This season, American Conservatory Theater is publishing a set of audience guidelines, known as“Rules of Play,”in its programs. Among them: “All and any laughter is welcome.” “We encourage all response.”“We ask that you turn off your cellphones.”
Maybe those tenets sound mild or self-evident to you. But American theater has a chronic inflammatory condition that gets triggered by perceived faux pas in audience etiquette.
The condition flared up again in mid-September when the playwright Jeremy O. Harris, whose provocative “Slave Play” opens Sunday, Oct. 6, on Broadway, tweeted that when the pop star Rihanna came to his show — she helped inspire it, and her music is featured in it — he held the curtain for her and then texted with her during the performance.
Two things I learned today about the Type of theatre maker I am:
When my idol texts that she’s running late. I hold the curtain for her.
When my idol texts me during a play I’ve written, I respond.pic.twitter.com/78081zXnje
— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris)2019年9月15日
When theater traditionalists issued a hue and cry — but cell phone glare is so distracting! Regular folks don’t get a curtain held when they’re running late! — Harris offered a range of justifications that opened up a broader conversation about how theater audiences ought to behave.
Regarding cell phones: “I’ve seen too many ‘general audience members’ do it over the last decade to care about it. I’m more interested in theatre evolving and maybe phones are part of that evolution? Who knows.”
Regarding vocal audiences: “I watch plays like I’m coaching a sports team or sitting in a church…”
Regarding it all: “There’s no right or wrong way to watch the theatre … the form is dying so I’d rather (people) just be there then (sic) not.”
IDK. There’s no right or wrong way to watch the theatre….the form is dying so I’d rather ppl just be there then not tbqh.
— Jeremy O. Harris (@jeremyoharris)2019年9月15日
Theater is a sardine tin. You might fight an elbow war with one stranger over an armrest, knock knees with a manspreading second and hold your breath while you stick your butt or crotch into the face of a third. You have to smell each other’s smells and inhale each other’s exhalations. Conflicts of theater etiquette are conflicts of regular coexistence both blown up and shrunk down. Here, you can’t avoid each other or give yourself space without taking extreme measures. Here, there’s art that you’re all supposed to see, art many of you have paid good money for, that you might get to see only once — art that some audiences have very particular ideas about how to see properly.
从表面上看,这可能听起来像是有益的evolution: Hey, at least different groups, with different norms and values, are all in a room together, trying to watch the same show! Maybe that togetherness, that tension, that conflict, can change what an audience member and an artist are allowed to look like. Maybe it can change who theater belongs to, what theatergoing might consist of. Maybe it’s not sitting with your hands folded, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. Maybe there’s no single arbiterwho gets to decide which audiences are right and which are wrong.
But there’s no equal playing field in this contest. When I enter a theater, no one ever questions my right to be there. Twice in my own theatergoing over the years, guests of mine — both white people over 60 — have started checking their email during shows when they got bored. Screens were glowing. No ushers stopped them. I suspect — though I can’t prove — that even if my guests posted about these incidents to a large social media audience, most followers would scroll right past or roll their eyes.
什么inflames American theater about Harris’ stance isn’t that people are using cell phones in a theater, but that he’s a young black man unapologetically claiming the right to question old norms and forge new ones in a historically white institution.
What’s more, these etiquette flareups about cell phones and vocal reactions are always the wrong way to think about audiences in theaters. We want people to come to shows. We don’t want to scare them away with infighting about rarefied norms. We should focus on welcoming new audiences, not controlling them. If I were considering an entertainment option I’ve never tried before, a sure way to keep me away would be to make me think I’d probably get scolded for doing it wrong. Another is to be cagey about what your norms are, to assume that everyone knows what they are and that anyone who doesn’t is unsophisticated, which is why we should welcome ACT’s Rules of Play.
The theateris taking other measures in widening its welcome. Under the artistic directorship of Pam MacKinnon, ACT now has a live human give a preshow welcome speech. (Previously, shows would often start without even a recorded introduction.) I didn’t notice this until MacKinnon pointed it out to me, but the company has also removed signs announcing rules at its doors. “No longer is the first thing you see upon entering a series of signs that read ‘don’t do this,’ ‘turn off that,’ ” she writes in an email. “Our front of house team are very much geared toward hospitality instead of rule enforcement.” ACT isn’t the only one making front-of-house changes. For years now, Cal Shakes has had a welcome kiosk on the grounds of the Bruns Amphitheater, rather like an information desk at an airport.
I’ve noticed I’ve felt more at ease at both theaters since these changes have been enacted. Now, how can the art form open its doors to folks who don’t see themselves as theater patrons, folks who in the past have gotten implicit and explicit messages that they don’t belong inside?
When you don’t state what your norms are, you still have norms; you’re just letting tradition — and its whiteness, its bigotry, its classism — write them for you.