Last night I sat in the front row of Arthur Miller’s View From The Bridge with Ken Stott. Although this position would normally be something to relish, I spent most of the performance rigid with silent terror.
For, it was from those seats that Mr Stott expelled several theatre-goers last week. Mid-performance the actor stopped moving, let his Brooklyn drawl slip into his Scottish growl, turned to face the audience and announced he was not continue until the teenagers in the front row left the theatre. Shock. An interjection by the teacher that the sniggers were permissable. Mr Stott re-iterated his intent. Exit school party.
Last night the tannoy annoucement at the beginning of the performance listed a long list of don’t for the cowed audience including not to rustle paper. I took the battery out of my (already-off) phone and refused a mint to ensure I was not ejected for my uncouthness also.
It seems that we are an interesting junction for theatre etiquette: on one hand we have the folks at the Globe trying to re-claim the Renaissance experience of being a groundling (although I doubt many 21st-century patrons throw turnips at the actors) and actors like Stott refusing to play to a disinterested audience.
My mother was charmed by the story, saying that the bane of her life were school parties descending on GCSE favourites to munch and chatter throughout. Yet Stott’s behaviour raises the question of who is the most important person in the theatre: the actor or the audience? Parking attendants, policemen, tax officials, MPs all get grief for their jobs – is it fair in the gaga land of celebrity that actors do not?
