The attention game and audience behaviour

Image composite: Carla Keen

I’ve been thinking about the live event and gatherings lately. And at the suggestion of Holly Stoppit, I am reading ‘The Art of Gathering’ by Priya Parker, which is a delightful read for anyone who brings people together in any way.

One of my favourite things is to play in a group is 'Find the Game'. Some folk credit it to John Wright, I also know a similar version as Calvin Ball. The idea is that a group of people start moving or make actions at first individually, but then someone starts to repeat what another person is doing until lots of people are doing the same thing. It might evolve into something else then disappear, it might become codified into a set of rules. The point is that the group reaches a consensus about how to be together at that moment. Which brings me back to thoughts about how we behave when we are experiencing the things that happen in a theatre.

Here are a few thoughts/provocations:

1. No-one has the right to your attention

I was in a clown workshop where one of the students made a comment about us needing to pay attention to the person who was working in front of us. It’s not the only class where we’ve been told to not write notes or otherwise be doing something else at the same time as watching the person on stage.

I took another clown workshop recently where I mentioned that I tend to take a lot of notes and/or might seem to be not paying attention (my brain works at a million miles an hour and taking notes helps me to focus on one thing). The facilitator said ‘no-one has the right to your attention’. And this changed the way I think about performance. 

a) Clown: if social conventions are forcing your audience to pay attention, rather than your actions on stage, then are you clowning well? If a clown has any metric then surely it is their ability to find games that captivate and enchant the audience? If I am doing well on stage, then you will want to watch me. If not, then it forces me to dig deeper or find a new game.

b) More 'conventional' theatrical performance: we have been taught that it is rude to leave if you don’t like something. But the ‘law of two feet’* is an important life lesson. We have a number of choices: we can choose to stay and experience something we don’t immediately enjoy with the hope it becomes enjoyable (and maybe it does); we can stay and reinforce the opinion that we don't like it; or we leave and never know if it changes. If social convention teaches us that we must stay regardless because of what others might think of us then we learn a different lesson. Instead of learning the ‘law of two feet’, which is fundamentally about self-determination, we learn the ‘law of obligation’. 

How much does it negatively impact as a performer if the audience aren’t paying attention all of the time? Maybe they look at their phone, or whisper to the person next to them. In a live, close-up performance, I might be curious as to what/why you have whispered (maybe you didn’t hear me, or you didn’t get something, and I might be happy to clarify for the joy of the audience). From experience, audiences love it when the performer acknowledges what is happening because it reminds them we are there, right now. (Admittedly, this might not be appreciated by a playwright or director, but that’s another blog.)

Image of an article from The Stage, which is incredibly clickbait-y and makes me want to throw things

2.  Behaving well at ‘conventional’ theatre is about reinforcing class identity

‘The maintenance and reinforcement of [direct emotional expression] is often through cultural forms: everything from the facial expression of the ‘stiff upper lip’ to the immobile seated audience in theatres which became commonplace at the end of the nineteenth century.’ (Stefan Szczelkun ‘The Conspiracy of Good Taste’)

In other words, the idea of sitting quietly and politely and watching someone display their learned skill is an indication that you know and obey the rules of the middle/upper classes. The higher the class you are, the more you are supposed to quietly admire someone’s talent; it’s nothing to do with politeness, art has been constructed to support and reinforce this behavioural norm.

We see this in recent performances of popular musicals based on songs that audiences know incredibly well. Producers appear to be deliberately attracting a wider audience into West End and large regional theatres by creating shows full of recognisable tunes, which creates an implicit invitation to sing, and then causes a culture clash between audience members who want to listen to the people on stage. Kirsty Sedgman talks about this in her writing in more detail.

But how much does it really impact your enjoyment of the show (beyond a mild annoyance) if someone opens a bag of crisps when Hamlet is performing a monologue? Isn't that friction part of the experience? Aren't the real human needs around you important in grounding the viewing act and keeping you psychologically safe?

3.  I took down the ‘turn your phones off’ sign in the theatre we performed in

I often put thematic posters around the auditorium, and sometimes in the foyer for our shows, as I want to begin to invite the audience into the world we are creating. When they enter the theatre, I don’t want one of the first things they see to be an A4 printed sheet with a huge red cross through it because the space immediately feels prohibitive or coercive: the opposite of how I want them to feel. An obvious caveat is if there is some danger in the space, but that’s also why I feel these semiotics should be used sparingly.

As performers, we give our audience guidance about how to interact with the piece of art we are creating. In this instance it is important because people often don’t know what is expected of them at an improvised narrative show. So, we chat to people while they arrive, framing their role while in character as a mediator of sorts (someone whose job it is to 'on board' the audience). We let them know that the show is improvised, but we’ll be doing the work, so while we encourage initial suggestions and love reactions, no more shout outs are needed. We set the parameters as part of the show because they will be different for every show we make.

I’ve seen people in the audience reading their phone, so I find a way to make what we are doing more engaging (or I consider this show might not be for them.) If people are late, we incorporate it. If someone loudly drops their phone, we make it part of the scene. Liveness is about recognising where we are at, not in telling people where they should be. 

4. Nothing ruins comedy like arenas (Tim Minchin, sung while in an arena)

Nothing ruins comedy like arenas

That is a well-established fact

But your enjoyment is not as important as my self-esteem is

My ego′s the only thing you can see clearly from the back

But I'm quite famous now, so suck my balls

I′ve sold my tickets, my job is done, fuck you all

Who cares about quality? This is not about you, this is all about me

And my tiny little penis, and flogging DVDs

Recently, Peter Kay did a gig in the Manchester AO Arena where an audience member was removed for disrupting the show by yelling ‘garlic bread’ repeatedly. Peter Kay asked the rest of the audience if he was disrupting their enjoyment of the to which they answered that it was, so out he went. Arguably this is live, democratic, and definitely in-the-moment stuff, so what's the problem?

Let’s take another view. What if by yelling, the guy was effectively saying ‘I can’t connect with you’ or ‘I want to feel seen’, because isn’t that why we watch live events? To feel like we can connect to the performer? Maybe for them to look at us at some point and know this show is for us? There is a place for spectacle, for sure. I’d happily watch a [insert cool band here] gig in an arena with great sound and lights, and be immersed in that bath of human spiritual soupyness. But that’s not what a stand-up or a clown does. And that is precisely what Peter Kay is.

Admittedly, it might be a case of asking a band to do the same songs over and over at a gig, and no-one wants to do that. But what if the heckler had both the economic privilege to leave and an understanding of the law of two feet? What if they felt able to leave because they weren’t enjoying the experience, and able to find something that better did suit them? In which case we are back to behavioural economics and the folly of capitalism. Possibly their disregard for theatre etiquette is a lot to do with the feeling of wanting value for money.

I get a bit stuck in the loops of irony, but my understanding is that Tim Minchin deliberately changed the way he performs alongside becoming more famous, so he created a show which combines the grandiosity of a huge orchestra, epic arena lighting, and massive amounts of sound design with one guy doing stand-up.~  

(There are clown shows which are huge spectacles, for example Slava’s Snow Show, but I’d argue that they deliberatly combine the power of small mimed gestures on stage with the epic theatrical magic of snow filling the whole auditorium.)

I’d also suggest that the audience of a Tim Michin is fundamentally different to that of a Peter Kay gig, and his audience is far more likely to sit quietly and enjoy what is in front of them. So 'Tim Minchin and the Heritage Orchestra' is arguably a bit, well, wanky. And I’m not sure wanking on stage is any better if you tell the audience you are wanking.

If you’ve read this far, well done, that's the end. Have a bag of crisps. And eat them noisily.

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*’The Law of Two Feet’ is the only law of Open Space Technology. It says that you, and only you, know when you are learning or contributing to a discussion or workshop. If you find yourself in a situation where you are no longer inspired, use your two feet and/or whatever you use to get around to do something else (including nothing if you like).

(I’ve used my definition rather than a link because it tends to get used in business contexts to talk about increased productivity, which I don’t think is always the best goal for everyone.) 

~ Ironically, I saw Tim Minchin do this show as a scratch at The Junction and it is one of the funniest things I’ve seen him do. The idea was that he would be lowered to the stage in a cage, but he was doing it in J2, which…does not have a cage. It was the most clownish thing watching him get in a tiny cage-like thing, and then try and describe what would be happening in an arena.)