Bad Audience Behavior — Page 8

A woman in the second row of On the Town tonight was caught repeatedly taking videos and pictures. Through the first and second act. It got to the point that the cast complained. I understand not wanting to cause a scene, but when it gets to a certain point, a person should be made to leave.

---

When I saw Jersey Boys a few days ago someone's phone rang during the part where Frankie is grieving at the hospital with the preacher. That part is silent and the phone ruined the whole mood.

I saw the national tour of Anything Goes recently at the Whiting in Flint (the star was a girl named Emma Stratton and it was her first professional production and she was fantastic), and I didn't know this was a thing, but multiple people around us hummed along to basically every single song. Including the woman next to me, who actually sang along to a couple lines of De-Lovely. I love the score as much as (or probably more than) anyone, and could have sang along to every single song. But obviously it's the theater and I'm paying to hear the people onstage, not the people in the audience. It was so rude, thank God we got to move up at intermission and were spared for the duration of the wonderful production.

---

Updated On: 3/5/15 at 02:41 PM

Sorry folks, but I'm afraid I have a real problem with American audiences. Applauding when a so called 'star' walks on, yuck. When an actor famous or otherwise walks on stage, they are in character (or they should be). Applause in my opinion, breaks the moment.

With respect to the ushers I think it can be difficult if people are seated in the middle of a row, middle of the theater, etc. It might be worse to have an usher somehow navigate his/her way to the offender or shine a flashlight than it would to see a cell phone light.

If someone's behavior is consistently bad in the first act, there's definitely an opportunity to tell the usher at intermission.

---

Yes LizzieCurry re:dealing with assholes. It definitely pops into my head too. It certainly impacts my decision on what days to see shows as well.

Entrance applause is what it is. It doesn't necessarily bother me but I can understand where you are coming from for sure.

---

This was last night,so Tiler Peck was on.

---

My worst experience of this is when a girl who was sat next to me (well almost, there was an empty seat between us) phone went off during a very small, intimate one man play called Seawall. The poor man had literally one line left to deliver and it was a very emotional moment and her phone went off. He had to walk about for a moment and get back into the right frame of mind and then deliver his last line. She was in tears after, but seriously, they told us to turn our phones off at the beginning for a reason!! The 'theatre' was called The Shed (its a large red wooden box, an art installation outside Londons National Theatre) and had no stage, just floor surrounded by seats and only holds about 150 people, so everyone heard her phone ringing. I had to cringe away to make sure people didnt think it was me!

Also i saw Indian Ink in November and saw a Wednesday matinee. At least 3 phones went off and i even saw one person texting during the show! The audience was mostly elderly people and i would have thought that they would have had the sense to turn off their phones!

As someone above said, i dont understand the need to clap when the 'main' actor comes on stage. We dont do that in London and i was really shocked when people did it when i saw my first Broadway show. It annoys me a little, but i guess thats just because im not used to it :/

My partner had a thought about older or elderly audience members not turning their phones off- they don't know how!

It seems like the older audience members are the most likely culprits for having cell phones go off, yet they blame my generation for our 'irresponsible' cell phone use. Well, at least we know how to turn our cell phones off. More often than not, it's the older folks with smartphones who don't know how to use them who are usually behind obnoxiously ringing cell phones during a performance. During the opening night of The Audience, I sat up in the mezzanine next to an elderly woman who took out her smartphone every five minutes to text someone that she was meeting after the show. She didn't even do it discretely! The light from the screen was shining in my face and there was an usher sitting in the aisle right behind he and he said NOTHING. I once thought that the older audience members would have a sense of theatre etiquette and just overall respect, but, I guess not.

---

^ Any show that draws the attention of young children is bound to be a nightmare. With how expensive The Lion King is per ticket, it's not worth the $100+ to listen to whining kids.

---

I saw the Annie revival twice, and while the kids would get a little squirmy, it was the bored and drunk adults that were the problem.

---

Unless they were being assholes (cell phone, crunching on food, talking loudly) it baffles me that you would be bothered by other people's reactions to art. Maybe they didn't understand what was going on.