Sometimes this is not about hard news, subsidy stress or downplaying for a while, but about other matters of art. Director and writer Erik Snel sent us the following sigh, now made topical again by The suspected side effect of the flu shot:
As fans, we know that theatre likes to break taboos. For instance, we no longer look up from sexual perversions actually performed before our eyes, we are happy to be insulted, we endure the display of our gut feelings on stage, we see the lords and ladies of the stage pissing, vomiting, shitting and bleeding ("Why don't you act it") and we say, "interesting!" or "Too bad you can't really shock on stage anymore", or we joke about the amount of pubic hair we were treated to today.
There are no more taboos. Everything is negotiable. Except .... sleep.
It's embarrassing and yet you see it at every performance. Someone falls asleep in the stands. Anyone who visits the theatre more often, anyone who can count actors among their circle of acquaintances knows how distracting a sleeping person is (always a man, I've never seen a woman sleeping in theatre) for both actor and spectator. But why really? Of course, as an actor, you want your audience to be alert and fascinated. And usually 99% of the audience manages to show at least some semblance of engagement, so why whine about the one sleeping head.
The sleeper doesn't hurt anyone. Very occasionally he snores once in a while, but most of the time he is more not - than present. So that can't be the problem. The issue is probably a more psychological annoyance. A projected annoyance too. "Yeah, say, go have a potty break here! We all want to, but you don't, do you?"
Sleeping is seen as the most provocative demonstration of disinterest.
The sleeper is treated as someone who forgot to turn off their phone, or who talks through the performance. Completely unjustified.
Here sits the sleepy-head who has worked himself silly all day, who has done some quick, quick, quick shopping and cooked a meal because his wife had to pick up the children. The man who, with mounting irritation, pushes the dishes into the washing machine (otherwise they'll just sit there), waits nail-bitingly for the not-so-punctual babysitter, knows his wife frowning beside him in the car because he can't find a parking space near the theatre - "let me out, I'll get the tickets" - then arrives just in time - "no, you really can't go to the toilet", inside greasing his face to hear the reproaches: "hey why are you so late, now we're at the very back, oh no, all the way in the front row there are still seats!", stammering - "should we?" - and is told, as an almost superfluous answer, "Sure! And turn off that stupid phone".
Then, for the first time that day, the man is allowed to sit on a chair and let the warmth of the hall come to him. After a long wait, the audience light goes out and, in a shadowy backlight, a person appears agonisingly slowly, claiming to be a herald - what is a herald again? - and reports on some utterly forgotten event in a monologue in blank verse in which it is unclear whether it is multiple sentences or a sequence of disused words. And only then, yes, only then, does this man - who is not a great lover of drama anyway, but wants to please his wife because he was not at his most sociable at her sister's birthday last week - the lights go out, too.
Blessed are those who are never bothered by this, but for all those others, who after half an hour are nodding off, whose heads are slowly sinking and who gradually manage to restrict their breathing to a very emphatic regularity, the question remains: can anything be done about it?
First, let's talk about the factual side of the story. What exactly is happening, where, when and how does it stop again?
With me, it has nothing to do with the quality of the performance. Very occasionally dynamics, fireworks or a constant agitation help, but more often it ends up working against and even stimulating my yawning. As a teacher, I did get busted if I couldn't disguise the fact that I was napping. A colleague of the performing student once pointed out to me that this really couldn't be happening after all. But yes. Couldn't! I fell asleep. It's not like I had been dancing furiously in dubious clubs the nights before or that I had deliberately swallowed a sleeping pill. I hadn't even eaten heavily. There was nothing to suggest that I had taken the student's stage performance too lightly beforehand.
With me, it is a phenomenon that starts about nine o'clock at night and is often over before 9.30pm. Should someone organise a theatre marathon until the next day, I will not fall asleep for the remaining time. It's really about that risk time. It is incredibly annoying (though nowhere near as annoying as a full bladder; what a pinch of misery someone can experience in the theatre) so I would love to be resistant to the sleep ghost. I look forward to hearing about your experiences.
In addition, I am curious about the experiences of theatre practitioners. What do you do about it? Can you do something about it? Is it bad? Can you adjust the dynamics of your performance? Should we start later? Should we make it easier for the audience to walk in and out? Stretch their legs for a while? Should we be more interactive? Is that strict, passive concentration still of our time? Or should we prepare nice little beds and assume we're in another dreamland from time to time?
We look forward to your reactions in the comments.
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