If theatre is so keen to diversify its audience, it should take a leaf out of the fringe’s book and stop punishing punters that don’t know ‘the rules’, says Lyn Gardner.
It seems that audiences have been playing up a bit at the Barbican, and Benedict Cumberbatch has had to ask them – ever so nicely – to stop taking photographs and trying to film him while he does Hamlet’s great soliloquies. I reckon this presents a bit of a conundrum for theatre: on one hand it is desperate to increase diversity and get more people to give it a try, rather than thinking that it’s not for the likes of them, and on the other hand it gets really narked when people who buy theatre tickets don’t know the rules about how you’re expected to behave. Those who do know aren’t better people. They’ve just been lucky enough to have been brought up in theatre-going families, or discovered theatre through friends or their education.
Maybe the art police, those who call for charters, draconian action, the shaming of offenders, or for people to be frisked for mobile phones at the theatre entrance would also like audiences to be frisked for purity of intention too... Keep reading on The Guardian
It seems that audiences have been playing up a bit at the Barbican, and Benedict Cumberbatch has had to ask them – ever so nicely – to stop taking photographs and trying to film him while he does Hamlet’s great soliloquies. I reckon this presents a bit of a conundrum for theatre: on one hand it is desperate to increase diversity and get more people to give it a try, rather than thinking that it’s not for the likes of them, and on the other hand it gets really narked when people who buy theatre tickets don’t know the rules about how you’re expected to behave. Those who do know aren’t better people. They’ve just been lucky enough to have been brought up in theatre-going families, or discovered theatre through friends or their education.
Maybe the art police, those who call for charters, draconian action, the shaming of offenders, or for people to be frisked for mobile phones at the theatre entrance would also like audiences to be frisked for purity of intention too... Keep reading on The Guardian