Theaters used to hire audience members to clap, laugh, and cry.

A public performance can be stressful for the actor, singer, or orator tasked with delivering the goods, not to mention the behind-the-scenes author of the creative endeavor. So it should perhaps come as little surprise that audience members have long been employed to supply an outward show of support for those on stage. This concept goes at least as far back as the heyday of the ancient Greeks in the fourth century BCE, when playwright and poet Philemon was known to stockpile his audiences with enthusiastic allies to help win competitions.

The practice reached its peak in early-19th-century Paris opera houses, where theater administrators coordinated with organized groups of “claquers,” derived from the French term for clapping, to prod the bourgeois crowds into responding appropriately at key moments. Such arrangements would typically involve the claque leader examining a show’s script and conferring with the director and performers about optimal times to display emotion. The claquers would then disperse among an audience, with some members tasked with laughing loudly at jokes, others charged with weeping during tender scenes, and still others there to bellow heartily for an encore. 

A claque leader could be well compensated (though underlings often received only free entry to a show), perpetuating a system in which these professionals held considerable influence over performers. In one example, the mother of an up-and-coming dancer declared that her daughter needed no “protection” from the hired hands in the audience, resulting in said dancer being embarrassed by the stony silence that followed her routine.

Although the claque may seem like a curious relic of the past, the practice was still going strong in Italian opera houses by the early 1960s, and in 2013, The New York Times profiled the well-oiled machinations of the claque-filled audiences of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. Just as the Greeks provided the building blocks of dramatic structure that endured through the ages, it seems their method for igniting a favorable audience reception and easing the anxieties of artists packed plenty of staying power as well.

Some airplanes used to have dance floors.

Ah, for the days of the groovy ’70s. While most contemporary airline passengers find their in-flight entertainment choices limited to a menu of movies and TV shows, the “Me Decade” saw airlines go all out with attempts to please customers aboard their brand-new Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Case in point: Air Canada turned the upper deck of its 747 into a 5-mile-high club for transatlantic flights between Toronto and Europe, with music blasting from 8-track tapes as passengers shimmied on a dance floor in lockstep with their reflections on a mirrored wall.

Those who missed out on the Air Canada dance-fest could still find other means for enjoyment among the competition. United Airlines and Qantas Airlines transformed the upper-deck compartments of their 747s into lounges, respectively dubbing them the “Friendship Room” and the “Captain Cook Lounge.” The Singapore Airlines version, known as the “Raffles Lounge,” provided “slumberettes” for those who wanted a nap after a few drinks. American Airlines installed a piano bar in the rear main cabin of its 747 fleet, even if the piano was technically a Wurlitzer electronic organ that proved more durable on bumpy flights. 

Sadly, this era of the party plane was short-lived, as airlines realized that the precious space set aside for socializing could be used to pack in even more paying customers. Air Canada’s dance floor lasted for only about a year, and most other plane lounges and bars were gone by the 1980s, thereby eliminating the in-flight option of doing the Funky Chicken for all but the most determined of passengers.