From flash photography and loud ringtones to texting on glaring screens, theatre performers have never faced so many potential distractions.
But while actors have largely directed their ire at audiences using mobile phones, a new source of concern has emerged: the superfan.
Gillian Anderson joked with some of her superfans this weekend that they should stop repeatedly watching her play from the front row because it is “so distracting”.
The actress made the comments while addressing a group of her supporters in a light-hearted exchange outside the stage door of London’s Soho Place theatre, after a performance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the play she is starring in.
In a video posted on social media, the X Files star appeared to recognise several female fans who greeted her as she left the theatre after Friday evening’s performance.
Flanked by security guards, the video shows Anderson smiling while signing autographs, saying: “You guys cannot sit in the front row, you cannot.”
In response, one woman can be heard saying: “You made us cry so much.”
Gillian Anderson told her fans that it was ‘distracting’ to see them in the front row time and again
Laughing as she spoke, Anderson then said: “I don’t care, you cannot sit in the front row, it’s so distracting. You can’t come 20 times and sit in the front row, it’s driving me mad.”
Although the women apologised, some commenters on social media, who said they had also attended, claimed that the “obsessive” fans had tickets for eight more performances of the production already booked.
Texting and filming
It comes just weeks after Cate Blanchett asked audience members to stop “spoiling” her National Theatre show by filming it.
During a curtain call last month, after a performance of Electra/Persona at the Lyttelton Theatre in London, the actress said: “There are few places on this planet where we can simply be together and be present.
“I understand you like filming the curtain call – and it is kind of flattering in a way – but for anyone who is filming the show, please don’t, because it spoils it for the next group of people who come in and are present with us. So thank you very much.”
Earlier this year, Rosamund Pike berated an audience member for texting during the finale of her solo performance in Inter Alia at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End.
She accused the texter of breaking the bond between cast and audience. One audience member told The Times: “She suggested that someone texting in the climax of this devastatingly emotional play broke this bond. She seemed genuinely upset.”
Rosamund Pike told a theatregoer off for texting during the finale of her solo performance in Inter Alia – Getty Images/Jeff Spicer
Likewise, Lesley Manville, the award-winning actress, also urged theatregoers to stop filming when the cast takes its final bows.
While performing in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre this year, she said: “Come on, it’s theatre, let’s preserve it. Let’s take the digital out of it for just a moment. We are all in this room, we are telling you a story, you’re listening – clap or don’t clap, but don’t just stick your phone in our face. I find it insulting.”
‘On with the show’
Anderson later spoke of how distracting she found it to see the same faces in the front row every evening.
In response to the video of the exchange being posted online, Anderson said: “The video doing the rounds is me talking with women I go back over 20 years with – so please don’t say anything negative to or about them. We’re thrilled to be doing this show but for people in the front row, please be aware that in such an intimate venue we can all see you and sometimes, it can be a tad distracting!
“That’s all. All good. On with the show and love to everyone and thank you to all of those coming.”
Anderson is starring in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Johan Persson
In another video posted earlier in the week showing Anderson meeting fans on a different night of the show, she can be heard saying to one fan asking for an autograph: “Again? You’ve been taking one every day.”
Anderson’s sold-out play, written by Edward Albee, the American playwright, and first staged in 1962, is set in the round, meaning the actors are surrounded by the audience from every angle.
It stars the Emmy and Tony Award winner Billy Crudup, who plays George, the husband of Anderson’s Martha, and charts a psychological war between the couple over one evening in the company of a younger couple who have been invited as their guests.
Directed by Tony and Olivier Award winner Marianne Elliott, who is widely acclaimed for productions including War Horse, she made her directorial film debut with The Salt Path, which Anderson also starred in.
Anderson has talked previously about having to deal with obsessive fans. In an interview with The Observer in 2017, she said that it had been something she has dealt with since starring as Dana Scully in The X-Files.
“I’m kind of used to it,” she said. “Especially because of my old job. The enthusiasm of the fans, from being in something that’s remotely science fiction, is more intense. And so I’m used to tattoos on calves and buttocks and stuff like that.”
