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The committee’s honourable mentions went to ‘right to disconnect’ and ‘rawdogging’

Hey, frustrated theatre kids: no one is going to musicals to hear you sing. And don’t listen to the Rock – some of us actually want to hear the film we’ve paid to see In shocking news for grumpy people who like to stay home, fans are going to public screenings of the movie-musical Wicked and choosing to sing along loudly with the songs. It’s happened so frequently that cinemas in the US have put up PSAs asking audience members to keep quiet. It’s not a new story – theatres, concerts and cinemas have always been battlegrounds of etiquette. During a midday screening of Call Me By Your Name that I once attended, two middle-aged women pulled out an entire roast chicken and began eating it with their bare hands, interrupting a tender scene of queer romance in the Italian countryside with cracks, rips and slurps. Our issues today – people singing in movies, kids filming entire concerts on their phones, people throwing hard objects at singers – are just modern-day versions of conundrums like, I don’t know, when is it polite to throw rotten tomatoes and jeer during a public hanging? Put more than two people together and someone will be annoying – it’s true of audiences, communes, and also why I don’t truck with polyamory. Continue reading...