Ethics

In any works of art the audience has an indispensable part to play. It is the life blood of any performing arts drama, classical music performance, baroque performance, opera or any kind of live performance. Stanislavsky is correct in saying that spectators come to the theatre to hear the subtext. They can read the text at home. The playgoers do not go to the theatre only to have the play interpreted or explained by the skills of the directors or the actors. The audience forms a partnership without which any performing works of art would be incomplete and inappropriate. Literature projects the vision of life in the manner of virtual memory, and this process would be dead, bad or non-existent without any interaction between the stage or author and the audience. In modern and ancient times there have been reports that violent behaviors by the audience had led to cancellation of the entire show. However, at the turn of the 20th century this trend has visibly begun to change in America. A well-informed audience no longer behaves as it behaved in the Elizabethan period. American audience has shown a great progressive attitude in this regard.

For any modern performing art production now in America the viewpoints expressed by the audience is as necessary as it was in the 18th or 19th century. But what have certainly changed are the behavioral patterns of the audience. It is now more quiet, cultured and meaningful. The identity of todays audience at any performing art events is that of basic civilized behavior which lets the artists perform their works as intended. With the passage of time the social behavioral patterns of the citizens has changed and it is now synonymous with culture and taste. Social etiquette has directed the audience of today to celebrate any performance with delight and enjoy aesthetically and not spoiling the show with loutish behavior.
   
American culture is like a continuous flow of trends, ideals, beliefs, customs and innovations, consistently progressing towards a better and higher cultural value system. American audience accordingly has grown both intellectually and culturally. This growth is indicative of larger trends in socio-economic culture of America. There were times when an audience in New York City started riot with the police because some of them did not agree to a Shakespearean performance. But after the First World War ended, America had been witness to rapid industrialization and quick social changes. Rapid industrial growth was quickly followed by spread of mass education and mass literary movements. The new audience was born. The participation of audience in a performing art increased significantly and this growth necessitated new forms of public entertainment like films, sports and other forms of entertainment that attracted public attention and imagination. The social bifurcation can be visibly witnessed in this period with the rich and upper-class finding their ways to opera houses and concert shows while the not-so-rich class giving vent to their energies in movie theatres and sport houses.
   
19th Century was an important period from the point of view of the audience behavior. The audience, regardless of how they behaved, had the patience to sit through a performance. In that period all major cities in America had more that one playhouses of its own. Even small towns had little troops of actors who performed popular songs, plays, dances and scenes. In 19th Century America Shakespeare and his plays were a major source of popular entertainment. It was not that the audience did not reach to the level of understanding archaic and artistic language. As cultural theorist Lawrence W. Levine said He was performed not merely alongside popular entertainment as an elite supplement to it Shakespeare was performed as an integral part of it. Shakespeare was popular entertainment in nineteenth-century Americaplaying much the same role in the first half of the nineteenth century as movies did in the first half of the twentieth.
   
It is a wrong premise that modern audience does not have the patience to sit through one long opera or theatrical performance. Many modern plays were performed, and are still performed, in front of this audience for quite a long time. Waiting For Godot, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman and many such plays are still being performed amidst the much accolades and enthusiasm on the part of the audience. But one thing is for sure that the role of the performance has changed drastically and dramatically. No longer has the director of the play needed to accommodate one act comedies, popular singers, gymnasts, magic-shows, chorus lines in between the main-show to entertain the popular taste of this time. At that time, many scenes and endings were altered to suit public taste and sensibilities. In modern times the playwright or the director of any performing art enjoys more freedom of artistic expression than before.
   
There are more modern styles of performance like films, television or sports entertainment where people gather in large numbers than opera houses or performance of a symphony orchestra. But classical forms of entertainment have not become obsolete yet only it has grown out of mass-popularity. In todays stage the rendition of Twelfth Night or Macbeth or for that matter King Lear mean that the audience become targeted and only a few will eventually turn up for the show. In popular imagination Shakespeare is heightened to such a level that people view these plays with indifference. Instead people will choose to go to the film version of the play Romeo  Juliet (Romeo  Juliet, 1996, dir by Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes). However, it does not mean that the modern kind of performing art has outmoded operas and symphonies. Beethoven and Mozart still attract large number of people in any part of the world. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra still performs without any ebb in their popularity.
   
Yet, after all the education and social uplifting of the average person in modern-day America, some members of the audience still behave in a rowdy manner as in the 19th century. The audience for Dirty Dancing at the Aldwych Theatre had been likened to a bear pit, where many members of the audience turned up drunk and had to be shoved away. Many performances of Waiting For Godot had to be stopped because some members were taking photographs using their mobile phones. The performance of A Little Night Music had to be stopped because an audience member had walked up to the stage and relieved himself.
   
The future of the American performing art looks bright and convincing. Barring one or two examples where one or two members of the audience found guilty of misbehavior, over all the general audience is more insightful and educated now. The general audience of modern-day America will never behave as they did in the early 19th century. The audience of today will never show their appreciation of a performing work of art by throwing something at the players or booing or hissing at the middle of the performance. It is still unclear whether a new audience attitude will evolve towards the performing art but one thing is for certain that the audience will never act like it did in the 19th century.