Yesterday's article in the Graun about poor etiquette in relation to theatre audiences in the UK struck me as being depressingly typical of what I've been reading in the last two or three years about poor behaviour in audiences in my home nation. How things change. I don't recall ever seeing such behaviour in the theatre when I was in my native country. Quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, when I came to this Far Place I was struck by how Singaporean audiences sometimes didn't quite seem all that aware of how live theatre worked and felt vaguely proud of this aspect of British culture.
But here's the thing. I can't remember the last time I felt critical of a Singaporean audience. In recent years my experience of such has been uniformly positive as they seem to have somehow grown in sophistication. And this has been especially true with regard to audiences for school shows. This evening I was thinking back to our performances of As You Like It back in July. Our audiences were small but happily engaged & responsive. Being out on stage myself really brought that home to me.
There is no magic in theatre. Unless a directly shared understanding of human experience is magical. Which it is.
Sad that some people choose to wreck this. And a bit sad for me that I'll not be involved in any kind of production this year.
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