I used to think I’d never walk out of a cinema unless I’d wandered into the wrong screen or gone into labour. (NB If I’d had contractions during Inception, any recent Bond films or Looper, I’d put my popcorn to one side and get on with it quietly.) Then I saw Keith Lemon the Film... But would I have done the same if the director were in the audience? Would you leave an exhibition with the artist standing there, or an author’s reading of their new book? Probably not. Live performance is a different ballgame because an artist is presenting his work to you, directly.

Performers feed off the energy in the room, positively or negatively, so is walking out just bloody rude – or part of the live experience of theatre, comedy, dance et al? Take this year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award winner, Doctor Brown, forcing audience participation to the extent that every show contains both euphoria and a fair few walk outs. Without polarised reactions and a sense of danger, the performance would lose its electricity. Without an audience, a performer is just a person arsing about for their own amusement.

Similarly, ‘In-yer-face theatre’ isn’t shocking if the audience feel only marginally scandalised. Have you ever seen Sarah Kane’s Blasted? Is it acceptable for a narrative to be interrupted by a huge explosion, resulting in violent non sequitur? (SPOILER ALERT: a man eats a dead baby.) Not for a lot of people (I didn’t walk out), but that’s part of the dialogue that live performance provokes. But what about some terrible cabaret I saw recently where a guy just talked about drugs and doing terrible things to Santa? I didn’t walk out – and there came a point where he sang about his childhood and the lyrics were clever instead of pointlessly tasteless. It was poignant and desperately sad. If I’d left, I wouldn’t have seen this, and I could have altered the energy in the room, ruining the one beautiful part of the show.

With films, novels and art, giving up before the end doesn’t matter; there isn’t the same feeling of power you have as an audience member. So is walking out an abuse of that power? Are you making a statement that what you’re watching is so irredeemably bad that you can’t fathom a moment to come that could possibly entertain you. Or are you adding to the conversation that live performance invites, as an interactive medium, saying ‘Don’t put yourself out there if you don’t want criticism’? My conclusion: walking out of theatre is li-

(Don’t pretend you didn’t see it coming.)

Have you ever walked out of a live performance – or been walked-out on? Let us know below…

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Image by Chris Beckett, used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence.