Hiss

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Hissing is a sign of violent disapproval, which was common as a collective demonstration by an audience , especially in the theater until the beginning of the 20th century. It was especially directed generally against writers, directors against individual performer, could be silenced and even their disposal cause from the stage. Above all, the fizzling out by the gallery audience was feared.

history

Hiss and whistle as disapproval in the theater already in the poetics of Aristotle mentioned.

Hissing on the stage is already used in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's opera buffa La serva padrona (1733) . There a maid silences her employer with the word Zit (in German about “Sss”). Because this meant a reversal of the balance of power, the work became famous before the French Revolution .

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz understood the hiss in his story The forest brother (1776) as an urban expression: "[...] I shall be the mockery of honest compatriot still benefit from the hiss of empty Stutzer and Stutzerinnen in the cities."

The Allgemeine Theater-Lexikon of 1842 considers whistling to be the clearest but inappropriate expression of displeasure in the theater and says: “Hissing and punching out is completely sufficient for displeasing a piece or actors.” However, hissing was often decried as a theatrical genre of the lower classes melodrama brought into context and banished from the posh theaters.

In 1888, the actor August Junkermann gave an idea of ​​the hearing impression of a hissing audience through his comparison with the hissing of a steam locomotive : "[...] that ominous hissing that touches the actor more sensitively than the hissing of a locomotive to the traveler when he misses the train [... ] ".

Since the 20th century, hissing has been largely taboo in (European) entertainment theater , and booing is considered the "gentler" way of condemnation. At the end of the 19th century , the critic Hermann Bahr advocated this custom against regulations of the court theaters which prohibited hissing and saw in it the necessary downside of the applause . The English writer Sidney Isaacs also declared the hissing a right of the public in 1927, but considered a planned hissing out to be inadmissible.

Since the Second World War, there has only been talk of the audience hissing when there are pronounced theater scandals, for example during the politically active 1968 movement .

It is still used to suppress inappropriate applause between the verses or movements of a classical musical work, for example at song recitals.

Development in the USA

The Astor Place Riot 1849 is considered by some authors as the end of the theater as an offer of proletarian culture in the USA. Closely related to this is the end of the hissing, the throwing of chairs and the nob -and-snob culture that combined rich and poor in one room. According to Thomas Hackett, the lower class turned to animal fighting and sporting events. With the latter in particular, however, a similar process began in a short time. Hackett sees professional wrestling as the successor to this culture, where there is still hissing.

Robert Clyde Allen also refers to the Astor Place Riot , but speaks of the beginning of feminization, the fine-tuning of the theater. He states that before 1850 women were not allowed in the Pitt, the theater floor. This changed quickly in the years that followed, not only because of the riot, but because the aim was to achieve a more peaceful and less hissing audience with a higher proportion of women and improved comfort in the parquet environment. According to Allen, by the 1860s the hissing was almost no longer part of American theater culture, which went hand in hand with a change in case law. While hissing was previously seen as the public's right, the right of the organizers and actors was emphasized afterwards. Allen sees Vaudeville and New Burlesque as a specifically American countercurrent to the refined (European) theater.

politics

Siegfried Prokop reports on an appearance by Walter Ulbricht at Leipzig University in April 1956. Agricultural research in the GDR had campaigned against the politically favored Lysenkoism , among other things because of Hans Stubbe . Ulbricht had insulted several professors during his visit and had been hissed and scratched by the students at a meeting of the agricultural and horticultural faculty . Ulbricht reacted, among other things, with reprimanding individual party members among the professors.

As a demonstration of displeasure by students, it is also documented for Andy Warhol's 1967 campus lectures .

literature

  • Ph. J. Düringer, H. Barthels (Hrsg.): Theater-Lexikon: Theoretical-practical manual for board members, members and friends of the German theater, Leipzig: Wigand 1841, Sp. 1140
  • Hermann Bahr: Zischen , in: Hermann Bahr, The Hermann Bahr Book, Berlin: Fischer 1913, pp. 164–168.
  • Between Hisses, James Burke, Paul T. Nolan , Pioneer Drama Service, Inc., 1973 (on American melodrama)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Kawalko Roselli: Theater of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens , University of Texas Press, Austin 2011, p 49. ISBN 978-0-292-74402-8
  2. ↑ JMR Lenz: Der Waldbruder, a counterpart to Werther's suffering (1776), first part, first letter.
  3. ↑ Robert Blum , Karl Herloßsohn , Hermann Marggraff : General Theater Lexicon or Encyclopedia of everything worth knowing for stage artists, amateurs and theater fans, Pierer and Heymann, Alternburg, Leipzig 1842, Vol. 6, p. 86
  4. ↑ cf. Michael R. Booth: Hiss the Villain, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London 1967, pp. 9-40.
  5. ^ August Junkermann: Memoirs of a Court Actor, Süddeutsches Verlags-Institut, Stuttgart 1888, p. 23.
  6. ↑ Sidney C. Isaacs: The Law Relating to Theaters, Music-halls, and Other Public Entertainments , Stevens & Sons, London 1927, p. 94 f.
  7. ^ Dorothea Kraus: Theater Protests: on the politicization of street and stage in the 1960s, Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 140. ISBN 978-3-593-38335-4
  8. ↑ a b slaphappy: Pride, Prejudice, and Professional Wrestling , Thomas Hackett Harper Collins, 30. November 2010
  9. ↑ a b c d e Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Robert Clyde Allen , Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991. pp. 70ff.
  10. ↑ a b 1956, GDR at the crossroads: Opposition and new concepts of intelligence by Siegfried Prokop, Homilius, 2006, p. 56
  11. ↑ UTOPIE Kreativ, H. 184 (February 2006), pp. 121–124, SIEGFRIED PROKOP , Ernst Bloch and Wolfgang Harich in 1956
  12. ^ Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop , Jan Greenberg, Sandra Jordan, Random House Digital, Inc., March 25, 2009, p. 104