My Ideal Audience

In my previous post I mentioned a few experiences I've had as an audience member.
Here are a few more:

Cymbeline at the Stratford festival in Canada.
What a wonderful show.
Shakespeare pulls out every stop and creates one of the most lush and ridiculous shows I have ever seen.
Here's the SparkNotes:
We sit through the opening of the show: Posthumous flees from the kingdom (I'm guessing England), afraid for his life (because the queen is evil like Snow White level evil) to a friend whose castle is in France somewhere. Posthumous is engaged to Imogen, the daughter of Cymbeline, who swears to be faithful, but Posthumous is goaded into a bet (because he is not clever) by the wily Iachimo played by this creepy mother-lover:

Who says, I bet I can sleep with your girlfriend because women are all sluts! Posthumous challenges him to a duel, but then figures, nah, I trust my girl, you've got a bet!
Anyway, Imogen is pure and chaste, Iachimo is pure evil and they have a scene where he woos her in place of Posthumous because reasons! It's Shakespeare!
So, it is getting all Richard III and I mean he cannot keep his hands off this lady and everyone is ready for her to slap him or screw him and then this plays:

Yeah.
If you're like me the irony is so powerful you can't help but wonder if it is intentional.
Is  it part of the soundscape? Is it a misplaced cue? What is it?
Oh no.
It is a cellphone.
And I mean in a sea of 500 witnesses it is playing...loudly.
So Imogen gets through to the end of her line and Iachimo just waits, staring at her.
It keeps playing.
He looks down at the ground...stewing.
It keeps playing.
He turns out to the crowd and stares.
It keeps playing.

Now I don't blame the person because at that point about 500 onlookers are all scouring the seats looking for this cellphone ready to murder.
It finally, miraculously ends and Iachimo dusts himself off, looks at Imogen, and keeps acting.
Boom.

Now I will say I was mortified for all involved, but I've been granted a new perspective.
Everyone took their time with it.
The cellphone went off and the actor playing Iachimo (see above) felt that what was happening was so important, the audience shouldn't miss it.
He stopped the action to allow the person to deal with their business and when it didn't happen quickly he showed very clearly he expected it to stop.
When it didn't, he waited for it to finish, showed he didn't want it to happen again, and continued.

This is a fabulous moment of communication.
Everyone wanted to be a part of the action and the actors took their time and let everything sink in.
They considered what they were doing serious enough and the audience's attention important enough to let an awkward moment happen for literally the length of a song and then continue where they left off.
I found it masterful storytelling:
"Don't worry, we'll get back to it once this is finally over."
And we totally did!

But what surprised me most was the audience: there was no booing, no talking, no whispering, no snickering during the whole exchange.
I think we were fascinated with Iachimo to see what he would do and how he would handle it.
I believe (because I've seen it happen too often) that if the actors had continued as if there were no cellphone, we, the audience, would have spent the time listening to the song, resenting the person whose phone went off, and missed the whole scene.
Instead the performers acknowledged us as part of the theatrical event.
"I know you're there, I can hear you in the room, I'm busy trying to have sex with this very attractive woman and you're distracting me. Could you not?"
Our attention, both as performers and audience were unified in that moment.

Now ideally nothing "interferes" with the event, but this is live theatre, something always goes wrong!
I am not calling for everyone to turn their phones on in the theatre, though that could be entertaining.
I'm tired of opening announcements being: stop talking, listen to me, be quiet, don't move, don't fidget, eyes front, phones off, oh and applaud at the end.
We, as actors, wonder why an audience is "dead", I think it is because we "kill" them often and early in middle/high school.

I suppose my ideal audience would look a lot like a globe theatre audience or a perpetual student matinee (sans teachers).
Why student matinees?
Kids laugh and joke during a show, they get the penis references, they want to shout at the characters to stop being idiots.
I think that is good and right and proper.
I have never connected as deeply with a show as when standing in front of a sea of students they cry out "Don't do it!" before drinking the poison.
You know they can't stand to see you or your character or whatever leave the stage or the world of the piece.
That is a very moving moment everyone can share because you both know you have to drink the poison!
Appreciating the complexity of that is what an audience and actor is about. I think.

The reason I say no teachers is because they create a hierarchy, which I dislike in an audience or community.
I think there can be a beneficial hierarchy and it can be important for society to thrive, but in an audience, everyone's experience is equal.
But all too often, teachers, faculty, sometimes other students feel they have the right to shoosh one another or infringe on another's experience.

This is where I run into the most trouble: whose experience is more valid, the individual's or the group's? I don't think there is an easy answer.
Because every person has the right to an experience, whatever that means.
But what does that mean when it is a communal experience?
Some of this is touched on in my previous post, but let us treat is as a thought experiment:
Someone vocalizes a little too loudly for another person's experience. So without knowing, someone having a deeply moving experience has 'impacted' another's experience.  Whose is more valid? Whose need is greater? I don't know.

I am reminded not of my own experience in Greece, but a colleague who went to an American production of Ajax at a Greek conference.
The audience ripped it apart during the entire show, talking about what was good and bad while it happened, laughing at the awkward moments, applauding the students' work.
At the end of the show, they shot to their feet and gave a standing ovation.
My friend was flabbergasted, but she did have this theory, "They left nothing for afterward, the entire audience knew what they felt and expressed it during the whole run that by the time the cast bowed the only thing left to do was to applaud them for their work, regardless of how they [the audience] felt about it."
This. I love this.

What if, instead of silently experiencing the show we create a dynamic for talking, for laughing, for exploring it with one another as it happens.
That way we can create a communal event that everyone can enjoy while it happens and if someone doesn't understand or isn't enjoying it, we can engage with them, explain to them, feel more at ease in the theatre and therefore more electric.
Because the audiences I love best are the ones I can connect with, the ones who let me know if I'm good or bad.
I think the theatre could go back to a playing space and hopefully look more like the Globe, the amphitheatre, or this:

People say the theatre is dying, but playing, acting is such a human quality that I cannot believe it for a second.
If we could create the kind of dynamic with the audience that sports has with its fans, then I think  would be the right direction.

I want to give people permission to curse, swear, scream, laugh, cry, take photos, videos, shout at/with me, and maybe, just maybe share something special.