https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/how-theatres-deal-with-idiotic-audience-members/
NOW magazine writer Glen Sumi is, at best, conventional. Nothing reveals that more than his current piece on hecklers and others who create disturbances in live theaters and comedy clubs.
If the performer is simply acting out a routine, yes, a heckler can and often will derail her or him.
Do you imagine there were not hecklers in the audience in ancient Athens?
Once we step foot before an audience we know (or should know) that we are entering an arena where anything can happen.
If we are actually bringing a character to life and not merely reciting words from a script we can engage that heckler as the character we are playing. That can make for a truly interesting moment.
Do we imagine that Lenny Bruce for example never faced a heckler?
While I do ask people to leave if they are carrying on a conversation during a screening I have never asked or told people to leave for heckling me while I introduce a program, contrary to what is often written.
I have had people say, “Shut up or give me back my money.” I used to say, “Go get your money.” Now I remind them that the program was advertised as being with an introduction by myself and that while they have the right to like it or dislike it having bought a ticket does not grant them the right to anything more than to observe.
Instead of throwing out hecklers or threatening them with the police (which from Sumi’s piece I gather is what most do) I embrace them.
As an example I was in Montreal standing before 1,000 people a handful of whom simply wanted to just see a movie. I told them that the program had started, that my speaking was part of it, that I was not speaking for their approval but that if they persisted in interfering it would take me longer to get to the end of what I had to say. I also told them I approved of their expressing their opinion and trusted they would allow me to express mine.
The man who ran the theater was a man who had no balls whatsoever. He was prepared to allow a few to steer the ship. He was astonished when the people who had tried to silence me suddenly gave me their full attention. Afterwards he said in surprise, “People love you.”
“Because I love them,” I replied.
It’s easy to love those who give us their love. The true test is to love those who don’t give us their love.
My live programs have filled venues from coast to coast in Canada and in the few venues I have played in The United States.
Toronto’s film writers avoid my programs largely because they may have to listen to me. One fellow said in a piece on myself that when he comes he brings a sandwich because he never knows how long I will speak. He has a distinctive face. It is also a face I have never seen at one of my programs.
Toronto, unfortunately, is infested with conventional writers. Thankfully, we also have a handful of unconventional ones.
Hecklers are part of the theater going experience.
Back in the day there was the claque and the anti-claque. The claque were paid to applaud and cheer. The anti-claque were paid to boo, hiss, and, yes, to heckle.
Television gives us the claque with recorded laughter at comedies but does not provide the anti-claque.
It helps to know what one is talking about. Glenn Sumi doesn’t.
In Toronto he is not the only one.
I got the best kiss of my life from a heckler.
I was in Waterloo, Ontario at the best and most perfect motion picture theater in Canada, John Tutt’s Princess Theater with my ANARCHIST, SURREALIST HALLUCINATORY FILM FEST when, just as I began to introduce it a woman in the audience shouted, “I came to see films not listen to you.” She got up from her seat in the last row of the theater, jumped up on stage and asked people to come up and help her throw me off the stage.
Instead the audience said as one, “We want to hear him.”
She shouted, “You are all brainwashed.”
I picked her up, deposited her gently off the stage.
From the audience came a man’s voice. He said, “If I come up there are you going to throw me off too?”
“Come on up,” I said.
He got up from his seat, marched up on to the stage, approached me.
At once I embraced him. I kissed him.
I expected him to recoil in shock.
Instead he stuck his tongue down to where my tonsils once were.
We waltzed around that stage for what seemed like forever. Then we let go of each other.
“That was class,” he shouted.
The audience was on its feet applauding and cheering.
My shows at The Princess in Waterloo played to capacity crowds.
Like I said, a good heckler is worth their weight in gold.–Reg Hartt 2017-05-25.
Post Script: A fellow wrote somewhere that I had kissed a butt ugly Black man on the stage of The Princess Theater. A few years ago a very handsome Black man appeared at my door. “Do you remember me?” he asked. I replied, “Of course I do. You gave me the best kiss I have ever gotten. Thank you. Come on in.”
As Shakespeare wrote, the world is the stage and all its people players.
It would not have mattered if the man had not been physically handsome. Loving our “enemies” is the only way I know to make this world a better place.
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