It’s been a while since I had hale bale seating for my audience.
Yes, I know these are straw bales, but no one calls them that, so I’m going to refer to them as hay bales. There are a lot of challenges that come with the audience sitting on hay bales. First, they’re pokey, so not fun to sit on if you’re wearing shorts. Next, they give kids stuff to fidget with, which is a distraction. Finally, kids and parents look at them as a jungle gym, and they let their kids play on them and generally destroy them.
Parents will let kids run around, jump from bale to bale, and that’s not conducive to building a crowd. People don’t want to make the kids stop playing, so they sit in the bleachers in the back, which isn’t the best scenario for engagement of the show.
When I noticed this, I tried something. When I got on mic, I said, “Just a heads up, now that I’m on the mic, my insurance doesn’t allow me to have you all play on the hay bales. I’m sorry, but once I start talking on the mic, it’s now my show, and if anyone falls off, it’s on my insurance. Once the show is over, it’s the fairs insurance, and you can jump all you want; it’s not my problem, but unfortunately, my insurance requires me to have you stop now or we can’t start the show.” Once I said that, all the parents got their kids and made them stop. That’s compared to simply asking them to stop because the show is starting. In the past, when I’ve done that, I think people think that since the show hasn’t started, I’ll just let them continue to play until the show starts and the rate of people stopping their kids from playing was virtually none.
This is the classic thing where if you give people a good reason why to do or not do something, you’ll get much higher compliance.
-Louie