Bectu’s Big Survey highlights theatre workers still facing unacceptable behaviour

Two years after Bectu identified the shocking scale of poor audience behaviour in theatres a new survey shows it’s a still a major issue faced by theatre workers today. A majority feel it has gotten worse in the past few years.

In Bectu’s Big Survey of 5,597 creative workers, collected between 28 February and 21 March 2025, we asked those working in theatre and live events (1051 people) whether they had personally experienced anti-social behaviour, violence, aggression or harassment from an audience member/s in the past 12 months.

Overall, around a third (31%) of theatre and live events workers had experienced this – including 34% in live events and 29% in theatres. However, front of house staff are clearly bearing the brunt of bad audience behaviour with more than three quarters of front of house staff (77%) having experienced anti-social behaviour, violence, aggression or harassment from an audience member/s in the past year.

A majority of respondents across front of house, technical, backstage and admin roles said things had gotten worse over the last five years. Theatre workers were more likely to say this (71%) while for those working in live events, around half (47%) thought things had improved, and half felt things had worsened (48%).

Head of Bectu Philippa Childs said:

“This summer hundreds of thousands of people will have been or be heading to the theatre or to live events and most will have a great time. Unfortunately our research shows that increasing numbers of them will behave badly, treating staff like dirt and subjecting them to unacceptable abuse.

“It is doubly disappointing that two years after we last highlighted the issue very little seems to have changed.

“Across the country people are facing regular aggression and abuse simply for carrying out their jobs. This is wholly unacceptable and we urge venues and industry bodies to commit to working with us to tackle this endemic issue.

“Everyone has the right to a safe and respectful workplace and with the sector facing a chronic skills shortage our findings should sound alarm bells. We are calling on theatres to have a zero tolerance approach to bad behaviour and ensure security is sufficient to deal with the problem.

“The advent of at-seat alcohol may also be playing a part and we urge theatres to look at whether a reasonable limit on these sales would have an impact so that people can continue to have a good time without things going too far.”