At the theater, watching the audience
I can still remember my first sex education class at school in Britain. My classmates and I were all about 11, and our introduction to “the birds and bees” was initially a video showing a family playing badminton at a nudist resort.
Our teacher followed this by reading a carefully prepared list of dos and don’ts — although, as I went to a Roman Catholic school, the list was almost entirely made up of don’ts.
That lesson was not the first time we’d learned about sex; our parents had been feeding us information over the years. But I recall the giggling that emanated from every corner of the class as we watched that video, prompting the teacher every few minutes to shout, “Oh, just grow up!”
It was possibly the most awkward moment of my life.
Twenty-five years later, in summer 2014, I realized I was experiencing the same exact feeling I had during that class while sitting in the Beijing National Library Concert Hall.
I’d been watching a live recording of Shakespeare’s
Coriolanus as part of a National Theater Live event. About two-thirds in was a scene in which exiled Roman warrior Caius Marcius, the central character played by British heartthrob Tom Hiddlestone, pledges his sword to frienemy Aufidius in order to wreak revenge on the people who forced him out of Rome.
In accepting the offer, the actor playing Aufidius kissed Hiddlestone full on the mouth, which sparked uproarious laughter from the mostly Chinese audience.
“Why are people laughing?” I asked my wife, confused by the reaction to such a powerful scene. “This guy is agreeing to slaughter everyone in Rome,” I said.
Eventually, after catching her breath and wiping the tears from her eyes, she answered, “Because it’s just so gay!”
As the two actors on screen continued to spit verse, their faces an inch or so apart, the laughter continued, and I began to ask myself whether I was really watching a Shakespearean tragedy or had accidentally wandered into Stephen Chow’s latest comedy.
I’m not sure why, but it felt like I’d been transported back to 1990 and was again surrounded by giggling 11 year olds, only this time it was me who wanted to shout “Oh, just grow up!”
The laughing didn’t ruin the show for me, but it did break the tense atmosphere that the tragic work usually creates. It also proved once again that it’s always an education — if not entertaining — to see a play or film in a foreign country.
The first time I went to a movie theater in the United States — it was Austin Powers 2 in New York City — I remember being amazed when everyone started clapping at the end, as though the actors we about to come out and bow.
But the funniest was in Vietnam, where I was dragged to a screening of
Mama Mia! with some female friends. Each time a character switched from speaking to singing, the crowd erupted in wild, uncontrollable laughter.
“We don’t do musicals,” my friend, who is from Hanoi, said as tears of laughter streamed down her face.
Her reaction was worth the entrance fee alone.