Thursday, November 18, 2021
After disruption at Guthrie's 'Christmas Carol,' Twin Cities theaters look at safety practices
StarTribune.com: Twin Cities theater companies are taking a new look at their contingency plans, including how to deal with disruptive and obstreperous patrons, in the wake of an incident last Friday at the Guthrie Theater. At the start of the performance of "A Christmas Carol," an audience member launched into a rant that delayed the show for a half-hour.
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Yikes. Disruptive audience members are the worst, even more so when they are screaming a muddle of nonsense and racism. Managing audience disruption to begin with is a difficult task, especially when so many (usually white people, white women) people have so much self-awarded entitlement and do not think they need to correct themselves. It sounds like the person in this particular case at the Guthrie Theatre was under the influence of something or just genuinely not in a healthy state of mind. That must have been scary for other audience members, especially reading that there were kids there. Christmas Carol is a family show, so I will say again, YIKES. It would be good for the theatre to have security on staff to deescalate those kinds of situations. I am glad to see that they actually did hire someone for a similar role, and I hope it pays off in future uncomfortable situations.
My heart aches for the performers that had to carry on with the performance after something that is so disgusting and vial took place that must have frightened them and took them entirely out of the world of the show. I hope that these types of situations never happen, but in the event that they do I hope that we as an industry allow for the actors and patrons to take time to breathe and feel safe again before returning to the stage. We have all been taught that the show must go on, but sometimes the show must pause to take a moment before going on. Actors are human beings, not robots that can perform under any condition no matter what. It is really alarming that someone could do this in the audience of a theatrical production, and I am grateful to know that contingency plans are being adjusted to account for these types of situations going forward. It is extremely unfortunate that an event like this had to happen for change and awareness to be made.
I think it’s remarkable, but also good, that these things happen so infrequently. There needs to be better processes on how to handle this kind of thing, and I’m not sure police is the best strategy. I did find it interesting that people were more inclined to leave if a police officer asked them to leave than a man dressed in a suit, unsurprising, but interesting. I find it hard to believe nothing like this has happened in the past, I do wonder why now. It also makes me think about the fact that we often don’t change systems until there is a reason to. Additionally I wonder why she wasn’t necessarily charged with anything but brought to receive some form of help. This also makes me wonder if theatre staff are allowed to physically remove a person. I wonder if perhaps they are reconsidering the training given to such staff.
That’s so scary. This is so scary. It can’t imagine how unsafe and unprepared the performers felt to deal with a patron so bad that the show had to be stopped. It’s interesting how simple the man at the end’s solution was, but how difficult it could be to keep in practice. He just said that the best way to deal with it is to just have someone in a police uniform deal with it over a manager because people are much more likely to cooperate. The idea of de-escalation is cool until the person you want to de-escalate only wants to escalate. Having a private police force act as security in a venue like this seems like the easy fix but police are 1) unreliable and generally bad with mental health issues and 2) should not be brought into arts as an integral force of safety. I honestly have no clue as to how to make this situation safer but I hope they do.
It unfortunately seems like this is a job for police and there’s not really any pre-planning that could see this coming. I assume theaters have a list of people that aren’t allowed back and I’m sure this lady is going on it. It seems to me that there is a limiting cost factor that would keep this from happening because if you paid a bunch of money to see a show, it’s unlikely that you’re going to interrupt it because you’re going to get kicked out and they’re most definitely not going to refund your ticket on your way out the door. And unless the theater is planning on doing background checks on all their patrons, even with that I don’t see them catching people like this because that would probably end up being classified as discriminatory behavior. I am amazed that this woman wasn’t charged if she was stating blatantly racist things.
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