This is slightly off topic, but a comment upthread about "responsive audiences" and gargoyle's question about the ethnic group of the audience served as the spark for my comment that I suppose is a given: Race/ethnicity is sometimes a factor in what constitutes a "responsive" audience.

The first time that I went to an off-Broadway show was with a group of fellow African American university students. The show,performed by Black performers, was a musical revue of African American history. And [but] just about all the rest of the audience was White.

I recall wondering why all througout the performance, the audience sat in silence. That was absolutely not how audiences were supposed to react or respond when they liked what they were hearing and seeing. But maybe this was supposed to be how people were supposed to react off-Broadway. So for a while, "my" group sat quiet. But I recall at least after the spirituals- we had to be real. And real for us was to clap before the end of a song {sometimes in church concerts-but not church services that I went to anyway-folks would clap when a song was announced}. But I don't think we did that. But the group I was with and I sometimes sang along with the songs or responded to the performance of the Black actors/actresses with some verbal affirmation such as "Yeah!" or "Amen". These actions were met with disgusted looks from other audience members.

When the show ended, the audience clapped politely, and then clapped again when the actors/actresses came back out on stage for a second bow. "My group" and I were surprised that it seems that hardly anybody but us stood up and enthusiastically cheered for the performers. I recall that the performers were GOOD. But I think that wasn't the issue.

I think that what was going on was a serious case of cultural dissonance. On the way back 'home' to our campus, the group that I was with talked about how different the energy would have been if the audience had been all or mostly Black. Usually we expect audiences to join in. Usually the desired "distance" between performers and audience is less with Black audiences and performers. Audience involement-including at least one sing along song-is expected and desired. And yes, there's a right way and a wrong way for the audience to be involved. But sitting silently and not expressing yourself until the end of the show, was [is]completely foreign to us.

Again, I recognize the lack of response that 'my group' expected from that almost all White audience was [is] not the same thing as an audience or audience member being rude and disrespectful. And I'm sure that some of that audience thought we were the ones who were being rude and disrespectful-to them if not to the performers on stage. And maybe we were-though we didn't intend to be.

I'm not sure how to bridge this cultural gap between the expectations that different races/ethnicities sometimes have for concerts/performers. But I think that there's no doubt that such a gap existed then and still sometimes exists now.