Reader TTS

On a Tuesday evening a few weeks ago my partner and I stopped by the box office of our local theatre just as it was opening. A famous play neither of us had seen or read was on for a very

short run. Outside a man, I guess in his seventies, was very politely but at some length berating a chap I recognised as the box office manager. We went in to wait. When the guy finally came

in and sat down he told us there were no returns for that evening but there were two tickets going for a matinée tomorrow. We took them. Just before the credit card was handed over, though,

a shadow seemed to fall across him. Hesitantly he said that maybe he should warn us the play was on the GCSE syllabus. His point being not that it was likely therefore to be over our heads,

though that would have been a perfectly fair assumption, but that the audience for every single performance of this run was very predominantly made up of large parcels of schoolchildren.

This was what had got the old gentleman’s goat the night before. Not a problem for us, we assured him — and ourselves. The next afternoon we went to the show. It was hard to get a good look

at the audience from the very back of the stalls – it was hard to get much of a look at the set too, as the balcony above us masked the upper section. We could see among us around half a

dozen people in their fifties and sixties, along with some younger folk who were teachers – judging by the just-keeping-it-together expressions on their faces. Every other member of the

audience was in school uniform and aged fifteen or sixteen. And very, very excited. The atmosphere was what I imagine you get before a boxing match. Or a chariot race. I’ve been a

theatregoer, though hardly an indefatigable one, for five decades. For all of that time the great majority of my fellow audience members have been aged between 50 and 70. Unlike policemen,

they don’t seem to have got any younger – in fact they’ve stayed the same age. Where’s the new blood, it’s often asked, theatre’s new sacrificial victims? Well, here they were, and sat right

next to me. From what we could tell, the students were, predominantly, from state schools nearby. The audience was strongly multicultural. It didn’t seem quite the right time to conduct a

vox pop but our whispered impression was that a lot of these kids had never been to a theatre performance before. At least, not a straight one. That’s not meant to sound patronising: I

didn’t go to one until I was fourteen, when my girlfriend’s parents took us to see _The Mousetrap_ – then a mere juvenile of twenty years old. The rest of the audience were American

tourists, many wearing plastic macs. It still did the trick for me. As it became clear the performance was about to begin, the teachers starting _shsh_-ing. This only ratcheted up the volume

several more notches, as the _shsh-_ing was enthusiastically amplified and gleefully echoed by the students. Ripples of _shshes_ cascaded round the auditorium, each setting off another,

louder one, that turned into a wave, revving up still higher the atmosphere of already slightly hysterical hilarity. Then the play began. Now the laughter and whoops and remarks and

_shsh_-ing only increased. At first the _raucouserie _reminded me of the pantomimes I’d been to. As a parent, but especially – _Ou sont les_ Snow Whites_ d’antan_? – the ones I was taken to

at the London Palladium towards Christmas in the early sixties. Which, by order of the Lord Chamberlain himself had to star Arthur Askey – playing Widow Twankey whatever the pantomime

happened to be – and, inevitably, Cliff Richard and The Shadows. In this performance, no-one was invited up on stage or screamed out “_He’s behind you_!” – but it felt like it might not be

far away. We did start to wonder if the old guy had had a point. (When my partner and I later swapped notes with an English teacher friend, Virginia told us that when she took parties of

schoolchildren to the theatre unaccompanied adults sometimes got up and asked for their money back before the kids had even sat down.) As the play unfolded I quickly came to the conclusion

that it was complete hokum. Thank God I wasn’t sitting a GCSE this summer, because I hate to lie. The production too was … well, let’s say, uneven. But as it went on I was more and more glad

I’d come. Why, because it turned out I was in for a fantastic reminder of the sheer power of live theatre. On a brand new generation of experimental subjects. Years ago I was told, or read,

that a woman at a matinée of _Othello_ at Stratford was so swept up by the emotions of the play that at one point she’s supposed to have shouted out, “He’s lying to you, you stupid

bastard!” Here too there was an extraordinary level of engagement on the part of this enthusiastic, lively, and in the best sense, impressionable young audience, its disbelief suspended as

the fourth wall melted away. Every single bit of stage business triggered loud guffaws. And then, as the dramatic materials on stage got darker, the atmosphere in the auditorium turned into

one of astonishment and alarm. As tempers frayed on stage, and one character or another made an aggressive or snippy remark  – especially when the _ingénue _was on the receiving end – it

drew gasps all around us. Of shock – _Wow!_ – or _Oohs_! in the sense of Get _him!_ Get _her_! A brief stage fight, well managed, provoked audibly shocked concern. When the heroine slapped

her philandering fiancé round the chops — he was asking for it — there were sharp intakes of breath. A disparaging remark about the age and figures of the pleasure women of the town drew

something like cat calls. And when the son complained to the father that he was cold and unapproachable there were cries of natural sympathy – for the old man. Tension crackled through the

audience. At one point it occurred to me that if I held the hand of the fifteen year old girl next to me – I didn’t pursue this line of action – I would actually get an electric shock, like

in the old playground routine. It would be naïve to suppose that none of these children had witnessed, in real life, a sickening fight or a frightening and vicious row. Perhaps even

involving members of their own family. Drama, as Aristotle observed, allows us to process such experiences, at a safe distance. But how safe, and at what distance? This audience had, one

assumes, read the set text. (Even if they only followed the example of the Hollywood mogul Jack Warner, who, when asked if he’d actually read a novel he’d paid a fortune to option for the

screen said: “Of course. I read part of it all the way through.”) They would, surely, have seen violence and angry arguments convincingly acted out in films and on TV? I ask these rhetorical

and redundant questions because what was so very striking to me was the unbridled vitality of these teenagers’ responses to live drama. The conflict on stage, these shaming home truths,

angry denials and queasy exculpations … all this psychodrama was being played out fifty or sixty feet away from them. Not by avatars summoned by celluloid, cathode rays or fibre optics, but

by real, flesh and blood human beings. Prick them, certainly they would bleed. In a golden word, this was theatre. Far from wanting these children to _shsh!_ I was energised by their

enjoyment and, most of all, their unselfconscious engagement. I went away thoroughly pleased that several hundred school children had been taken to see that the play really is the thing. The

real thing. If just five per cent of these young folk fall in love with the theatre and continue to watch plays, then – assuming that neither they nor their parents had had to pay for this

excursion themselves – whoever ultimately funded a fleet of charabancs to turn up and disgorge their cargo of beginners to the stage that afternoon, well … their – or perhaps our – money was

very well spent.