Never walked out, but have refused to return after the interval when I was forced to witness The Break of Day by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Admittedly, I was a bolshy little bastard who revered Chekhov, so we were off to a rocky start, but it just felt so utterly airless and self-regarding that I needed to get out of there. What tipped it finally was an "Isle of Lesbos" joke/misunderstanding that felt like it was straight out of a Carry On movie. But at least the birthday cake prop accidentally burst into flames, much to Anita Dobson's chagrin.
While I have never walked out a of a play performance myself, I think that everyone has the right to do so if they experience either sufficient displeasure or discomfort. I would probably be skeptical of any demands for a refund based on either of those categories (emergencies obviously differ here). I tend to be pretty selective about the plays I see due to finances, so I haven't typically experienced a situation where I might have walked out.
There is, of course, one exception. I almost walked out of a performance of Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas (https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/shows/matthew-modine-saves-the-alpacas/) at the Geffen Playhouse. I went to see it because I'm a fan of Modine's and it promised a kind of surreal comedy experience that was extremely meta and referenced a ton of genre I enjoy. It opened strong, and self-deprecating, but I was rapidly becoming bored with the play. There was nothing offensive, but I was hard pressed to stay. In the end, it was my love of the artist AS artist and my sympathy for how hard it is to make something actually entertaining that led me to stay.
I often say that every man who writes has a heist story in the back of their mind that should never be written. Mine deals with a bank robbery in Reno and is called Last Stop Disneyland. I will never let much more than that escape my subconscious into the real. I might want to add an addendum to that maxim. Every writer has a self-insert heroic tale that should only be shared with friends. Modine's play was of that variety.
To my recollection, I've only walked out once, from a university production of a Shakespeare play--20+ years later I've forgotten (blocked out?) which one--because it had somehow reached nearly three hours before intermission. I'm a professional in the field, which probably makes me less patient with unnecessarily long shows, but good lord. Get the air out!
I walked out of David Mamet play (Goat,?) mainly from boredom. I once walked out of an opera that hurt my ears. My line has always been I'm a patron of the arts ,(ie I've paid), I don't have to stay around. But I would definitely walk out of a play if I felt a cast member was being assaulted. And write to the theatre.
Oh if a cast member was being assaulted it would be a criminal investigation no doubt. This was a fictional scene of non-consent so the walkouts were for moral and artistic reasons at least. Boredom and sore ears are also excellent reasons to leave!
Walked out of the Edinburgh Festival production of “Lanark” at the interval. Had just finished a MLitt on Gray but couldn’t stand what I was watching. Wife insisted we walk out of “Blue Velvet” after 20 mins, she was so freaked out … wanted to leave the worst ever, ESC production of “R & J” (R was an alien) but as I had taken a bus load of kids with me could not.
Joint worst production of any Shakespeare play I’ve ever been to. Romeo was a silver tin foil inhabitant from a distant galaxy with Spockesque levels of emotional incapacity. Stars put out your fires was spoken like he ordering a happy meal. (The other stinker was a ‘heritage’ Macbeth. Lady M didn’t blink, looked like Bride of Frankenstein and had a vocal range of one note. It actually might have been worse.)
Ah but you see Ian, I’m a great connoisseur of the ‘so bad it’s good’ genre (Neil Breen for example) so now I want to see both of those productions just to marvel.
Excellent points. I agree, you shouldn't censor the author, and you should also give the audience the right to choose to enjoy or walk away from a performance. As a big fan of transgressive cinema, It's one thing to pile on the gore, violence and nudity to enhance the story or move it forward. When it's completely gratuitous for the sake of shock value, it gets boring to me. The trend towards almost "torture porn" in underground/independent films, violence for the sake of violence and cruelty became rather obnoxious in my opinion. The film of "Marat/Sade" is a pure delight. Definitely worth a viewing for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Thanks so much Tom! It’s so interesting how the term ‘torture porn’ is used amongst horror lovers (myself included) to talk about gratuitous sadism when lots of people think horror as a whole genre is sadistic and we are all messed up for enjoying it! I’m interested to hear your take on the term ‘extreme horror’ — does it overlap with ‘transgressive cinema’ or is it essentially ‘torture porn?’
And NO, Rebekah we are not messed up for enjoying horror films. One of the most excruciating films I ever sat through was the Bette Midler film “Beaches”…that to me was worse than torture, but being as I was with someone who wanted to see it, I kept silent about my opinion. To paraphrase the 10cc song …”the things we do for love”. LOL
Aw that is very gentlemanly of you! I was thinking of ‘Martyrs,’ I’m still bracing myself to watch it but I have heard and read so much I think I know if shot for shot. French extremity seems often to have a lot to say. A lot of war films fall into the ‘extreme’ category for me too even though people don’t often think of them as horror. Things like ‘Come and See.’ I’ve always thought that horror genres were all first developed on stage, extreme films definitely come from Grand Guignol and Jacobean Revenge dramas!
I think “extreme horror” definitely overlaps with transgressive cinema. If you take a film like the original French version of “Martyrs”, it’s definitely a brutal watch. I love it, but find it hard to go back and re-watch it more than once a year of so, at most. The horror and violence are extreme, BUT they are essential to the story. Much the same way that the scene you referenced in “Titus Andronicus” is. You identify with the character more and they become more human. It simply isn’t a bunch of random murder set pieces like a lot of “torture porn” seems to me. Another transgressive film is Eric Stanze’s 2000 movie “Scrapbook”. Yes it is brutal at times, and has been accused of being almost torture porn, BUT what happens to the character Clara humanizes her to the viewer, making you “root for her”, to overcome her captor and the abuse he is putting her through. It’s also a film that’s hard to go back and re-watch very often, but like “Marat/Sade” or “Titus Andronicus” it leaves a definite impression on you. What is strange to think is that torture porn, and splatter films in general have their roots on the stage , because of The Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris in the very late 1800s.
Oh, the ever reliable “I must take this silent call, pardon me…” and never come back and call it a night or a drink at the local pub or concierge while you wait for your compatriots….
Perhaps if it's a socio/political values statement or offense to one's sensibilities, sure! You're the audience with rights to entertaining ideas, events, and notions! And it's a right, I feel, to exercise at will, wisely and determinedly. But yeah, as discussed below, if it's for a friend, do stay and somehow find a discrete way to entertain yourself in some manner: a surreptitious podcast in ear, pretend awake glasses to get some shut eye in, or marvel in disbelief at this moment…and bill the friend the lost hours.
I walked out in the middle of “Ghost.” I found myself wondering why I had thought I’d like it. (I was going to type “what possessed me” but then I thought twice about it.)
This was fascinating. I actually saw Marat/Sade way back in the early 2000s in Cambridge (Massachusetts), and thankfully there was no gratuitous sex scene. My sister recently saw Titus Andronicus in Stratford and she said it was a helluva show, and of course stayed till the end.
The only time I walked out of something was the cinema probably around the same time, High Fidelity. I was just bored shitless. I fell asleep during The Matrix, also bored shitless.
I've never walked out of a play or film, but I *have* fallen asleep.
I've never walked out of a play or a film, but I have fallen asleep....
When I was doing A-level Theatre Studies, I was living on the Isle of Wight, attending a school that started stupidly early. Our teachers decided to take us to the National to see a double-bill of Oedipus, directed by (I think) Trevor Nunn: "Oedipus Rex" and "Oedipus at Colonnus". It required a ferry and a coach to get there after school.
There was a problem with the tickets and I drew the short straw, ending up on the opposite side of the auditorium to everyone else (they didn't like me much anyway so it wasn't a massive hardship). I befriended the two very nice middle aged chaps next to me, who felt sorry for me being abandoned.
So the first play starts and we're off. Actors declaiming in linen, etc etc. Fake blood. Interval (which I spent on my own). Then the next play, which we weren't studying for A-level; I had no idea what was going on. I was knackered and fell asleep. Then - thunder sound effect! - and I awoke with a shriek heard by everyone in the auditorium.
The chaps next to me chuckled, and one of them said, "I don't blame you for falling asleep. Isn't it *boring*? I nodded off as well!"
In the end, when I wrote my staging plan for "Oedipus Rex" in my A-level exam, I based it on the set of Tina Turner's music video for "Golden Eye", which I'd seen down the pub on VH1 while my friends played pool. Oh, dear. How uncultured I am!
Firstly, hilarious. Secondly, were the plays in Greek? Thirdly, I love the image of you waking up screaming, I’m sure that gave everyone a welcome giggle. Fourthly, I am immediately going to watch that video and imagine Oedipus in it…
They were in English, but so intoned/declaim-y, if you see what I mean. I'd seen the Kenneth Brannagh "Much Ado About Nothing" by this point and couldn't understand why they hadn't at least *tried* to make the text sound like people talking. It was three hours of hearing the same dum-te-dum rhythm over and over again. Fate. Thebes. Etc. Every line self-consciously heavy with significance. I should really look up some reviews and see what proper theatre-goers (not knackered teens!) thought of it! "Fine acting, convincing scream at the thunderclap."
Tbh I bet people have raved about how amazing it was. I just think showing those two plays back to back was a bad idea as it made for such a long showtime (we nearly missed the last ferry!), but I suspect that if they didn't, "Oedipus at Colonnus" would never see the stage!
I really enjoyed and it was the first time I was able to see how Shakespeare could be more than lots of reciting things and could actually mean something. At least it didn't send me to sleep!
I think I might know the Oresteia plays done in that style, there were some that experimented with the original masks and rhythms… such an alien style for modern audiences. It can’t help if the play is dull, I don’t even remember whether I read Oedipus of Colonnus as an undergrad so it definitely didn’t stick with me.
Oh, definitely, it was very alien. I mean... It's interesting to do a production like that with an eye to theatre history, but... Just one Oedipus would've done! I think it was basically "Oedipus is an old man and about to shuffle off this mortal coil." Interestingly, it looks like the Oedipus I saw played Tiresias in a production about ten years ago with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role.
Yes!! Peter Hall! So it’s the same direction as the Oresteia plays I’ve seen. I enjoyed Agamemnon but maybe because I like the play I’m biased. It’s not at all naturalistic and that rhythm could easily lull someone to sleep.
(Accidentally repeated the opening line there because it looked like it'd disappeared while I was typing so I added it again... Ah, well... It's a bit like the experience of watching that double bill!)
I walked out of “Lust in the Dust”, a movie starring Divine (I was 15? It was not for me), and my husband and I left an opera at intermission. It was… ugh, can’t remember, but it was Valentines Day, and we had been expecting lavish sets and costumes and it was bare bones… the only set decorations were ramps and a giant hanging pod in the middle of the stage. The costumes were just normal clothes. We looked at each other…and went home.
Sensing that you’re too young for something is such a valid reason, good for you! And that is a shame about the opera, especially if you’d paid a lot for tickets. Sometimes you do think ‘I’d better be able to see this bloody money somewhere.’
Almost every play I've ever wanted to walk out of has been a community theatre production in which I've known at least a couple of the actors, and at that point, social nicety demands that I suffer through and then try to say something complimentary at the end which is not a lie (usually something along the lines of, "Wow, you all work so hard on this!")
The sole professional production I've wanted to walk out of was the Broadway musical version of Moulin Rouge, a play which seems to have entirely missed the point of the original movie. I stayed because the tickets hadn't been cheap, and we hoped the second half would redeem itself (spoiler alert: it did not).
Indeed. I did not walk out of the worst production of the Scottish play, ever, because the only good actor in it was a friend BUT after the interval the audience was noticeably smaller than the cast onstage, very awkward.
Oh god the classic ‘you were so…brave!’ And I feel you on Moulin Rouge, the hours of my life I must have lost to fruitless optimism about terrible art.
Never walked out, but have refused to return after the interval when I was forced to witness The Break of Day by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Admittedly, I was a bolshy little bastard who revered Chekhov, so we were off to a rocky start, but it just felt so utterly airless and self-regarding that I needed to get out of there. What tipped it finally was an "Isle of Lesbos" joke/misunderstanding that felt like it was straight out of a Carry On movie. But at least the birthday cake prop accidentally burst into flames, much to Anita Dobson's chagrin.
Wow, that does sound bad. I don't know the play but perhaps that's a good thing!
While I have never walked out a of a play performance myself, I think that everyone has the right to do so if they experience either sufficient displeasure or discomfort. I would probably be skeptical of any demands for a refund based on either of those categories (emergencies obviously differ here). I tend to be pretty selective about the plays I see due to finances, so I haven't typically experienced a situation where I might have walked out.
There is, of course, one exception. I almost walked out of a performance of Matthew Modine Saves the Alpacas (https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/shows/matthew-modine-saves-the-alpacas/) at the Geffen Playhouse. I went to see it because I'm a fan of Modine's and it promised a kind of surreal comedy experience that was extremely meta and referenced a ton of genre I enjoy. It opened strong, and self-deprecating, but I was rapidly becoming bored with the play. There was nothing offensive, but I was hard pressed to stay. In the end, it was my love of the artist AS artist and my sympathy for how hard it is to make something actually entertaining that led me to stay.
I often say that every man who writes has a heist story in the back of their mind that should never be written. Mine deals with a bank robbery in Reno and is called Last Stop Disneyland. I will never let much more than that escape my subconscious into the real. I might want to add an addendum to that maxim. Every writer has a self-insert heroic tale that should only be shared with friends. Modine's play was of that variety.
To my recollection, I've only walked out once, from a university production of a Shakespeare play--20+ years later I've forgotten (blocked out?) which one--because it had somehow reached nearly three hours before intermission. I'm a professional in the field, which probably makes me less patient with unnecessarily long shows, but good lord. Get the air out!
Was it Hamlet? There is a four hour version but it’s basically not how Shakespeare intended it to be seen so directors should edit it down!
Nope, it was a comedy. Not that the version in question managed to be funny. Perhaps it was Twelfth Night, which I do normally find funny.
I walked out of David Mamet play (Goat,?) mainly from boredom. I once walked out of an opera that hurt my ears. My line has always been I'm a patron of the arts ,(ie I've paid), I don't have to stay around. But I would definitely walk out of a play if I felt a cast member was being assaulted. And write to the theatre.
Oh if a cast member was being assaulted it would be a criminal investigation no doubt. This was a fictional scene of non-consent so the walkouts were for moral and artistic reasons at least. Boredom and sore ears are also excellent reasons to leave!
Walked out of the Edinburgh Festival production of “Lanark” at the interval. Had just finished a MLitt on Gray but couldn’t stand what I was watching. Wife insisted we walk out of “Blue Velvet” after 20 mins, she was so freaked out … wanted to leave the worst ever, ESC production of “R & J” (R was an alien) but as I had taken a bus load of kids with me could not.
I am oddly intrigued by alien Romeo…
Joint worst production of any Shakespeare play I’ve ever been to. Romeo was a silver tin foil inhabitant from a distant galaxy with Spockesque levels of emotional incapacity. Stars put out your fires was spoken like he ordering a happy meal. (The other stinker was a ‘heritage’ Macbeth. Lady M didn’t blink, looked like Bride of Frankenstein and had a vocal range of one note. It actually might have been worse.)
Ah but you see Ian, I’m a great connoisseur of the ‘so bad it’s good’ genre (Neil Breen for example) so now I want to see both of those productions just to marvel.
I walked out of the rape scene in Jack Nicholson’s Goin’ South. Because rape treated as all in good fun.
I haven’t seen it but that sort of scene often crosses the line for me too. Good for you!
Excellent points. I agree, you shouldn't censor the author, and you should also give the audience the right to choose to enjoy or walk away from a performance. As a big fan of transgressive cinema, It's one thing to pile on the gore, violence and nudity to enhance the story or move it forward. When it's completely gratuitous for the sake of shock value, it gets boring to me. The trend towards almost "torture porn" in underground/independent films, violence for the sake of violence and cruelty became rather obnoxious in my opinion. The film of "Marat/Sade" is a pure delight. Definitely worth a viewing for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Thanks so much Tom! It’s so interesting how the term ‘torture porn’ is used amongst horror lovers (myself included) to talk about gratuitous sadism when lots of people think horror as a whole genre is sadistic and we are all messed up for enjoying it! I’m interested to hear your take on the term ‘extreme horror’ — does it overlap with ‘transgressive cinema’ or is it essentially ‘torture porn?’
And NO, Rebekah we are not messed up for enjoying horror films. One of the most excruciating films I ever sat through was the Bette Midler film “Beaches”…that to me was worse than torture, but being as I was with someone who wanted to see it, I kept silent about my opinion. To paraphrase the 10cc song …”the things we do for love”. LOL
Aw that is very gentlemanly of you! I was thinking of ‘Martyrs,’ I’m still bracing myself to watch it but I have heard and read so much I think I know if shot for shot. French extremity seems often to have a lot to say. A lot of war films fall into the ‘extreme’ category for me too even though people don’t often think of them as horror. Things like ‘Come and See.’ I’ve always thought that horror genres were all first developed on stage, extreme films definitely come from Grand Guignol and Jacobean Revenge dramas!
I think “extreme horror” definitely overlaps with transgressive cinema. If you take a film like the original French version of “Martyrs”, it’s definitely a brutal watch. I love it, but find it hard to go back and re-watch it more than once a year of so, at most. The horror and violence are extreme, BUT they are essential to the story. Much the same way that the scene you referenced in “Titus Andronicus” is. You identify with the character more and they become more human. It simply isn’t a bunch of random murder set pieces like a lot of “torture porn” seems to me. Another transgressive film is Eric Stanze’s 2000 movie “Scrapbook”. Yes it is brutal at times, and has been accused of being almost torture porn, BUT what happens to the character Clara humanizes her to the viewer, making you “root for her”, to overcome her captor and the abuse he is putting her through. It’s also a film that’s hard to go back and re-watch very often, but like “Marat/Sade” or “Titus Andronicus” it leaves a definite impression on you. What is strange to think is that torture porn, and splatter films in general have their roots on the stage , because of The Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris in the very late 1800s.
Oh, the ever reliable “I must take this silent call, pardon me…” and never come back and call it a night or a drink at the local pub or concierge while you wait for your compatriots….
Perhaps if it's a socio/political values statement or offense to one's sensibilities, sure! You're the audience with rights to entertaining ideas, events, and notions! And it's a right, I feel, to exercise at will, wisely and determinedly. But yeah, as discussed below, if it's for a friend, do stay and somehow find a discrete way to entertain yourself in some manner: a surreptitious podcast in ear, pretend awake glasses to get some shut eye in, or marvel in disbelief at this moment…and bill the friend the lost hours.
I walked out in the middle of “Ghost.” I found myself wondering why I had thought I’d like it. (I was going to type “what possessed me” but then I thought twice about it.)
This was fascinating. I actually saw Marat/Sade way back in the early 2000s in Cambridge (Massachusetts), and thankfully there was no gratuitous sex scene. My sister recently saw Titus Andronicus in Stratford and she said it was a helluva show, and of course stayed till the end.
The only time I walked out of something was the cinema probably around the same time, High Fidelity. I was just bored shitless. I fell asleep during The Matrix, also bored shitless.
I walked out at intermission when I saw Cats. Because I was not on enough (or any) drugs to make that trainwreck make any sense.
Almost walked out of Lestat. It was rough.
I have heard tell and never dared find out…
I've never walked out of a play or film, but I *have* fallen asleep.
I've never walked out of a play or a film, but I have fallen asleep....
When I was doing A-level Theatre Studies, I was living on the Isle of Wight, attending a school that started stupidly early. Our teachers decided to take us to the National to see a double-bill of Oedipus, directed by (I think) Trevor Nunn: "Oedipus Rex" and "Oedipus at Colonnus". It required a ferry and a coach to get there after school.
There was a problem with the tickets and I drew the short straw, ending up on the opposite side of the auditorium to everyone else (they didn't like me much anyway so it wasn't a massive hardship). I befriended the two very nice middle aged chaps next to me, who felt sorry for me being abandoned.
So the first play starts and we're off. Actors declaiming in linen, etc etc. Fake blood. Interval (which I spent on my own). Then the next play, which we weren't studying for A-level; I had no idea what was going on. I was knackered and fell asleep. Then - thunder sound effect! - and I awoke with a shriek heard by everyone in the auditorium.
The chaps next to me chuckled, and one of them said, "I don't blame you for falling asleep. Isn't it *boring*? I nodded off as well!"
In the end, when I wrote my staging plan for "Oedipus Rex" in my A-level exam, I based it on the set of Tina Turner's music video for "Golden Eye", which I'd seen down the pub on VH1 while my friends played pool. Oh, dear. How uncultured I am!
Firstly, hilarious. Secondly, were the plays in Greek? Thirdly, I love the image of you waking up screaming, I’m sure that gave everyone a welcome giggle. Fourthly, I am immediately going to watch that video and imagine Oedipus in it…
They were in English, but so intoned/declaim-y, if you see what I mean. I'd seen the Kenneth Brannagh "Much Ado About Nothing" by this point and couldn't understand why they hadn't at least *tried* to make the text sound like people talking. It was three hours of hearing the same dum-te-dum rhythm over and over again. Fate. Thebes. Etc. Every line self-consciously heavy with significance. I should really look up some reviews and see what proper theatre-goers (not knackered teens!) thought of it! "Fine acting, convincing scream at the thunderclap."
Tbh I bet people have raved about how amazing it was. I just think showing those two plays back to back was a bad idea as it made for such a long showtime (we nearly missed the last ferry!), but I suspect that if they didn't, "Oedipus at Colonnus" would never see the stage!
No it was shite. It even kept the hey nonny nonny at the end.
I really enjoyed and it was the first time I was able to see how Shakespeare could be more than lots of reciting things and could actually mean something. At least it didn't send me to sleep!
I think I might know the Oresteia plays done in that style, there were some that experimented with the original masks and rhythms… such an alien style for modern audiences. It can’t help if the play is dull, I don’t even remember whether I read Oedipus of Colonnus as an undergrad so it definitely didn’t stick with me.
Oh, definitely, it was very alien. I mean... It's interesting to do a production like that with an eye to theatre history, but... Just one Oedipus would've done! I think it was basically "Oedipus is an old man and about to shuffle off this mortal coil." Interestingly, it looks like the Oedipus I saw played Tiresias in a production about ten years ago with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role.
I suppose they also wanted to justify using that big Greek-style theatre. Still doesn’t guarantee a good audience response though!
Yes, that's true, it's perfect for it!
I think we were offered the chance to go backstage, but couldn't because otherwise we'd be trapped overnight in Portsmouth!
Ahh here we go - it was Peter Hall's production. "Peter Hall's production was masked, formal and in rhyming couplets." https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/oct/16/theatre2?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Yes!! Peter Hall! So it’s the same direction as the Oresteia plays I’ve seen. I enjoyed Agamemnon but maybe because I like the play I’m biased. It’s not at all naturalistic and that rhythm could easily lull someone to sleep.
Yeah, definitely - if you like the play, I'm sure it's really good. I just remember finding the last of the pair I saw not exactly thrilling!
(Accidentally repeated the opening line there because it looked like it'd disappeared while I was typing so I added it again... Ah, well... It's a bit like the experience of watching that double bill!)
I do that sort of thing all the time Helen
I do that sort of thing all the time Helen
No apologies needed!
I walked out of “Lust in the Dust”, a movie starring Divine (I was 15? It was not for me), and my husband and I left an opera at intermission. It was… ugh, can’t remember, but it was Valentines Day, and we had been expecting lavish sets and costumes and it was bare bones… the only set decorations were ramps and a giant hanging pod in the middle of the stage. The costumes were just normal clothes. We looked at each other…and went home.
Sensing that you’re too young for something is such a valid reason, good for you! And that is a shame about the opera, especially if you’d paid a lot for tickets. Sometimes you do think ‘I’d better be able to see this bloody money somewhere.’
The tickets were not too pricey for the opera, and we were happier with going home!
Almost every play I've ever wanted to walk out of has been a community theatre production in which I've known at least a couple of the actors, and at that point, social nicety demands that I suffer through and then try to say something complimentary at the end which is not a lie (usually something along the lines of, "Wow, you all work so hard on this!")
The sole professional production I've wanted to walk out of was the Broadway musical version of Moulin Rouge, a play which seems to have entirely missed the point of the original movie. I stayed because the tickets hadn't been cheap, and we hoped the second half would redeem itself (spoiler alert: it did not).
Indeed. I did not walk out of the worst production of the Scottish play, ever, because the only good actor in it was a friend BUT after the interval the audience was noticeably smaller than the cast onstage, very awkward.
Oh god the classic ‘you were so…brave!’ And I feel you on Moulin Rouge, the hours of my life I must have lost to fruitless optimism about terrible art.