ANST - Audience Disdain?

[Gunnora Hallakarva]

Karl Muller" <apophysis at hotmail.com> said:
> sorry for being so late with my post. but, the performers
> are almost always treated with distain. they are conceder
> by some as a bother. they are not given the respect they
> deserve. i have seen singers and storytellers scream their
> piece to try and be heard to no avail. the audience will
> talk over the performance, turn their backs to them, and
> even walk thru the performance area as if it didn't matter.
> i think what the performers need is a more courteous
> audience. but then, that's just my opinion.
> km

The thing that you are missing here is that this is EVERYONE's recreation time, not just the performers.  The rest of the populace are
NOT a captive audience, trapped and forced to listen.

It is up to the performer to accurately judge the atmosphere -- there are times when ANY performance is inappropriate.  If the
audience is in no mood to listen, the performer has no business performing.  Being sensitive to the mood of the audience is the
biggest and most important skill any performer must learn. And I can recall times when even Master Ragnar would start a tale, then
decide that the audience was in no mood to listen.  He would usually crack a joke, take a thoughtful sip from his horn, and then sit
down to wait until a more appropriate mood was present.

Furthermore, if a performer's piece is boring, or just plain bad, well, having backs turned on one is far from the worst that can
happen.  Up until just a few years ago, it was commonplace for items to be hurled at an offending performer until they ran for it!
Even modern audiences will boo a bad performer off the stage.  There's a LOT worse that a bad performance could receive than simple
disdain!

A GOOD performance will captivate the audience.  You could have heard a pin drop when Thomas of Tenby staged his dramatic presentation
of "Maldon" a while back.  If a performer isn't good enough to capture the audience's attention and keep it, then that audience
reaction is a clear message, too.

You can't really have it both ways -- I have seen performers complain because they are stuck in a back room somewhere, when they were
given a private room to enable them to perform for just the interested listeners without distractions from an uninterested populace.
But if you place the performers in the main hall with everyone else, then I think that the performers must accept the fact that there
will be times when no one wants to listen to them, and that the populace should not be forced to listen to them -- if the performance
is not good enough to enforce silence on its own, then that's a more accurate assessment of the performer's skill at guaging the
audience, and their skill at performance, than any Laurel's judging form could be.

::GUNNORA::

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