What's an audience to do?

There is a growing tension in the performing arts between desperately wanting an audience and bemoaning its behaviour. Symphony orchestras, regional theatres, ballet and opera companies across North America are feeling stiff competition to lure ticket buyers who they believe are increasingly distracted by interactive entertainment and social media. But when those sought-after new audiences do show up, they don’t always behave the way that venerable institutions and veteran audiences expect.

So writes Kate Taylor for The Globe and Mail. And what she's saying does not apply solely to Canada. It seems like forever since we could go to the movies with the expectation that people would quietly watch the movie. Since when they watch movies at home they chat their way through them, come and go to and from the kitchen a half dozen times, Google the cast members that look sort of familiar on their iPad, and generally act as if the movie isn't on in the first place, they figure they can do the same when they're sitting in front of you at the Cineplex. But no, I didn't come today to hear your opinion on the movie, at regular intervals, when you're actually bothering to watch it and not getting up, again, for another ten gallon tub of popcorn. And are your kids really playing with their Gameboys during this whole thing? Why did I decide to go to the movies, when I could have waited a couple of months and watched it in blessed peace?

And that's recorded entertainment. How about live entertainment? Apparently, that's even worse. There are real performers up there, trying to do their thing, and here you are, wondering if you're in one of the tweet seats. And because live entertainment is, as a general rule, expensive, there have indeed developed a slew of general rules of behavior that you, noob that you are, may not know about, or if you do, may not wish to follow.

It's a jungle out there at the old philharmonic.

Venues that want to bring in new, younger audiences to replace the fossils that have previously been occupying the seats, and keeping their mouths shut as they have done so, don't have any easy answers yet. Taylor's article, Quiet in the audience, please, puts it all in perspective.

So what are you? The stolid establishment? Or the nouveau tweeter?
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