Taking on the audience

Glasgow's Fightin' Reviewer, Mr Criticulous gets ready to rumble

Feature by Mr Criticulous | 19 Aug 2011

The rules of engagement in the theatre are pretty simple. The audience shuts the fuck up. The actors or dances show off. The audience applauds. The critic awards stars and gets accused of not being objective.

For immersive theatre, all bets are off. In Hotel Medea, the audience are dressed up in balaclavas and threaten to execute each other. In Audience, they are abused from the stage, or compelled to dance to violent hip-hop. The theatrical point is to challenge conventions, and get past audience passivity. It's like theatre is finally admitting that lap-dancing is the highest form of performance.

This weekend, I tore off my top in Hotel Medea and told the cast to bring it. I threw a shoe at Ontroerend Goed. I shouted at the audience that I couldn't take responsibility for their behaviour. People asked me why I didn't just leave.

I was making no comment on the worth of the work - frankly, there are enough idiots out there who still think that the "quality of acting" determines whether an immersive show is "good". I was joining in - and, as a critic, self-consciously encouraging the audience to understand that we had permission to join in the acting.

Despite being photo-shopped into political campaign posters, revealing intimate secrets to strangers, ignoring a man abusing a woman and sharing a delicious breakfast with the actors out of costume, audiences still seem to think that they are not being manipulated and that only the performers are allowed to act.

Both Hotel Medea and Audience fuck with the usual rules: they encourage argument that goes outside the theatre. Audience is taut and confrontational: Medea plays serious headgames over six hours. Both expose the mob mentality, exploit our willingness to co-operate and deconstructing the way that lovely, supportive people can support evil, just by being passive.

It's telling that audience members hate me more for getting involved than do the performers. The latter seem to be quite happy to get abused by me.

Here's a clue: there is no such thing as "just theatre". It's the place where ideas are tested. If the company plays by the rules, I'll watch quietly. If they don't, I am going to be onstage. Ontroerend Goed and Zecora Ura want this. Their teachings are effective if I do.

Now that the web lets every arsehole have their opinion in public, the critic is under threat. Here's where we start to matter. Desensitised, cynical, passive, the audience needs to be jolted and companies are pushing it. It makes sense to subvert them, refuse to let them use our power: and this critic, who is used to standing up and knows the rules inside-out, is ready to join in.