It was reported in yesterday's Guardian newspaper that actress Imelda Staunton, currently starring in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Harold Pinter Theatre has called for food and drink to be banned from theatres.
Apparently more and more play-goers in London are bringing takeaway food in and the sound of munching impacts on the atmosphere that the actors and audience together create.
Eating doesn't appear to have become an issue in Dublin playhouses, or at least not to the point where actors are calling for a ban. But West End plays sure to attract full houses; one can afford to alienate some potential customers.
I suppose this phenomenon (like the refusal of some to switch off their mobile phones, and the decline of the practice of 'dressing up' for the theatre) is linked to increasingly casual attitudes to entertainment. Once the main form of entertainment became a box you could watch in the room next to (or even in) your kitchen, it was inevitable that many people would bring their home-viewing habits into the public domain.
After all, this is a world where you can lie on the couch in your pyjamas, eat nachos, pay a bill, keep an eye on football scores and watch 'The Remains of the Day'' all at the same time.
But it is true that there is no silence like the intense silence of a rapt crowd of people watching evenets unfold on stage: people who had been coughing earlier on, forget to cough, fidgeters stop fidgeting, no one moves. These moments are rare and magical.
No comments:
Post a Comment