Oh no she didn’t .......

Audience Participation 

2 words to strike fear deep inside me , 2 words I never want to see on a theatre programme , 2 words that will have my stomach churning throughout a performance 
Id like to say this is a recent thing but more of that later.

In recent times when going to the theatre I have tried to make sure that seats are chosen in safe places , not on the aisles and certainly not on the front row 
My mum found out that this doesn’t always work though when we went to see ‘Cats’ in London 
We thought we had safe seats , not knowing that the centre stage revolved and as a result we were actually in the front row , resulting in the Jack the lad cat (can’t remember his name) standing on the stage ,exclaiming “oh Mother , you came” , bouncing over to Mum and proceeding to hug her , transferring his grease painted whiskers onto her face !! We also had various ‘cats’ crawling round our legs , purring and rubbing their faces up our legs 
Another time we settled down for a comedy version of Hamlet and I ended up with a tomato sauce covered (supposed to be blood) Hamlet dying whilst sitting on my lap 
Nope , not the most enjoyable night at the theatre for me !!
So here does this hatred for audience participation come from you ask ? 

It was the Measley Germs at the village hall 

Yes , you read that right 
When I was very young , I think I was about 3 , theatre groups used to put on small shows in the village hall that I went to play group in.I can remember going there with Mum , Dad and my 2 Brothers and there it began.

If I’m honest I can’t remember the storyline , just the traumatic part . The play was in some part about measles (???) and the scary part was that each child was given a packet of red dot stickers and at a certain point in the performance we had to stick as many of these onto our skin as possible so the measley germs didn’t get us.
Now this caused me to panic , I really did think I was going to get measles if I wasn’t quick enough , if I didn’t put enough stickers on , I think by this time I was in tears as the actors came amongst the audience to catch any children not properly stickered.
And this one play from about 42 years ago is the reason I hate audience participation , why I hated seeing Rod Hull and Emu , why I don’t like Panto ,why singalong shows are torture , I wonder if any of the actors in this show know the lasting impact they have had on me !! 
All together now “Oh no they don’t “ xx