Sunday, September 21, 2014

Why You Gotta Be So Rude?

The Wittenberg Choir held its successful annual Variety Show on Friday and Saturday. Each night procured a full house, with additional seating necessary to accommodate the turn out, and the shows raised a lot of money for the choir, despite the negative occurrence on Saturday night.

While the choir members were performing their solos and duets, there were two groups of individuals mocking, laughing, and talking to each other and on their cell phones DURING the performances. The singers put on a brave face and tried to ignore the rude nature of these audience members, and they still focused on their respective performances.

After this continued to happen, Frances Fonza, the choir's director, came over between acts and told the disrespectful people to either quiet themselves or leave the room. The audience members got quiet, and remained in their seats after that.

The other group was about halfway up in the middle section, acting in the same manner. Other audience members commented to me about how hard it was to enjoy the performances while these people were having lengthy conversations. Thankfully, after Fonza's reprimand of the first set of individuals, the second group quieted down as well.

As a performer, nothing is quite as disrespectful as people distracting others during a show. We worked hard for weeks to perfect the 21 acts for the VOLUNTARY audience's pleasure, and the fact that people came to the show and then tried to talk on their phones DURING it was very upsetting to us behind the scenes, as we were trying to get emotionally ready for our numbers and focus on the acting aspects within the show.

I was fortunate enough to not have this happen during my solo, but it still stuck with me knowing that there were audience members who didn't have enough courtesy to just sit back and enjoy an hour and a half of dancing, comedy, and music.

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