Sorry to do this to you, but I need to vent some spleen!
I work in a theatre, and at the moment we're putting ballet on (we make our Christmas profits by offering an alternative to pantomime, which every other theatre in the region is putting on). The show is Christmas Carol, based on the Dickens novel - it's a great show and very well done.
Tonight we had a couple of school groups in, a party of 80 and another of 30, for their last Friday of term Christmas treat. Bearing in mind the venue was full and holds nearly 1600, so 110 kids is something like 7% of the audience. And they behaved beautifully. There was the odd sweet wrapper, but it was an odd one, very infrequent. The children left the theatre talking about how they'd loved the show and what a wonderful evening it'd been.
At the end of the show I took a complaint from three ladies about the school groups. The crux of their problem was just that they just didn't want to sit next to children to watch the show. They seemed to think the theatre should have informed them of who was sitting next to them and offered them alternative seats or refunds if that person was unsatisfactory for some reason. They also questioned why we allow children's parties to come to evening shows, seeming to think we should enforce a rule that children should only be permitted to come to matinee performances. Needless to say we sent these ladies away with very little sympathy - they hadn't even mentioned to a member of staff they'd like to move if it was possible, so gave us no opportunity to offer them any alternatives.
Gaahhh! It makes my blood boil! How can people be so small-minded? Of course nobody wants to sit next to someone at a theatre who's being obnoxious, but these were children who also happened to be very well behaved. I can't help but wonder if people like these three women are part of the reason it's so difficult to get children involved in the arts - people who want to restrict their access to it and make it both elitist and the province of older people only. Working for a theatre, we spend a lot of time and effort getting children involved with our shows and the theatre because they get so much from it even if they don't decide to pursue a career in it. But if these women had their way, we wouldn't have allowed the children to have the opportunites and inspiration that performance at its best can provide. How do people expect children to grow up to be both interested and interesting if they ban them from anything that might give them joy or spark a desire to learn?
Ok, I've finished ranting! It just makes me crazy when people are so ignorant and don't even seem to realise it... these three women are going to write in to formally complain, and will get an unsympathetic written response pointing out that children are people too...
Topic: Bit of a rant!