Punch-ups in the stalls. Drunken audience members singing and shouting over songs. Theatregoers filming performances – or just watching something else on their phones instead. These are just some of the examples of bad behaviour recently reported in theatres. What on earth is it like for actors to contend with such unruliness?
“I was in Dreamgirls and there would be fights in the audience,” recalls West End actor Marisha Wallace. “It was wild. It happened so often that they had to get more security and put extra signs up that said: ‘Don’t sing, don’t dance.’” She continues: “It’s off-putting and you don’t want to stop the show and ruin it even more for everyone else. It’s very distracting when you’re trying to sing, act and dance. It’s unsafe as well because any noises, or anything that throws you, will put you in the wrong spot on stage.” In these instances, she says, actors could “get hit by a piece of scenery” or even end up falling off the stage.
For Wallace, the Dreamgirls experience is a contrast to how audiences are responding to her current show, Guys and Dolls, at London’s Bridge theatre. It’s an immersive promenade production where some of the theatregoers crowd around a series of moving stages. “It’s interesting that the subject of audience behaviour has come up when I’m in a show where I am literally in the audience,” she says. “We have amazing stage managers and hosts who are dressed as New York City cops and they police the crowd. The audience feel like they’re a part of the show when they are that close to you.” The effect, she adds, is that “they feel like they need to behave because they want the show to go on”.
Wallace believes there is a “new generation of theatregoers that don’t know what the rules are” and that the best thing to do is to follow the rules of the house. “Be smart,” she says. “If you see everyone else isn’t on their phone, then you probably shouldn’t be on your phone. In the past, theatregoers have had unwritten rules about staying quiet during the scenes. You don’t talk. You also don’t take out your McDonald’s and eat it in the middle of a show. I’ve seen people eating full meals – with chicken.”
Alice Fearn has starred in the musicals Wicked and Come from Away and believes the “base level of acceptance” has fallen since theatres reopened after Covid. “What annoys me, as petty as it sounds, is someone’s face being lit up by their phone,” she says. “In a dark auditorium, it is like a beacon. People have watched football [on their phones] in Row A. All I can see is their face watching this football match and I think: what was the point in coming?
“You also have people opening cans of lager,” she adds, saying that bad behaviour leaves her really frustrated “from the audience’s perspective – but as a performer, it can really affect my show.”
Fearn is one of many in the industry who think audience behaviour has worsened since the lockdowns of the pandemic and is a result of people bringing a “Netflix mindset” – thinking they can talk, check phones and behave as they would in the comfort of their living rooms – into theatres. While attending a performance of Pretty Woman in the West End, Fearn says she saw audience members joining in with well-known lines from the original movie. “Are we going to see that happen in a Shakespeare sonnet if you happen to know the lines? I hope not!”
If someone causes serious disruption in the theatre, they should be barred from other venues, thinks Fearn. “There should be some sort of list. There must be a way these people can be identified and banned from theatres. They can do it with football hooligans, there must be a process we can develop where on those rare occasions of disruption, we can do something about it.”
When theatres reopened after Covid restrictions, Fearn initially accepted the decline in behaviour. “I was like, ‘We’ve all been let loose, I get it.’ But when you’re two years down the line and it’s still happening – and, if anything, getting worse – it has to be vocalised because it’s really not a nice environment.”
Charles Brunton, who originated the role of Emelius Browne in the recent Bedknobs and Broomsticks tour, remembers performing a key moment in the musical: “I’m doing this emotional ballad, which is quiet at the start, and someone gets their phone out. They’re on WhatsApp and they start leaving a voice note saying, ‘I’m just watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks, yeah I’m really enjoying it, I think it finishes in 10 minutes’. I can hear the entire conversation.”
As well as watching people handing out sandwiches during poignant moments of the show (“I heard someone shouting ‘Do you want tuna and mayo or cheese and ham?’”), Brunton has been heckled. “There was one venue where audience disruption occurred at practically every show and I just felt like I wanted the week to be over,” he says. “It’s so sad, to be in this position to play the lead in a brand new Disney production, I’ve had to jump through hoops to get here, and it’s just heartbreaking when you’ve got someone shouting at you inappropriately.”
He adds: “We are trying to tell you a story and if you start singing along, you’re going to be doing it probably in a different key, at a different tempo and every single beat of every song has so much direction built into it. So if you’re sat at the front singing as if you’re in the shower, it is going to be completely disruptive to what we’ve rehearsed for months.”
Actor Joaquin Pedro Valdes believes the root cause of audience disruption is drunkenness. “People are really empowered to sing along when they’re very drunk. There’s a level of intentional, almost malicious disruption that’s going on,” he says. “I think the main ingredient that separates, for example, a relaxed performance or kids singing along, from audiences that are disruptive, is alcohol. Audiences think it gives them licence to disrupt the show.”
Some productions known for attracting younger audiences, such as the musicals & Juliet (a jukebox show using producer Max Martin’s pop hits) and Heathers (based on the cult 1980s film), have held dedicated singalong performances during which fans were not just given permission but encouraged to join in. Erin Caldwell, who played Veronica Sawyer in Heathers, says the singalong left the cast “really overwhelmed”. “There’s a picture of me after the bows, head in hands, just crying because it was so emotional – I would do another one in a heartbeat … I wouldn’t be surprised if more shows do it in future.”
“There’s lots of things with theatre etiquette that have to change,” she says. “A big one for me is filming shows, as we just constantly have our mobile phones on us and it’s a really difficult challenge for front of house staff to manage.” Caldwell is now playing Jane Seymour in the touring production of Six. While it has the same etiquette rules as other musicals, it does allow fans to stand up and film its encore number, the Megasix. It gives them an opportunity, Caldwell says, to capture a “special memory” and also makes audiences less likely to take photos or videos during the rest of the show.
For Alexandra Gilbreath, who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company for 30 years, the situation is not yet at “crisis point”. But, she says, mixed messages from some shows encouraging audience participation could be having a knock-on effect on behaviour at other shows.
Gilbreath also advises taking a longer view, which might suggest today’s actors don’t actually have it so bad. “In the history of live performances, I would imagine the ancient Greeks were a bit full on. And if you think what it must have been like going to the theatre during the Elizabethan times, I think in the 20th and 21st centuries we have been rather spoilt.”
Perhaps the perceived decline in theatre audience behaviour reflects societal standards in general. That is the view of the veteran actor Janet Suzman. “What is being referred to is what people experience in a railway carriage,” she says, giving the example of a passenger talking very loudly into their phone. “They don’t seem to care that other people are disturbed. They don’t care about other people’s enjoyment.”
Suzman suggests that “it’s always peer pressure that makes people behave better, isn’t it? If the audience got crosser with the disturbing element, that might make a difference.” This stalwart of the stage has sometimes done so while watching a play herself. “I have occasionally hissed a sort of old lady ‘shush’ at somebody, which always works quite well. It’s pretty rare but the more vicious the ‘shush’, the quieter they will be.”
