Reconsidering The Audience-Artist Contract (Let’s Stop Walking Out On Work We Don’t Get)

Maura Hogan, in a Spoleto Festival USA post-mortem: “Perhaps some among us view our annual arts dive as simply transactional. The customer is always right, so we can bolt from or belittle performances as we see fit. I would argue that we are missing the point. Ditching a performance mid-show is at best disruptive, and potentially far more insidious. … What’s more, if you truly have pride in place regarding our singular city, I can promise you that the provincial attitudes regarding its relationship with world-class performance telegraph that if you scratch the surface — if you go beyond the high-end Boho apparel and performance belt-notching — the walk-outs and sneers render us collectively a bunch of yahoos.”