Applause

During my last theater production, a discussion arose that could not be resolved, which seemed to me to be a good sign to continue dealing with it without wanting to resolve the poles that had arisen. We sit together for a while after the final rehearsal and chat. At some point, E. interjects whether we want to take a bow or not, and that she won’t either way. This got me thinking about how collective action, understood as consensus, is often linked to unquestioned gestures and rituals. Applause is one of those contagious and unquestioned gestures, just like bowing, whereby the two are mutually dependent (although applause is also possible without bowing). E. even goes so far as to claim that you could get people out of the habit of applauding if you stop bowing all the time.

One characteristic of applause is that it doesn’t fail, even if the performance was bad, so it can hardly be meant as an approving nod to the performance — sometimes, but not always, and if not always, then what? So what is applause all about? First of all, it marks the end of a performance and thus the transition from the agreement about to play to the agreement on reality. What if this transition would take place in silence? Could the last note, the last word of a performance resonate longer in people’s minds if they wouldn’t applaud? Or is applause a protection from reality that rushes in, from the rustling and murmuring of the audience standing up, rummaging under the chairs for their handbags and who would — without applause — simply leave the hall as soon as the last word sounds. Similar to the end of a lecture in university, where the professor has no chance to even finish his sentence as soon as the lesson is over, and everyone consistently gets up without any interest in a common end to the event. I remember the rustling of clothes starting to move over the helpless voice of the professor trying to find a dignified ending for his lesson.

But – the way in which a shared environment is commented on together improves the individual’s ability to hear and thus the ability to perceive and listen to the interpersonal space. Applause is therefore also the ability to play with and comment on the shared space in between. I even recognized cultural differences in how people applaud. Does this have anything to do with how sensitive people are to a sense of community? Compared to the German way of applauding, the Swedes found a common rhythm surprisingly quickly, with everyone hitting the same beat.

In conclusion, I have to say that since I started to think more about applause, I have, of course, listened more when applause happens to me and realize that I like it – especially applause of a smaller audience, to closure a get-together with noise, sometimes sounds like rain on asphalt – and the possibility to shortly be a community, the moment-community, even including those who do not applaud, applaud differently or louder. I just wonder whether applause as a format could not be fabulated with a further collective agreement of a sonic nature or whether it is precisely the monotonous, rhythmic, simple-minded clapping that contains the appeal of an unformed and therefore low-threshold moment. In other words, although the possibility of an extended applause behavior – the slap on the shoulder, on one’s own inflated cheeks, on the back of the head of the person in front of me, or the mutual clapping of different areas of the body – seems to me to be an idea worth trying, I appreciate the delicacy of the unity of a simple applause, in which everyone knows what to do and can be part of, even without applauding.