Turn Down the House Lights

The other night at the Sondheim event, the introductions were done by a gentleman whose name I didn't catch. But I do remember something he said and I've been thinking about it. Here's an approximation of his words…

Later, there will be a Q-and-A session and I'm sorry to say I need to explain to people what the "Q" means. It means you ask a question. A question is a sentence that begins with an interrogatory pronoun and it ends with a question mark and your voice goes up at the end. And it's one sentence. If it's more than one sentence, it's not a question. This is not an audition. It is not about you. We don't need to hear what the first Sondheim show was you saw and how it forever changed your life. Just ask a real question and sit down.

As you know, I moderate a lot of public events and while I occasionally say a little of that, I never go that far. I think I'm going to start…or, better still, consider skipping the "questions from the floor" portion entirely. It's been clear to me that many audiences do not want the kind of audience participation that usually occurs these days.

The folks at the Sondheim interview cheered the admonition. An open mike at a public event has increasingly become a magnet for people who should not be allowed near open mikes at public events. Audiences have begun to dread that portion of the program and to regard it as the signal that the event they came to see has come to an end. Thereafter, they can either leave (many do at that point) or sit there and cringe as control passes from the person they wanted to hear and goes to some stranger who, but for this opportunity, would never be speaking in front of a real audience and/or to someone of importance.

This seems like a new trend to me. I don't recall it happening much at lectures and panels I attended in the sixties, seventies and eighties, but it got going in the nineties and has sadly become the norm in this century.

There are always tip-offs, always danger signs. One is when someone camps out at the microphone in the aisle for the entire talk, waiting for their chance. That guy, you just know is there to hijack the attention. The person who gets up and starts with "On behalf of everyone here…" or "And I know I speak for everyone…" is about to say something just to force the audience to applaud, and they probably think that applause is for them.

I have also seen great gymnastics of segue performed to formulate a question that seems to make it natural for the question-asker to mention their own current projects or even perform a bit. One time, I was interviewing Ray Bradbury. The first guy at the mike — who'd been poised there since before Ray and I arrived on stage — just wanted to say how much Ray's work had inspired his own, beginning efforts and he wanted to read aloud a passage from one of those stories to demonstrate this. If I hadn't stopped him, he'd have turned the rest of the hour into a books-on-tape recital.

I see the worst of it when I host panels about Cartoon Voicing. We always seem to get an audience member who aspires to that profession — not that there's anything wrong with so aspiring — but wants to ask for advice in a couple of different voices and accents. The panels themselves are always great and no one leaves…up until the moment when I say, "Let's take some questions from the floor." That's when people figure it's over and they start trudging out…so I'm going to stop saying it. Or at least, I'll be much ruder if I do say it and the first lady at the mike has a question she's been dying to have answered but which can only be asked in her Bart Simpson impression.

Anyway, that's what I've been waiting my whole life to say, and I know I speak for everyone when I say it…and by the way, my new book is available from Amazon. Thank you. Oh, and one more thing — on behalf of everyone here, I really want to thank you for everything you've done…and is it okay if I give out my website address and pass out some flyers I happen to have along?