set himself in scene

VinnyD, I'm sure you've also heard of the peanut gallery. Do you know what it is? I certainly don't.

Kerouac, I always thought the peanut gallery was the top balcony in a theatre or movie theatre. Maybe the people in the cheap seats used to eat peanuts during intermission instead of going to the lobby for champagne?

I'm pretty sure that the phrase "the peanut gallery' originated on the 1950s US children's TV show Howdy Doody. The "peanut gallery" was the small studio audience of children. "Peanut" because they were children, as in the comic strip Peanuts.

When I got big enough that I joined my older brother and sister and started going to some other family's apartment to watch Howdy Doody, my mother decided we had to buy a television. Burdening the neighbors with two children was OK, but three was one too many, she thought.

I just looked it up:

1. The hindmost or uppermost section of seating in a theater balcony, where the seats are cheapest.
2. A group of people whose opinions are considered unimportant: “Pressure is building … to force … Alan Greenspan to cut interest rates and pump up the money supply. [He] has politely ignored these catcalls from the peanut gallery” (H. Erich Heinemann).

The best I can come up with for the OP is is "to be the center of attention." I don't think there is an equivalent English idiom.

The Word Detective answered a peanut gallery question<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Hey, thanks a lot. Because of your question, I've had "It's Howdy Doody Time" running through my head for the last ten minutes, and it doesn't seem like it's going to stop until I replace it with something a bit more refined. Hold on a moment. "Louie Louie, me gotta go...." Ok, I'm fine now, and I'll explain that Howdy Doody business in a minute.

As you suspect, "peanut gallery," today used in a figurative sense, refers to the unruly riffraff, skeptical spectators whose opinions, at least to the speaker, do not count for much. In a literal sense, "peanut gallery" started out as a theatrical term. American theaters in the 19th century were (as theaters still are) divided into tiers of seats whose ticket price varied with their proximity to the stage. The topmost tier (what we would call "the nosebleed seats" today) was the gallery, where the less affluent patrons ended up. Many of these folks were not shy about expressing their opinions when they found the performance lacking, and often employed the peanuts they bought to munch as handy missiles to get the actors' attention. Thus, "peanut gallery" gradually took on its figurative meaning of "rowdy rabble."

But "peanut gallery" might well have faded away years ago were it not for The Howdy Doody Show, an immensely popular children's TV program of the 1950s (and the source of the theme song that was driving me crazy). Howdy Doody's "Peanut Gallery" was the in-studio audience of children, and to get a ticket to be in Howdy's Peanut Gallery was the dream of nearly every American child of my generation. Unfortunately, I never made it, but if you're wondering what the whole ruckus was about, you should check out Howdy Doody Online at howdydoodytime.com. You'll even get a chance to sing along with "It's Howdy Doody Time." Just don't sing it around me.<hr></blockquote>