Actress Miiko Toiviainen intervened in homophobic behavior in the theater

Actor Miiko Toiviainen there is concern and empathy in his voice as he talks about his recent experiences with young audiences.

Espoo’s theater Minna Craucher -musical, in which Toiviainen plays the lead role, has been visited by a particularly large number of eighth graders this fall. They are so-called art testers, i.e. 14-year-olds who have been offered free screenings in a program financed by the Finnish Cultural Fund and Svenska kulturfonden.

However, according to Toiviainen, not all school performances have been well behaved. There have been many homophobic murmurs and shouts from the audience when romance scenes between two male actors have been shown on stage.

Defamations have been treated seriously in Espoo’s theater. According to Toivianen, the actors and the theater staff have together thought about how to deal with the harassment.

“We concluded that the threshold for interrupting the show due to interference should be lower,” says Toiviainen.

Discussion was supposed to continue with the next school performance.

This week, however, a regular evening performance was organized, which happened to include a few groups of high school students.

When Toiviainen stepped on stage for the first time, he heard a homophobic expression being whispered from the audience. Toiviainen asked the theater organizer if he would be allowed to intervene in the situation himself if the situation happened again.

When the stage came to the scene where Toiviainen’s character kisses the person played by another male actor, “tumultuous screams” and nocturnal noises could be heard from the audience.

Toiviainen interrupted the performance and asked the troublemakers to stop.

“If this continues, you will be thrown out of here. Not only is it really embarrassing, it also prevents other viewers from enjoying the show,” he says he said.

The remark caused resounding applause and cheers from the stands, Toiviainen says. According to him, the young spectators also cheered.

After the applause, Toiviainen said that the show would continue and asked the disturbing viewers to behave.

The show continued as usual, even warmer than before. The oppressive atmosphere had changed to collective support, Toiviainen describes.

“After that, it was wonderful to finish the show, and we had really good energy.”

Hopeful told about his experience after the show on Instagram. Many other theater artists told him about similar and also racist shouts from the past years.

“It may be related to the fact that during the corona period, young people have missed out on many years of cultural education,” Toiviainen reflects.

In these situations, teachers are quite helpless, says Toiviainen. It is difficult to deal with disruptive behavior in a dark theater audience.

Disruption of the show is unpleasant not only for the employees but also for the audience, especially if the slander hits a minority.

“I think of all those queer viewers and queer youth who, without interruption, would have just witnessed open hatred directed at them and no one doing anything.”

Toiviain was relieved to notice that the shouting ended with a small, friendly remark.

“The fact that I was able to turn the situation into a positive one with such an easy and small means was a great lesson for me that it should probably be done that way.”