Concert Etiquette – Who teaches?

When I go to my son’s school music concerts, I’m always amazed at the concert behavior some of the audience exhibits. When a group performs, one should be quiet. When your child has finished performing and there are other musical groups to follow, you don’t leave. Yet adults either do these things or sit by while children do them. How do you instill the love of art and music, if you demonstrate to your child that the only reason you are there is because your child is in it, not because you enjoy music. Whose job is it to teach audiences proper etiquette?

I find this issue somewhat similar as a professional storyteller. How do you get audiences that generally do not go to storytelling events to react to you?

Some of the issues are similar to the music issue I raised.  If you are sitting in an audience and while a performance is going on you find your 3 year old start to get antsy and loud, what do you do? From my point of view, you pick up the child and leave the performance until cooler heads return, or you don’t even bring the child to the event if you know that is going to be an issue. This goes for any type of concert. I am very impressed with a regional music organization (SCMEA) that puts on a yearly concert with the best musicians from our area. In their program they specifically lay out the rules of etiquette for concertgoers. That is an attempt to educate audiences. I wish more groups would do that.

There are other interesting audience responses to storytelling that you don’t always see at musical events.  I was recently performing before a group of parents and children in a hotel banquet hall. I had my own set of speakers, so I was able to be heard, though the acoustics were not the greatest.  As much as I encouraged the kids and adults to sit in the front, where I had cleared away space, a number chose to sit at the big circular banquet tables spread throughout this large room. What amazed me was the audience’s behavior as I either sung or told stories. When I was singing, you could have heard a pin drop. They were attentive and all was quiet. When I would finish my song, I would get some applause from the group.  When I started telling a story, no matter how loud, dynamic, and mobile I was, the audience relaxed and felt it was okay to have their own conversations throughout the room, making it very difficult to keep the focus of all but the ones close to me. As I finished a story (and this happens even when everyone is very attentive) generally there was no response.

Why does it appear that the telling of a story is not in the same realm as a musical performance? I think a lot of it has to do with ignorance on the part of the audience.  They just don’t know how to react. If there is a person in the audience that knows how to react at the conclusion of a piece and begins to applaud, then usually others follow. But if no one has ever been to a storytelling concert, that’s not a guarantee. Many a time, no matter how involved the audience is in the participation of the story as it is being told, when it ends (and for me a lot of the time it ends with…”and that is the story of. . . by . . .) everyone is quiet.  They don’t know what to do. It’s not like they don’t enjoy what I did. I get a lot of complements afterwards.

So how do you educate an audience to react at the conclusion of stories? Is it my role as the storyteller, or the role of the creator or director of the event? Should I ask that instructions be given by the MC prior to introducing me, just to raise the consciousness of the listeners to good concert going etiquette? Or just continue to do what I do now and begin the next set?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.