Nick Ahad: Why us oldies need to make way for a new generation of theatre-goers

Kit Harington is attracting livelier audiences than usual in a new production of Dr Faustus.

It’s a confession that I may be older than I suspect. With my birthday falling at the very end of August, I grew used to being the youngest in my school year. Not the runt of the litter, before you start, I was just always significantly younger than my peers. At school it wasn’t something I enjoyed.

Once I entered the world of so-called work (journalism), I learned that this was actually something of a badge of honour. I tended to be at least at the younger end of the newsroom and in many newspapers, the youngest. Being the ‘cub reporter’, the ‘kid’, was a position I enjoyed.

Then last week this planet-spinning moment happened.

I was presenting a show for BBC Radio Leeds and working with a new producer for the first time.

In radio (certainly in my case) the producers are the parents of the relationship and the presenters the errant child. The producers attempt to rein in the child-like (childish?) presenters and keep a firm hand on the tiller, while the presenters are attempting to amuse themselves and, hopefully, the listeners.

The new producer I worked with last week had the temerity to be 25 years-old. More than a decade younger than me. The gall.

I realised no longer was I the ‘kid’ in this happy office and I had inadvertently become...older. It made me re-examine a couple of opinions, one of which is a firmly held one about theatre.

I think theatre is a place where audiences ought to sit in respectful silence and enjoy the drama unfolding before them. We gather together to experience a moment. The actors are in the room. They can hear sweets rustling. They can see the glow of mobile phones being ‘surreptitiously’ switched on. Can we really not bear to engage in just a single thing for a couple of hours? That used to be my attitude. Then I worked with a 25-year-old producer. And I realised that maybe my views are outdated. Maybe, just maybe, my views are even a little fogey-ish. Perhaps theatre needs to move on. Perhaps the anarchic-sounding production of Doctor Faustus, currently in the West End and starring Game of Thrones Kit Harington, attracting an audience of screaming young women according to a brilliant piece by The Guardian’s inestimable theatre critic Lyn Gardner, is the future.