kelso in the equally amazing Copenhagen at the Octogon very recently apparently employed the simple break of character and "Would you please be quiet, the rest of the audience is tying to listen." before returning to character and picking up from where he had been so rudely interupted.
Is this the best way to go about it? Or should you just ignore it and hope it goes away? Or send a runner out in the interval to hunt down the culprits and have a quiet word? Or get the cast and crew together in the car park afterwards to make sure these inconsiderate audience members never bother another actor again?
Suggestions? Stories? Annecdotes?
Leah
Re: Will you PLEASE be quiet??!!
Mon, 26 Aug 2002, 05:11 pmNoisy audience members. HmmÂ… ThereÂ’s no point in us being up there without an audience. So, how do you deal with noisy audience members so they will still want to come back?
In one performance of I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe we had an audience member ask a question of the actor David Hayward, who was playing the role of a professor, and David calmly answered the question then continued. This does impress people, more than the fact that you have just spent the last umpteen weeks of your life rehearsing. Generally, I think that if audience noise is not too distracting I would ignore it and carry on.
However, we’ve not had a noticeable problem in this area. Maybe we’re so bad we stun them into disbelieving silence! Or (boldly) perhaps we are so ‘living the moment’ we don’t hear them?
Mobile phones - We print a large request on our programs asking for them to be switched off and also remind people as they enter the theatre.
We also follow standard theatre convention in that latecomers are not admitted. Doors closed = doors closed. One exception was where a woman had booked and rang us to say she was late due to a train strike, so when she arrived we unobtrusively allowed her in at a suitable moment. Of course I would usually leave that to the discretion of the front-of-house staff.
NowÂ… how is that three way romance developing?
Tina Jack
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