I found this tweet through a RT by @HeatherParish. I couldn’t help thinking about different Armitage fan reactions, and different Richard Armitage actions and inactions, around his own stage door appearances. If I were a fan of this actor, I would appreciate such a tweet. I appreciate it without being a fan.
For some information on Dear Evan Hansen you can check out Wiki for the plot. It’s a Tony award winning play ( musical) about revolving around a teen suicide. There are loads of reviews and thought-provoking articles about it – Google is your friend.
Armitage Agonistes 
I don’t think this actor was obligated to explain himself, though. I might appreciate it, depending on the situation, but as with the whole rest of the experience, not feel that he was obligated to say why he was doing what he was or wasn’t doing. I have a basic incomprehension of the position that fans who go to see a play are paying for / entitled to anything more than — as he says — the actor’s / cast’s best possible performance on that evening.
(I also feel sad that this guy is apparently reading criticisms of him for not appearing at the stage door and taking them seriously enough to respond. If I were him, I would try to avoid reading them and would do my best not to respond. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from social media over the years, there are always people who are going to say things that are either intentionally cruel or casually mean or just not through very far.)
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I saw one tweet by a other that called him asshole because she took her two daughters to see the play twice and he didn’t show up. Ironically, some articles I read about the play noted that it was as much about parenting as it was about teen angst.
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ah, well, the hardest person to see clearly is oneself. That seems kind of an extreme response on the mother’s part.
I’d been asking myself (yet again, this isn’t the first time) about how much some of these effects has to do with theater-going experience level. Both in 2014 and last fall I had the feeling that many people who were going were not regular theatergoers (in addition to making very long journeys), which would inevitably affect one’s perception of what was supposed to be happening at these events. But presumably this mom is not in that category.
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When I retweeted, RA was exactly what I was thinking about. It comes up in various ways among my theater-loving friends, too. The convos around Stage Door-ing are pretty much the same everywhere it comes up. Like you, I appreciate Ben Platt giving his own feelings about it, in the first person. It may not change anyone’s thinking, but his POV at least gets to be part of the conversation. And acknowledging the issue is a respectful gesture.
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It may be respectful, but he’s giving those [disrespectful?] fans exactly what they wanted. Now they have an incentive to up the ante. That discussion is also more or less the same everywhere you go — going back to the “don’t send Richard Armitage pictures of yourself in a bikini with a phone number” discussion from about … 2008. One reading of what’s been going on in Armitage’s Twitter feed is that by trying to appease, he’s created a situation in which he can never provide enough for some people.
The other thing is that it’s a big step from someone expressing disappointment, even in a cruel or vicious manner, to attributing much more than just failure to be thoughtful. Asking people to be thoughtful or considerate on Twitter is a losing battle.
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I’m not going to blame him for bullies doing what bullies do. I appreciated that he said his piece. I don’t consider it a requirement, but I do appreciate it.
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Every incident is really in its own context, and I’m not interested in getting involved in learning about this one, but I suspect from the very formulation of that tweet that he’s in quite a different situation than Armitage was last fall. I can’t say whether I appreciate it, because I don’t really know what was going on; I can only say that I would have advised Armitage not to do something like this (had I been asked, which I was not). Particularly given the response to his (imo rather andyne) statement about his response to seeing crowds at the stage door. Perhaps it is possible for Platt to say something placating (or discussion-ending) in this situation but it was not possible for Armitage, not least because there are indices that Armitage can’t abstract himself from (negative) tweets at him. Noting that is not blaming him or Ben Platt; rather, it’s recognizing that the actor is in an impossible situation.
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Don’t know whether there were other tweets about his not showing up, but as I read his timeline, I was struck by how some fans defended him by, as you can guess, knocking, rather viciously, in some cases, all other fans who complained.
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yeah, that’s another one of the inevitable responses, no? It’s all so conducive to accomplishing what the actor wants in this sphere, which is just to be able to his job: the fan is angry they didn’t see him at the SD, then he says something that can’t help but be interpreted by that person as a reproach, then the subsequent subsidiary attack from the lurking minions defending his honor. Feelgood moments all around. The only people who probably end this feeling good about it are the fans at the end who can compliment themselves on their self-righteousness.
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I still appreciate that Ben Platt said it ( honestly, I’ve seen him, I guess, in Book of Mormon but had no idea who he is) Maybe it would have gone over differently had it be a statement made in an interview. I know that Richard Armitage came to the SD for both plays almost every performance ( except 2 show matinees), and similar convos went on about how much time he spent, etc. What I can’t recall is him ever saying anything in Tweets ( thank heaven) or in an interview that was very positive about the SD from his point of view – but that doesn’t mean those statements don’t exist. I recall a statement that he was more or less out of it when he was doing SD for The Crucible.
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I saw it more as a defensive or explanatory gesture. Certainly, one of the tweets he replied to didn’t deserve his respect.
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And today, the news that Ed Sheeran is done reading Twitter (multiple sites reporting based on an interview).
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In other words: show a bully that you’re wounded and the bully says, mission accomplished.
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I guess — thinking of how Zoe Kazan did it, I found her response a great deal more convincing.
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