Annoying Audience Habits — Page 2

"Hey, you! Theater coot! If your blood sugar is gonna crash so badly that you can't wait until intermission or the curtain to open your hard candy...then STAY THE FUKC HOME!"

- Playbilly

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Updated On: 8/22/12 at 07:12 PM

"But why people would need to rush out of a curtain call in New York escapes me. I assume most people there aren't driving."

they want to be the first: 1. To hail a cab 2. To get their car out of the lot. 3. To be on line at the coatcheck. 4. To be the first to buy a souvenir 5. To be the first out of the theater to avoid just standing there waiting to move. A plethora of reasons. I find that New Yorkers have to be first for EVERYTHING. They can't even stand to walk behind another person on the sidewalk, or to cross the street.

"Personally, I don't see what's so wrong with photos at the theatre before the show starts. I mean yeah during the show it's wrong, but before?"

Well, it is unlawful to take a photo inside the house at any time. Shooting the stage set is a copyright infringement. If people were permitted to take pictures of each other, it would be impossible to keep track of everyone doing it, and making sure they aren't getting the stage in the frame also.

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I agree. If it's a show I like at all, I'm staying for the very last note of the play-off music. (And even if it's a show I detest, I'm not leaving before the last curtain comes down. Why would I be rude to the actors?)

hehe, sorry to be the reminder of the negative!

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So do I, jetts7. I suspect it's because we treat the Playbill like a book, save it, etc.

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Jane, that's okay. I need to be reminded of the difficulties of life in NYC. Otherwise, I'd just be green with envy every time I read here.

Years ago I was working at the now defunct Airport Playhouse on Long Island. We had a special benefit performance of SOUTH PACIFIC mid-week and it was scheduled at an earlier time than usual. I think it was 7 PM. As I was working full-time in those days, I drove from work to the theater (and got stuck in traffic, as I recall) and made it just enough time to get into makeup and costume. I was starving and so was most of the cast.

Some of the audience members brought picnic dinners and as the show started, they opened up their foil-wrapped chicken and began munching away. Whoever made the potato salad used lots of onions in it because we could smell it from the stage: onions, fried chicken, celery sticks--everything could be smelled in that tiny theater. They were even opening cans of beer. Our stomachs were growling on stage and fortunately the theater wasn't mic'ed because the audience would've heard a veritable symphony of growls. One of the ushers went out and bought some cold cuts for the cast to munch on in the green room so we weren't completely famished by the time intermission came.

From that point on the theater maintained a policy of "No Food in the Theater"

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When to see Freud's Last Session before it closed and a girl sitting in the center of the first row was texting throughout the whole show. Later at the talk back with the actors, she texted again and the actors pointed it out to the whole theatre.
Not to mention that at the same performance, another girl ripped pages out of her Playbill to spit her gum out. She then proceeded to dropped the ripped page with gum on the floor. Later, during the show, she was writing all over her Playbill. Now, this might just be me, but I was really annoyed by her.

I just saw a show where someone's best friend was clearly in the audience, trying to drum up applause and inappropriately howling at the worst times.

But i really hate it when bouts of coughing come over the audience, usually during the really quiet bits.

I've posted this in previous threads but the most uncomfortable experience I had in the audience was at City Center when I was sitting beside a woman who reeked of hard boiled eggs. I changed my seat during intermission.

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"I despise people who leave before curtain call. It is so disrespectful to the performers who have worked so hard to entertain you."

i heard one performer describe it as a "strolling ovation". funny.

This is all just between us, right? Well, don't tell anyone, but when I was in high school I worked at a theater with a very geriatric audience. For reasons that escaped me, the senior citizens were the worst about running out before the curtain call, even for shows they obviously liked.

So sometimes I would stand in the dark on the far side of the exit doors and hold them closed just as the rush for the exits began. Caused quite the pile up on the inside of the doors.

Now that I'm pushing 60, I think what I did was very foolish and I am lucky no one was ever injured. But I was 17 back then and full of righteous indignation over what I saw as rudeness to the performers.

No doubt there's some nasty karma in my future...

Updated On: 8/24/12 at 09:53 PM

I hate the audience members who sing along with the show, or hum, but unlike a few of you, I don't mind the hooting, hollering, whistling and spontaneous applause that have become common in musical and comedy audiences today. I consider it proof that, even in today's world where encores are written into the show and audience response means nothing to the way the show actually progresses, something we do behind the fourth wall is actually reaching the audience behind.

And regarding "what happened to bravo?" Bravo, in as far as I understand it, refers to something very different than cheers, hoots or screams- it's an audience's way of saying "a consummate performance, from a master of the craft!" An extremely weighty, not to mention somewhat affected, pronunciation far different from spontaneous shows of appreciation and audience joy. Sometimes I wish Wagner had never made the pronunciation that the only sounds appropriate to theatrical audiences were applause, and the withholding of applause.