{"id":10077,"date":"2006-05-25T02:07:01","date_gmt":"2006-05-25T02:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/production.ou.org\/life\/other\/fanfair\/"},"modified":"2015-10-21T13:26:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T18:26:48","slug":"fanfair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/parenting\/fanfair\/","title":{"rendered":"Fanfair"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: left; padding-right: 5px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/ou-images\/content\/fanfair_crop2.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"175\" height=\"123\" name=\"image\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p><i>Quiet please, there&#8217;s a lady on stage.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>She may not be the latest rage,<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>But she&#8217;s singing. She means it.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>And she deserves a little silence.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager<\/p>\n<p>Last February was production season in my community, perhaps in yours too. I, for one, was excited and proud: excited to participate in Harmony VI, a concert for and by women, and proud to attend my daughter\u2019s high school play.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I was excited and proud \u2014 but I was also nervous, and stage fright (or stage motherhood) was not the culprit. Nor was audience rejection.<\/p>\n<p>The culprit was audience adulation.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, I attended a high school production (not, I hasten to add, in my community) and witnessed audience adulation at its worst. On stage were over 50 charming teens singing in harmony. Ninety seconds into the song, one student stepped forward for her 15-second solo. At its conclusion, hundreds of spectators applauded. A dozen of them whistled shrilly. Five hooted. And two bellowed, \u201cWE LOVE YOU, ADINA!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s wrong with this picture (or should I say soundtrack)? Let me count the ways. The outbursts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>rendered the next 20 seconds of painstakingly rehearsed music inaudible, frustrating performers and patrons alike.<\/li>\n<li>flung a \u201ccan-you-top-this?\u201d gauntlet, impelling the audience to ever heightening histrionics \u2014 and ever higher decibels.<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0transformed a beautiful performance grounded in teamwork and unity into a popularity contest, with the student eliciting the most frenzied uproar declared the winner (albeit possibly a very embarrassed one).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another culprit reared its ugly head at that production: the opposite of audience adulation, audience apathy. To my amazement, some people not only kept their cell phones on and answered them, they actually placed phone calls during the performance. And, to my sorrow, some audience members engaged in lengthy conversations throughout the performance \u2014 except when their daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, sister or friend was in the spotlight.<\/p>\n<p>Are these individuals mean? No. But they are certainly misguided. How I wish that they could have heard the principal\u2019s words that prefaced another production I was privileged to witness:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn order to ensure the professionalism of this evening\u2019s production, we ask our honored audience the following: Please take a moment now to completely shut off your cell phones. Do not leave them on vibrate, as that interferes with the sound system. A moment now to please shut off your cell phones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur players, actors, dancers, singers and backstage hands have worked fantastically hard these past few weeks to bring you a quality production. In order to show your appreciation for their hard work, we ask you the following: Please wait until the end of a scene \u2014 the end of the scene \u2014 for applauding, and show your appreciation through applause only. We cannot strictly enough state that to call out names of players, or to chant individual names, would cheapen our production, and we ask you not to allow that to happen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now we proudly present our school production!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The principal walked offstage. The curtain rose to reveal students standing in frozen positions.<\/p>\n<p>Then an audience member\u2019s voice rang out: \u201cGO, MALKY!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To her credit, the principal \u2014 who still had her microphone in hand \u2014 calmly said, \u201cThat is exactly the cheapening I was referring to.\u201d Then the performance began, eliciting laughter, applause, joy and, thankfully, no further outbursts.<\/p>\n<p>June is just around the corner, graduation season in my community, and probably in yours. As we await those happy occasions on which I pray we will all be privileged to see a loved one on stage \u2014 be they siddur parties, chumash plays, high school productions, graduations or community concerts \u2014 I respectfully ask prospective audience members to ask themselves these two questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As proud as I am of my child, grandchild, nephew, niece, cousin, sibling or friend, as much as I want to express my love, might my outburst be a source of pain to someone else?<\/li>\n<li>Specifically, besides disturbing fellow audience members, might my cheerleading break the heart of another performer, one who (Heaven forbid) is an orphan, comes from a broken home, or has relatives in mourning, in short, one who lacks the luxury of a cheering squad?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If, deep in your heart, you know that the answer to both questions is yes, I promise you that from now on, no production you attend will ever be the same. For as you take your seat at future performances, and as the curtain begins to rise, you will say to yourself, \u201cI am here to <i>shep nachas<\/i> from (feel proud of) every person who treads this stage.\u201d Whether a dancer twirls or trips, whether a soloist sings on- or off-key, whether an actress enunciates or mumbles, you will feel your heart grow tender and your eyes grow misty. And when you applaud at the conclusion of each dance, song or scene, you will feel your heart overflowing with love.<\/p>\n<p><i>Chava Willig Levy is a writer, editor and lecturer from Woodmere, NY. Her web site<\/i> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chavawilliglevy.com\">http:\/\/www.chavawilliglevy.com<\/a>) <i>showcases her lectures, articles and editorial services; her blog, accessed via her web site\u2019s<\/i> \u201cTalking to Myself\u201d <i>link, chronicles her latest adventures. Chava can be reached at<\/i> <a href=\"mailto:chava@chavawilliglevy.com\">chava@chavawilliglevy.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 2006 Chava Willig Levy. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quiet please, there&#8217;s a lady on stage. She may not be the latest rage, But she&#8217;s singing. She means it. And she deserves a little silence. &#8211; Lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager Last February was production season in my community, perhaps in yours too. I, for one, was excited and proud: excited to participate in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":49050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth","category-parenting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fanfair - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Graduation season is just around the corner. 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