Actor Andrew Scott shares his experience of having a play shut down due to audience behavior.
Netizens ‘sympathize’… Recently, damage caused by abnormal behavior of audiences in the UK has been ‘serious’
Andrew Scott, a famous British actor who played Jim Moriarty in ‘Sherlock’, shared the story of stopping a play due to the audience’s bad manners, garnering sympathy from netizens. Foreign media reported that the British performing arts industry was suffering from strange behavior by audiences.
Foreign media such as the Guardian reported on the 2nd (local time) that Andrew Scott appeared on a podcast and talked about his experience of having to stop performing ‘Hamlet’ in London in 2017 because of an audience member who was using a laptop.
Scott said that as soon as he uttered the first line of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be,’ a man took out his laptop and started checking his email. In particular, the monologue in question lasted for several minutes and required a long period of breathing, and since it was an important part that penetrated the entire work, it required the immersion of not only the actors but also everyone in the performance hall.
Scott stopped the performance when the man refused to turn off his laptop. Scott was embarrassed, saying that the man did not stop his ‘unmannered behavior’ until someone eventually stopped him, and that he did not appear to be embarrassed at all. After the broadcast, many netizens sympathized with Scott’s experience.
The UK has a highly developed performance infrastructure. However, the Guardian reported that in recent years, damage caused by ‘unmannered audiences’ in the UK has continued. At a concert hall, the audience is not only a customer, but also a member of the performance culture who adheres to the minimum manners, but this implicit rule is being destroyed.
In April last year, a disturbance occurred at the Manchester Palace concert hall in which the musical “Bodyguard” was stopped due to the audience singing loudly and the police were dispatched. In November 2022, at the Royal Opera House, an audience member who shouted profanity at a 12-year-old actor was banned from the theater for life. In addition, numerous cases have been reported and the severity has been raised.
In particular, during the pre-release of the play ‘A Little Life’ last year, nude photos of the lead actor, James Norton, were distributed despite a ban on filming. Afterwards, procedures arose to store cell phones by attaching a sticker to the camera area or placing them in a pouch with a lock.
According to a survey conducted last year by the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Media, Theater, and Labor Union (Bectu) of more than 1,500 performance industry workers, 90% of workers experienced ‘anti-social’ behavior from audiences, such as assault, vandalism, and racist language. It appears that he or she has witnessed it.
As this happened repeatedly, the union launched a signature campaign to create a healthy concert hall culture and actively respond to anti-social audience behavior.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.