You are correct that talking is not the problem of the younger generation (at least alone). Ironically, since I first started going to the theatre many years ago, it is a problem very much associated with the opposite end of the generational spectrum. Ditto for cell phones going off. Young people do not generally have their phone's ringer on, and even if they did, they know how to shut it down quickly.
Complaints about other (lower) groups of people not meeting "decorum standards" is nothing new. It goes back as least as far as the Globe et al in the 1700s. (I'm sure longer but I can't as easily document.) So what we have is the usual chorus here singing about the "good old days" (a time when "other" folks were segregated and allowed in, if at all, only when properly obscured seating for them could be arranged.
The goal of theatre is to engage audiences and make its product resonate for them. The biases and prejudices that took hold in the "golden era" are at the root of the predicament in which we find ourselves today, and yet even today we have those here who seem oblivious to their suicidal (for the theatre as an entity) tendencies. |
