Well, it seems that with COVID being around so long, that Theatre has turned to streaming of their productions. People sit in their homes in their pajama’s watching the latest production from their favourite theatre company. They can chat, drink, and eat without disturbing the rest of the Audience. They can often pause the playback to have a pee. Now when we could not get out or there was a limit on audience sizes this was great. Although we are now returning to normal and theatre benefits from having a live audience, but audiences are slowly forgetting the manners needed to be in a live audience.
Streaming is not the same atmosphere for cast, crew, and the remote audience. I am not sure if we need to carry on with this way of seeing shows. Audiences are returning, they are wanting live events. It is time to wind back the live streaming instead of live audiences. We have audiences wanting to sit in the theatre and enjoy some good theatre.
But there has been a change in the way the audience act. On recent shows that I have worked on, I have observed that the audience conduct is quite different from before COVID. It is like the audience have lost their attention span. They cannot even be trusted to turn off their mobile phones, they talk to the people next to them during the show. Recently I have seen folks check their messages etc whilst the show is going. So, it looks like we will need to return to training the audience. It seems reminding them in the foyer and having notices in the foyer and the program does not work.
Here is hoping that audiences get back into the rhythm of enjoying live theatre without the electronic distractions that are part of our life.