By P. C. Clarke

Dear Theatre Audiences,

Just a short note to you from me, the person sitting in front of you, beside you or craning my head around behind your big hair and hat.

You, as a member of this audience, have certain responsibilities to me, your fellow audience member, and to the hard working actors up there on the stage as well. Mostly these responsibilities consist of adhering to the good manners your mother and your teachers (should have) taught you as a child. It seems that some of you have forgotten these lessons, so let me refresh them for you.

Arrive on time. On time means early enough to get your tickets, enter the theatre, find your seats and settle down BEFORE the performance starts. When you arrive late you become the show. Everyone turns to see what kind of inconsiderate fool is destroying the first five minutes of the performance. We aren’t talking about movie theaters here, where the first five minutes are commercials and credits. The first five minutes of a stage show sets the mood and points the entire evening in the direction you are going for the next two hours. The actors can see you entering, and they don’t appreciate it. In small theatres your late arrival may block the entrance an actor might have to make from the rear. And most annoying is the fact that you arrive late so often the theatres hold the curtain ten minutes to try (fruitlessly) to avoid all these problems. Great, now I’m not getting home early enough to see Letterman’s monologue.  Oh, and don’t be late coming back from intermission either.  Same reasons.

Please, don’t eat during the performance. Before it, after it or during intermission, okay, but once the lights go down, stop. No one wants to hear you chewing the peanut clusters during the introspective moments happening on the stage. And that goes for those of you who get thirsty and suck on your plastic water bottles making them collapse and snap and crinkle and pop….every thirty seconds. These are small theatres. The actors can hear it too and it doesn’t improve their performances.

Don’t be rude to the people around you. Don’t keep whispering your opinions to your friend next to you. We can hear you, and your giggles. We can’t keep from watching and listening to you. You aren’t that sly and quiet. Shut up. Shut the frak up. And while I’m on the subject of being rude to your neighbors, stop kicking me. Stop bouncing your foot up and down. Sit as still as you can and don’t invade my space. If I have to kill you it will spoil the show for everyone.

And then there are the cell phones. Is it so hard to be alone for the space of an hour or two? Can’t you let your friends wait thirty minutes to get that text or twit back from you? Those people up on stage are probably friends of yours, too. Be nice to them. Turn off your cell phones. And than means you people who turn them back on to use as lights to read the programs. Not cool. Not cool at all. Nothing improves my evening at the theatre like having the person in front of me light up the row with their I-phone to see which actor was on a soap opera once. Leave the phones off. Unless you are a doctor. If you are a doctor on call, sit on the aisle in the back. You know you have to leave. Why bother everyone else?

Perfume. Lovely. Please take a moment to realize that small crowded theatres may not be the best places to wear it. Ventilation is often poor and these places are so small they often turn off the fans because they are too loud. Sitting next to someone wearing too much strong perfume or cologne can be a nightmare. On the other side of this coin, young men, I’m here to tell you that you need to shower… often. We can tell…. and we don’t like it.

Dress well. You don’t need white tie and tails but you are paying $25 for the privilege of attending. Make it a little special. Otherwise stay at home and watch TV in those pajamas your mother would burn if she knew you still had them. Besides, its harder to fall asleep and snore when you are in nice clothes. And grandma, leave the flashing LED Christmas broach at home.

Enjoy the experience. If something is funny, laugh out loud. It improves the experience for everyone, unless you have one of those laughs that always makes people turn and stare… you know who you are. Challenge yourselves. Go see shows that make you think. Try seeing some Shakespeare. Good Shakespeare is hard to find, but when you do, it’s worth it.

When the show is over, be nice to the actors. Stay and wait for your friends to get out of makeup and find nice things to say about the huge effort it took to get that show up on its feet. Even the worst show you’ve ever seen took weeks of work, by many people, to get on stage. Think about what you’ve just seen and form an opinion. More than half the experience is how you perceive the art work in front of you.

And in the end, be considerate of the people who run the theatre. It is easy to take your trash to the bins, you would do it at McDonald’s. If you don’t want your program leave it on the seat, they cost money the
theatre doesn’t have. As you exit, be aware of your surroundings. If it is a residential neighborhood don’t ruin the theatre’s relationship with its neighbors, leave without waking them up.

In short, behave as if your mother and grandmother and that teacher with the yardstick in her hand are watching.