The challenge for all of us is to know when we are part of a true audience: when our presence is part of the presenter’s consciousness.
The Broadway actress Patti LuPone is apparently at the end of her tether. As was recently reported in the New York Times, during a performance of a play at Lincoln Center she grew frustrated with an audience member who texted continuously through an entire act. The texter was downfront, just a few feet from the actors. Finally, at the conclusion of the last scene LuPone grabbed the offending phone from the audience member as she left the stage.
The problem of audience members otherwise engaged has been more common in recent years, notwithstanding pleas from theater managers that audiences shut down their arsenals of personal hardware before the lights go down.
As for LuPone, the multiple Tony winner reports that she is utterly defeated by audience members staring into blue screens. With dismay she notes that she may give up working in live theater.1
Anyone who makes any kind of presentation to a group knows how daunting it can be to remain effective when an audience member visible to the presenter has decided to opt for an electronic environment over the one they are in. Any electronic surrogate that gets more attention than the human who striving to connect is bound to produce some justifiable anger. Making a choice in favor of the device not only signals a kind of aggressive indifference to the performer, but other audience members as well. In its own small way, it’s an tacit act of sabotage against a presenter who has a right to expect at least minimal responsiveness.
To say that as a culture we have a problem with granting others our sustained attention is obvious, and not completely attributable to our growing obsession with constant connectivity. Commanding the interest of others always requires the mastery of a very narrow path that threads its way between vast spaces of boredom and distraction.
Cayleigh Goodson aptly illustrates this lack of focus that seems to make attention deficits an emerging norm .
Research on the nature of the fickle human attention span includes a lot of cautionary conclusions. Among them,
Attention Is Intermittent Rather Than Continuous. We make a serious mistake if we believe that humans give themselves over to just one thing at a time. This only happens in times of emergency. Otherwise, our attention to one object wonders, turning on and off faster than lights on a traffic signal. This is why oral presentations need some tactful redundancy.
Demands On Americans For Attention Are Enormous. It comes as no surprise that we have immersed ourselves in environments that flood us with messages. In the pre-electronic world it was not always this way. Previous generations more or less chose their communication moments, especially when work was a more solitary process. Now the arrows are mostly reversed. Those moments mostly choose us: a result of the constant connectivity of e-mail, texts and other proliferating forms of social media.
The Rate Of Decay For The Retention Of Content IsVery Steep. We could not function effectively if burdened with the cognitive consequences of all that we take in. So our brains protect our sanity by discarding most of the data that washes over us. With its emphasis on ceaseless mayhem, news alone would drain our abilities to act on the premise that every event is potentially transformative. So our restless information-processing requires that we ignore a lot, sometimes making us useless as engaged interlocuteurs.
From this last perspective, Patti LuPone is just another momentary intrusion in a continuous parade of incoming stimuli. But she has a right to be ticked off. The challenge for all of us is to know when we are part of a true audience. There’s a simple imperative we need to honor: When our presence is part of the presenter’s consciousness, we should act on the clear obligation to be responsive to their efforts.
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1Erik Piepenburg “Hold the Phone, It’s Patti LuPone,” New York Times, July 9, 2015.
Most people accustomed to the public arena have learned to not take audience opposition personally. In return, members opposed to a persuader can show unexpected forbearance.
Kennedy and Falwell at Liberty University
Several decades ago I wrote a book describing a number of public figures who willingly appeared in front of “hostile audiences.” An audience is “hostile” if its known to oppose who you are or what you intend to say. Even so, these were individuals who were mostly fearless in facing their critics. I think only my mother actually read Persuasive Encounters when it was published in 1990. Yet, a least for me, the idea remains intriguing.
The book included transcripts and analyses of specific public comments made by a range of people, including Phil Donahue, Edward R. Murrow, John Lennon, Ed Koch, Ted Kennedy and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz. Szasz was an interesting case. In a number of books and addresses he went out of his way to warn his medical colleagues that they were crippling their patients by renaming their bad choices as mental health “conditions.” So much for his chances to be a future President of the American Psychiatric Association.
Senator Ted Kennedy was also a useful example. By mistake he was sent an invitation to join the “Moral Majority,” Reverend Jerry Falwell’s crusade to purge secular liberalism and governmental activism from the American political landscape. At what was then Falwell’s somewhat constricted version of higher education known as Liberty Baptist College–they still had curfews, as well as prohibitions against women going on dates–Kennedy was Exhibit “A” for why the nation had strayed from its ostensible Christian roots.
But never a person to miss the humor in our foibles, Kennedy wrote back, telling Falwell he welcomed the invitation. After long distance pleasantries to smooth over the awkward snafu, Falwell made an offer to have Kennedy address his students at Liberty. And so the Massachusetts senator went to Lynchburg in 1983, offering a general plea arguing that we should oppose “religious tests” for public office-holders. That idea remains a cornerstone of evangelicals interested in politics.
The clean-cut audience couldn’t have been more courteous. And Kennedy gave as much as he got. The speech included a generous acknowledgement of Falwell, acceptance of the value of religious belief, and a straightforward argument for tolerance of all or no faith traditions.
In my study, only New York Mayor Ed Koch responded as a rhetorical athlete, matching his audiences shout for shout. He returned a disgruntled resident’s sneer at twice its original speed and with far more topspin. At a particular public meeting held in one of the city’s districts sustained volleys between vocal citizens and the Mayor wore down even hardened veterans of municipal feuds.
Persuaders in front of hostile audiences are interesting not because they may produce charges and countercharges, but mostly because of the reverse: there is usually surprising and sudden elasticity of viewpoint in many who are involved. People accustomed to the public arena have mostly learned to not take audience opposition personally. In return, members opposed to a persuader can show unexpected forbearance.
And so a whole series of questions seem interesting. In terms of communication skills, how resourceful can a respondent be to complaints that they are “out of touch,” or are “dishonoring” the public office they hold? How focused can they remain in the face of criticism and overt disbelief? And what ideas or values can a persuader dramatize which—to quote a common phrase—affirms the idea that ‘our areas of agreement are much greater than our differences?’
Versions of this line have been delivered many times by Barack Obama and less frequently by Donald Trump. In rhetorical terms, it has been a common trope (a recurring pattern in discourse) for public figures to explicitly celebrate a common culture and shared history of beliefs. And so it reenacts what is perhaps the most universal of all communication impulses: the reaffirmation of the other’s legitimacy in the culture. Our opponents may annoy us. They might seek ways to limit our reach or effectiveness. But the basic courtesies we expect even from those with seemingly alien views are an anchor against currents that can sweep away a tenuous civility.
