Why do theatres hate their audiences?

War has broken out in theatreland. Managements are increasingly at odds with the audiences who fund their livelihoods. A recent stand-off involved James Norton’s new show, A Little Life, which contains a couple of scenes in which the actor removes his clothes. A punter at a preview in Richmond secretly photographed the moments of nudity and posted the images online. This sparked a furore in the newspapers and the majority of commentators took the producers’ side against the theatre-goers. Dr Kirsty Sedgman, a media studies lecturer, spoke piously to the Independent about ‘an absolute violation of the unwritten contract between audiences and performers’. The Mirror reported that ‘drastic measures’ might be needed to ensure that similar ‘privacy breaches’ don’t occur. No one considered that the backers of the show were secretly thrilled by all the free advertising. And it seems bizarre to invoke the ‘privacy’ of an actor who chose to appear naked in public and who spoke to the press about his on-stage striptease.