Audience Participation - Love It Or Loathe It?

Personally I can't imagine anything worse than being dragged up on stage to do something. I'd also like to think that where a production does have an element of this built into it, people should be given an element of choice as to whether they wish to participate and that whatever the interaction is it should be thought through sufficiently as to what happens when it doesn't go the way it's intended to. Reading a comment on the Arturo Ui thread it sounds like the bulk of the audience didn't do what was intended at the end and it all got a bit muddled as a result. Not ideal if people are paying decent money and the thing has fallen apart because they have tried to be a bit too clever.

Ooh. Give us some lines to use! (Please.)

I would imagine that the following would work, if delivered in a voice that brings the word "stentorian" to the mind of every person in the theatre:

"F**K!! OFF!!"

Doesn't quite work as far as not being the centre of attention is concerned, but probably effective.

Participate?

Not while I'm alive, possibly not even after I've died.

You don't pop in for an operation and expect the surgeon to ask you to do the sutures do you? I wouldn't ask my barrister to park their backside while I gave the summation.

Obviously if you've paid for that kind of thing, enjoy and good luck, I'll be in the bar with my book

Ha! That was me age 17 seeing Rocky Horror having not been warned in advance and finding myself the only person not in fishnets.

Also I was with a boyfriend who I hadn't been going out with for long and we were still at the stage of finding everything mortifying, so that situation was truly dreadful.

Still brings me out in a cold sweat.

I would love to see the show without the participation to see how it works as a show in itself, but I think that ship has sailed.

I have wanted it to be staged somewhere like southwark or menier for a while now with a complete BAN on dressing up and audience participation. JUST so I could see it as it was intended to be seen. Plus I think it would make the piece a lot darker!

Having said that theatres should warn, I should also mention that many of the most wonderful productions that I have seen have included audience participation, such as Paines Plough's 'Every Brilliant Thing', Filter's 'Twelfth Night', promenade productions from Punchdrunk, Look Left, Look right etc, the insane Japanese 'Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker' last year in the Barbican Pit, Ontroerend Goed (who really do push the boundaries way out there), Kim Noble's stand up shows.

On the latter, Kim Noble famously confronts his history of mental illness in his shows and anything can happen, albeit that they are life affirming, moving and beautiful in an entirely unexpected way.

You probably won't get that from the review on 'Chortle' which said "As if the content wasn’t disquieting enough, Noble ensures that the audience never relaxes. One punter is made to spend the entire show in a corner with a bucket on his head, on which video of Noble and his mother are projected; at another point someone is evicted in a twisted parody of Big Brother-style programmes; and at the end we are all aggressively ordered out without ceremony, although a chosen few are kept back, to what nefarious end we cannot tell. "

One of the best shows I've ever seen......

www.chortle.co.uk/review/2009/08/30/27491/kim_noble_will_die_-_fringe_2009

Oh yes! This is something I've dreamed about for years - I do adore the show, and love dressing up and participating, but I long for a production that takes it back to its roots. I'd love to see a gothic horror version, but I imagine it would be impossible to stop the audience callbacks and dressing up.

I think that's why I'll always love the film more than the show (and I do LOVE the show) because it's played serious rather than for laughs, and that makes a huge difference in my opinion.

"Shock Treatment" at the King's Head did a good job of audience interaction - never making fun of the audience, just interacting with them. I imagine it would have still been embarrassing if you hate that sort of thing, but they didn't seem to be doing it to make fun of the audience.

I remember seeing "One Man, Two Guvnors" in blissful ignorance (before things became more obvious) pitying the audience members and hoping they'd get some sort of compensation!

That's really weird, the second part of the above post isn't showing.

I invite you to see it in Germany, where that kind of thing is usually not happening because Germans, humour, etc.

Seriously, I remember seeing it in Berlin many moons ago and there were notes all over the lobby that tossing popcorn or toilet paper or anything else was verboten and the audience just sat quietly as in every other show.