Robert Viagas

Usually they've been working all day, they're exhausted, they may have had a couple of pops on their way in, and they tend to do what's called sitting on their hands.

They don't applaud, they don't laugh.

It's very, very hard to get a Friday night audience rolling.

Good actors are able to do it, but it's hard.

You become a creature.

It's interesting how unanimous audiences can be.

When something funny happens, you don't get half the audience laughing and the other half of the audience growling.

Audiences tend to pick up energy from the other people sitting with them, and they tend to reach unanimity.

I remember...

Talking to playwrights, one thing that became very popular in the 90s was to do a play and then afterward have a talkback where people could raise their hands and ask questions about the play or give comments on the play, etc.

And I spoke to a playwright who once said, individual audiences are always wrong.

But the audience as a group is always right.

And that's why a lot of these people, instead of having talkbacks, they'd rather just sit out in the audience and just listen.

Movies do this too.

They do audience reaction.

Instead of just asking one or two people, they will sit there in the back and they will watch the audience watch the movie.

And the group reaction is more significant than individual comments because a big audience will somehow reach a magical consensus just from being in the same room together.

You probably heard in New York, they have what's called Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway.

And primarily those are based on how many seats are in the house.

And you'll sometimes see a show, they'll open on Broadway and people will say, you know, this was really, this needed to be in a smaller theater.