forced woo-ing.

When I was a junior in high school, I was a part of a terrible play. It was not the fault of the playwright, but that of the players. We didn't know our lines. Each scene was punctuated with long dead silences as those on stage looked blankly at each other. A performance that should have taken up no more than ninety minutes of anyone's life stole nearly three hours of time from each poor soul who was foolish enough to buy a ticket.

Before you start to feel sorry for those devoted patrons of the arts, realize that they were only our parents. Yes, they were miserable, but it was for a good cause. They had to be miserable. That's what parenting is all about, right?

During the third night or so of our run, a friend of mine told me that her dad had been laughing very loudly on purpose during the previous night's show. It was a sweet gesture. There really were some genuinely funny moments in the script. They were just hard to catch, what with us mumbling the wrong lines all the time. But he knew the story and was trying to help. He laughed to encourage the other bored theatre-goers, and he laughed to encourage us. Maybe it would have worked if our problem was low self-confidence rather than a lack of preparation.

Now, I had heard of this sort of thing before. Someone had told me that there were planted audience members even on Broadway. The director or maybe the producers would hire someone to go to a show and laugh, guffaw, and slap their knee. The theory was that other, non-paid viewers would catch on to this laughter and enjoyment, giving the impression that this was actually a good show after all.

Surely that doesn't work, right? I mean, people can't possibly be that stupid. Besides, that seems wrong somehow. It was dishonest, that's what it was. Cheating, even.

And then my friend's dad did the same thing. True, he wasn't paid to do it. He wasn't trying to increase the producer's profit or the director's reviews. He felt sorry for us, even though we had brought it upon ourselves. It wasn't cheating, it was charity. I doubt it worked, because the show was just so bad. Everyone probably just thought he was crazy.

I don't do all that much at Josh's shows. I carry some equipment, I help break down the drums. But I don't sell merchandise, and I don't walk around with the email list, bullying people to sign up to receive free mp3s and tour information. However, I am very active in crowd encouragement.

Every show is different, of course, but sometimes the people need to be told when to clap. They haven't been paying attention and those jerks didn't even notice that the song was over. So I clap, and I go woo. And then they suddenly notice the woo-ing and they give the required clapping and half-hearting woo-ing. An unenthusiastic cheer is not much, but it is better than indifferent silence.

Sometimes the audience, at least part of it, is paying attention. Not only are they hearing the music, they are listening to it. They are noticing the melody, they are trying to make out the words. They might even be looking at the band! They know when to clap and woo. I still clap and woo with them, because every voice counts. In this situation, I will even woo in the middle of songs when one of the guys has a solo. Sometimes other audience members get in on it, and sometimes they don't.

And I dance, if you can call swaying and toe-tapping and head-bopping dancing. It's nothing much, but I try to be positioned towards the front. This encourages others to come up and dance. People are self-conscious about being at the front of the room, even if there are three guys on a raised platform with lights pointed at them making a ton of noise who are most certainly even more at the center of attention. By getting over myself and being in front of them, even though I'm frequently by myself, I give them confidence to come let go a little bit too. I suspect that this move has extra power because of my femaleness. Men in bars like it when girls dance, even when they're tall, goofy girls like me. They don't hit on me, they don't even talk to me, but somehow by grooving in my own awkward way, I make the party more fun. They come up closer to the stage, they pay more attention to the music, they do their own swaying and toe-tapping and head-bopping. When this scheme of mine works, I feel like a freaking saint. Perhaps this is setting the feminist movement back a few years. What's worse, I'm doing it out of love for a man.

It doesn't feel like cheating and it doesn't feel dishonest. I'm not paid to do it, like those Broadway guffawers, and I am genuinely enjoying the music, as opposed to my friend's poor stout-hearted and faithful father. I'm just bridging the gap between performer and audience. When no connection is made, it seems like charity, like a stubbornly optimistic cheerleader on the sidelines of a blowout. But when someone does come around, I feel like I'm helping, like I'm earning my share of the free beer. Maybe it has nothing to do with me, and those people would connect to the band anyway. It never hurts to try.