#luckily i've never had an audience that dead and heartless ever again

[blunderpuff]

i was friends with a Stage Manager who let me watch a production of Peter Pan from the booth (and this was a Professional Production where cheap seats started at like $60 and the prices for better seats were astronomical). So when Tinkerbell drinks the poison for Kuzco Peter, Peter screams for the audience to clap to bring her back.

However. This was an expensive production. No one really brought kids young enough to get into this (usually the Under 10s). There were fewer than 15 kids in the audience, and about only 20 people clapped when Peter begged them to. And since so few people were clapping, they all stopped pretty quickly because they were embarrassed to be the only person around themselves who was clapping.

So Peter Pan is on stage, desperately repeating lines, and no one is clapping and it's horrifying, and then it gets worse because the Assistant Stage Manager realizes that literally the rest of the scene hinges on Tink "getting better", so she starts clapping (from the stage right wing), and then there's more clapping from behind the scenery, because the props and costume crew start clapping and it's just... it was so weird. it was awful. the audience NEVER got into it, so there's just disembodied clapping coming from behind the scenery, and Tink "gets better" and the show goes on, but you can bet your whiskers the whole crew was like "WTF was that?!?!?!" at the end of the night

I love when fiction makes the audience feel guilty about their role as the audience. When something fucked up is treated as a joke but later it's recognised how fucked up it was and the audience feels guilty for finding it funny. When a character breaks the fourth wall to plead for help, and you can't do anything so you just watch. And you know that the characters pain isn't real, but they're begging for help and you're not helping because their suffering is entertainment for you