Audience Participation - Love It Or Loathe It?

Absolutely LOATHE it!

I just want to relax and be entertained. If the cast start some sort of audience participation I spend the entire evening dreading them picking on me.

My most recent experience was typically humiliating. I was in the middle of the second row for Pure Imagination - the Leslie Bricusse show at the St James Theatre - now the Other Palace. Giles Terera singing Candy Man was offering out sweets to the entire row who obligingly held out their hands for one. Feeling I would look stupid if I was the only one in the row NOT to hold out their hand for a sweet I did so but when he got to me their was an instrumental break in the song and he said "oh not for you" and withdrew the sweet! The audience laughed and I just wanted to die! I am sure it was nothing personal and he did that every night on the instrumental break to whomever he had got to in the audience - but stupidly it completely ruined the evening for me!

As I said I just want to watch, relax and immerse myself in the show, not worry I am going to have to hold stupid props and become the butt of some joke!

Oh well in that case ....bring it on!!!!

Normally I hate it (except for immersive theatre, when it's expected). However, at the end of Moby Dick at the Union the cast were getting people to stand up and dance. I'd enjoyed the show so much that I was in a really great mood and was happy to join in!

Oh if we are talking finale audience participation of up and dance, I cannot tell a lie, I am usually the first one twerking in the aisle.

If I'd known Sunny Afternoon was going to end with a megamix, I'd have left at the interval.

I must admit, other tha the megamix style endings of shows, I have rarely been to an audience participation show, in London especially. Other than Play That Goes Wrong and Jest End of course.

I know. I stupidly forgot about that part and when I went a second time I sat at the end of a row in the Stalls (well it wasn't the end of the row but there was no one between me and the end). When they started coming into the audience I clenched everything started feeling hot and sick, but thankfully they didn't pick me. That sort of thing really is not for me as it's designed to get the audience to laugh at you. Definitely not what I pay for. I don't mind some mega-mixes.

It's not helped by the fact that they're probably told to pick someone who looks like they'll be "good value" in some way. In other words will look a right numpty doing the dance etc. They're not gonna pick someone who's going to look dead cool up there on stage are they.

Loathe it. For all the reasons others have mentioned. I'm terribly shy and hate speaking in any kind of group bigger than about 5 people (and it's taken me years even to do that confidently!). What makes entertainers think I'd be remotely interested in messing about on a stage in front of a crowd?

If I go to comedy gigs, I make sure I sit well out of the danger zone. Same with magic shows (though that can be harder to avoid as they often draw from throughout the room to show there are no stooges). I think with Impossible they mainly asked for volunteers, but could be my memory playing tricks...?

There are some situations where, though I wouldn't want to be picked, I wouldn't curl up and die if I was. Penn and Teller, say, or the Mischief Theatre lot. Their shows are laid back and funny, so you feel the audience laugh with the unsuspecting victim rather than at them.

At Wilton's Music Hall, Celia Imrie gave me two pieces of cake during 'Mixed Up North'. Now that is the kind of audience participation I like.

Which reminds me of this story
www.musicalofthedecade.info/Audience_misbehaviour_a_confession_.html

I sat front row at Protest Song in the NT's Temporary Theatre. I was one of the people who had to deal with the persistent attentions of Rhys Ifans's character. I obviously made an impression on him because after the curtain call he approached me to return the pound coin his character had successfully begged in the show. But it had actually been donated by someone else.