Enter Acting, Pursued by Applause - NY Times The New York Times - July 1st, 2007
By ZACHARY PINCUS-ROTH
LAST spring, the cast of “The Drowsy Chaperone” found a mysterious sign taped to a backstage television monitor. The letters “TN” were followed by a series of tally marks that grew by one every night. Later, “TW” appeared, followed by more tally marks.
The actress Beth Leavel eventually learned that the crew had been charting the number of nights the audience applauded her entrance after her Tony nomination and, later, her Tony win. On Nov. 1, after 11 and 99 tallies respectively, she took the sign home as a birthday gift.
Entrance applause, the seemingly obligatory practice of clapping at the first glimpse of movie stars or Tony-honored performers, is an odd thing. While it provides a sense of communion between performer and audience, and an ego boost, it can also be disruptive to the show.
“ ‘That damn, damn entrance hand’ — you hear that much more often than ‘How are we going to get an entrance hand here?’ ” said Doug Hughes, director of the current revival of “Inherit the Wind” with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. “There’s something wonderful, by the same token, about an audience saying to a performer, ‘We’re thrilled to see you, we’re on your side, we wish you well.’ ”
Frank Langella, fresh from winning a Tony for “Frost/Nixon,” said he had mixed feelings about the phenomenon. “In the best of all possible worlds it really would be wonderful if there were no entrance applause and even no applause within a show,” he said. “But it’s part of the enthusiasm of American audiences.”
Most objections tend to come from directors. “Almost every good director I know doesn’t want it,” the producer Emanuel Azenberg said. “The whole rhythm of the play has to stop.”
Much of the applause goes to Hollywood celebrities, like Julia Roberts or Denzel Washington, when they make a rare foray into live theater, but it is not limited to them. In “Curtains” David Hyde Pierce, best known for his role on “Frasier,” certainly gets it, but so do some of his Broadway veteran castmates, like Debra Monk and Karen Ziemba.
An entrance hand can signal that a performer has finally reached a certain threshold of recognition, as it did for Ms. Leavel, or for Kelli O’Hara, who started tearing up when she first got entrance applause after her 2005 Tony nomination for “The Light in the Piazza.” Ms. O’Hara said she was nervous about leaving that show for “The Pajama Game,” to play opposite Harry Connick Jr., but felt validated when she got entrance applause in previews: “I could do my work instead of having to prove myself.”
Sometimes entrance hands reflect the staging as much as the performer. In “Legally Blonde” the relatively unknown Laura Bell Bundy got applause even before her Tony nomination, partly because she is first seen grandly rising to the stage in a big pink box.
Read on...
Enter Acting, Pursued by Applause - NY Times
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
(kinda kidding with that... but when I saw Judi Dench on-stage there, people clapped at her entrance) 
