![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() My family knows that it’s the rare movie or concert at which I won’t be shooting a glare at a noisy spectator, or having words, and have perfected the slide into their seat to make themselves inconspicuous. In my high school days, during a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” I spun around to an audience member armed with his toilet paper rolls and toast and barked, “Hey buddy, d’you mind?” I speak as a sworn shusher of long experience. The implication is that a noisy audience at a classical show is an uneducated, unsophisticated audience. The rudeness of entertainment audiences has been growing exponentially every year, and now people have an unprecedented arsenal of weaponry to deploy against their fellows, including smartphones with cameras and text capabilities and beeping, glowing wristwatches. It’s the sort of environment that is killing classical music - and live theater, and moviegoing. Oakes seems to think that an environment like this is just what classical music needs to become relevant. … Cellphones, banned in the program that nobody bothers to look at, beep out text alerts.” Throughout the performance “people stomp up and down the aisles spilling their cups of beer, spectators gripe about the hard stone seats, kids fuss and shriek. The woman had set herself up as decorum monitor for her section of Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, and it’s obvious from Oakes’ description that she had her hands full. I’d like to offer my sympathy - to the shusher. Over at, a writer named Kaya Oakes reports resentfully of having been shushed at a recent Yo-Yo Ma recital by the lady seated in front of her, when she leaned over to her husband to make a whispered comment. ![]()
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