Bad Behaviour: History of Unruly Audiences

Since the pandemic, audiences have been behaving badly. They have booed opera singers, heckled comedians and fought in the stalls. Even at the best of times, all of us have been irritated by crisp packets, mobile phones and inappropriate conversations. But is this such a new thing? In this entertaining lecture, Mark Fisher revisits the audiences of the past to discover outbursts, protests and punch-ups. From the fatal Astor Place riot in 19th-century New York to the reception of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, he looks at the stories behind the greatest controversies in the performing arts.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Mark Fisher

Mark Fisher is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a contributor to publications all over the world. He has run criticism workshops at schools, universities and theatres all over the UK as well as giving sessions as far afield as Malta, Brazil and Chile. His online workshops have attracted participants from South Africa, Canada, Singapore, the USA, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the UK. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls (2017) and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (2019), both Mark Fisher Ltd.