Let it out! Biggest theater pet peeves — Page 2

candydog2 said: "I used to work front of house in theatres in London and have many pet peeves, so I'll go for a less obvious one:

SUITCASES. Seriously people. Go check in to your hotel. On one bigmusical we'd have to store at least 2 or 3 LARGE suitcases at each performance, not to mention all the little pull-along cabin baggage ones as well.

Theatres don't have large spaces for coat-checks, and in today's security-conscious world every bag has to be searched, especially if entering a large, crowded venue. It's such a pain for security to have to stop everything while they open up your huge suitcase and rummage through your underwear in the lobby of a busy theatre. It's really SO unnecessary."

I am absolutely sure it is a pain and I try at all costs to avoid it, but I actually really needed to bring my carry-on to Wicked once. I had an evening flight to catch at JFK right after and my Airbnb was in Brooklyn. Besides check-out being very early, I would have had to add an additional 2 hours to my commute back to Brooklyn then back to the airport where I would have missed my flight.

I actually didn't expect that they would let me bring it in because I never would have thought to done so, but I looked it up online and it sounded pretty common. Once I got to the Gershwin, it seemed like they had a streamlined process as I got in and out with my luggage very quickly. But it might just be because Wicked is more of a tourist show. I probably wouldn't have tried it on a smaller show.

It's not necessarily the show that would affect it, but the theatre the show is in. Many of the older Broadway houses have very small lobbies, so space is at a premium. The Gershwin being significantly newer than the majority was built with much more front of house space in mind.