Don’t feel obliged to stand for professional performer

Dear Miss Manners: When is one obliged to join a standing ovation? My understanding is that standing ovations are reserved for truly outstanding performances and that applause while seated will suffice as a show of appreciation for other performances.

If one’s fellow audience members judge a performance worthy of a standing ovation and rise, however, is one required to join them? Is it rude to remain seated while others around you are standing? Dear Miss Manners: I received a beautiful amethyst bracelet and set of earrings as a birthday gift. I Gentle Reader: Doyou always feel that you have to vote with the majority?

Not a fair question, Miss Manners admits. You vote in private. In public, youwant to be polite, surely with her approval.

Aha! Nowwe are at the heart of the question: Is an ovation a vote, which is to say a sign of high approval of a performance? Or is it a polite gesture, away of thanking the performers for their efforts, whether or not you thought these were successful?

In theatrical— and especially musical— tradition, audience reaction is a judgment, and the standing ovation its most dramatic sign of admiration, short of flinging bouquets or oneself at one’s artistic idol.

But modern audiences have the notion that wild enthusiasm is owed in return for any effort, and that leaving an auditorium when the piece is over without a huge show of appreciation is like leaving a party without gushing to the hosts.

Not quite. This is true of amateur performances, especially those to which one has been invited by one of the participants. But professionals ought to have the thrill of knowing that a standing ovation is a true triumph. It would be a shame to wake up the next day to find that the same people have posted their dissatisfaction all over the Internet. remember one of Grandmother Manners’ maxims was “Colored stones are vulgar.”

Will you please elaborate and provide context for this rule? Gentle Reader: It is time to confess that the family suspects our much-beloved Grandmother Manners made that one up.

Of course, we also thought that she made up “Alady never checks her coat at a restaurant,” and that obscure rule turned out to be documented in the literature. Wemay just be bitter about the jewelry we didn’t inherit when she condemned it.

Please enjoy your amethysts in good conscience. Miss Manners will square it with Grandmother Manners. Dear Miss Manners: Eulogies have recently been the topic of discussion in our family. I personally do not see the need for them. A funeral is a very difficult place for public speaking, especially when you are close to the deceased (i.e., mother or father). Gentle Reader: Yes, it is, and therefore it is not the immediate survivors who are expected to deliver eulogies, unless they have volunteered to do so. Their task is to invite otherswho can speak well of different aspects of the deceased’s life.

Itwas not always thus. The “celebration of life” funeral developed when itwas no longer common for the deceased to have been well-known enough to the presiding clergy for the eulogy to be left in professional hands.

The newer form is not without hazards. Miss Manners has sat through funerals at which the speakers made tasteless jokes or told self-serving stories to illustrate how highly the person who died had admired them.