Said Zoë Roberts, a writer and star of 'Operation Mincemeat," quoted in rule #6 — about keeping quiet — in "The 37 Definitive Rules of Going to the Theater/Everything you need to know about seats, coats, eating, drinking, clapping, peeing, compliments, autographs and not being a jerk to those around you" (WaPo)
Rule #6 is "You’ve heard of quiet luxury? Try quiet essentials." We're told you can bring in "water bottles, and even your own candy," but "try emptying candy or snacks into a cup, where you can pluck them out with minimal ruckus."
But Rule #23 creates a big loophole: "Pick your time to sip or bite." It quotes a sound designer who says: "In a musical there are certainly louder scenes where you can probably get away with a little more." Just decide the show is being noisy enough and apparently it's okay to crunch chips.
I feel sorry for the actors on stage. They can see us, the audience. It's not a movie, people. I feel sorry for actors who not only have to tolerate the unreality of a theater full of humans who do not belong in the scene but also have to see us shoveling in food, sucking on straws, chewing, and tipping water bottles up in the air. But the theater people are afraid to call for traditional decorum. They need to fill the seats, and they know we are needy, entitled louts.
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40 comments:
I 100% agree with our host - I always thought dinner theater was a weird and terrible idea.
"Unless you wanna suck them until they are soft like baby food..."
The lament of many a Broadway theater groupie.
Slob culture is the white people's equivalent of thug culture.
When I attend the live version of My Dinner with Andre I just eat when they eat.
The best stage performers ignore rude crowds and hecklers. They leave it to the ushers to enforce security (or to parents who taught manners long before). Bad performers break character and stop the show, and then half the audience gets mad. The event spirals down from there.
I saw this happen once with the opening act at a concert. While his music was not in the same genre as the headliner, the guy wasn't that bad. He talked back to a few heckers and everyone got cranky. In the post-smartphone era, most of the crowd arrives cranky and childish too.
Don't give a standing ovation at every single show that you see.
I feel sorry for the actors on stage. They can see us, the audience.
I was under the impression that the lights prevent the actors from seeing much of the audience.
And is this about theater, dinner theater or both?
Put out a riveting product, demand decorum, people will comply. No list needed. Plan your day so that when you arrive you can sit through each Act without doing personal business except in the breaks. The exceptions shouldn't become the rule.
It ain't that hard.
I was under the impression that the lights prevent the actors from seeing much of the audience.
Most of the time it does, but there are moments...
Those actors would be encouraged people anywhere else to be relaxed and fly their freak, to tear down those stuffy bourgeois inhibitions. It's only when they're on stage everyone has to shut up and be still.
Actors looking out over the crowd have nothing to worry about these days, compared to earlier eras. James Boswell, in his London Journal, highlights Boswell's potentially disruptive behavior at a play, noting that he "entertained the audience prodigiously by imitating the lowing of a cow". Chips in the movie theater might be annoying but not as annoying as the infamous Interrupting Cow Joke.
Wow, this really put me off going to the broadway theater. Lets see: Super-expensive tickets, tight seating, drunk morons falling asleep, people munching on snacks, and others getting up in the middle of the show for a bathroom break. Not to mention, talking about the plot, and bringing bored squallying kids to the show.
And its come as you are. Sweat pants for women, shorts for men. Sounds like a nightmare!
Oh c'mon. The Bard himself had to put up with the groundlings in his hour of strutting and fretting on the stage. His plays-- even the comedies-- incorporated loud moments presumably to gratify, but maybe to mask the sound of, the riotous audience below the stage.
During my years as a stage actor (1980s-2006) I never encountered people eating or drinking during a show; our audiences were mostly elderly people who knew better. Live stage performance is interactive, and each performance varies somewhat due to audience reactions, which affects the timing of line delivery, such as holding for laughs. I can't even imagine having to also deal with the sound of munching and bottles opening.
Looking at the Broadway shows on the webite, it seems almost all of them are musicals or comedies. The only serious drama I could find was "Purpose", which has the following plot:
"For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home to Illinois with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning with itself, its faith and the legacies of Black radicalism."
I was under the impression that the lights prevent the actors from seeing much of the audience.
It’s been almost six decades since I last acted in a University Theater production, but the other part is that when you’re onstage you have to look where your character is supposed to be looking. If your character is supposed to be an ordinary citizen of the town watching the preacher rant in “Inherit the Wind,” then you should be looking at him and not trying to figure out who is the noisy asshole near the stage right end of the third row.
Price of a seat in the back for a Saturday show? $259. Snacks and Soda not included.
Indeed. Rules of the theatre should be enforced for everyone's enjoyment. If you cannot go two hours without food and water, stay TF home. I attended a performance of a play that my daughter was a main cast member. The older couple next to me started talking to each other in Act One until I gave them two death stares.
Don't give a standing ovation at every single show that you see.
Amen! I am definitely guilty of giving in to peer pressure on this one.
I suppose the problem is that theater is no longer the major narrative entertainment form any more, so we don't have a big enough data set to judge whether a performance really is ovation-worthy. Plus we want to be nice.
I guess all the rude behavior is OK, because y'know Shakespeare had it worse 600 years ago. Of course things weren't like that 50 years ago, 75 years ago, 100 years ago. But lets skip over that.
I'm reading a Bio of Eleanor Roosevelt and she loved the theater. Hellman's "Watch on the Rhine" had a profound effect on her. No doubt she'd love "Purpose" or "Hamilton" if she were alive. Looking at the Broadway show's of 2025, they're all aimed at chicks and Gays. Which is what you'd expect.
why is non-stop eating such a thing with us? probably goes hand in hand with our nation's obesity problem.
How about - eat before you go - so you don't need to eat at all?
The actors are just as entitled as the audience. The two groups should be social equals. Kind of like college theatricals or a show put on at a great country house. The audience of course drinks, eats, and - heavens forfend! - smokes, because they are relaxed and enjoying a night out with their peers onstage and off.
Now the phone shite is right out. Disrespectful to everyone, above, alongside, or below you on the social ladder.
RR
JSM
If the actors are not eating or drinking, why does the audience need to drink or eat?
Hey if they are smoking on the stage they should pass out cigs to the audience.
Too many rules. Fuck off.
Memorize these rules, you stupid, vapid, dumb Americans. You are a fucking embarrassment to humanity. Do not travel anywhere, stay in your trailer parks and comment on the Althouse blog, don't pollute the rest of the world with your offensive presence.
“ I feel sorry for actors who not only have to tolerate the unreality of a theater full of humans who do not belong in the scene but also have to see us shoveling in food, sucking on straws, chewing, and tipping water bottles up in the air.”
Tolerate? The audience is literally why they are there, doing what they do. And if they’re looking at the audience, they’re not doing it right.
Isn't the action on the stage supposed to be happening behind the Fourth Wall ?
When I was doing summer theater at Occidental College, we sold popcorn and soda to the audience before the show. I don't ever reacall ever taking notice of an audience member eating or drinking while I was onstage. (They obviously did, but it wasn't distracting.) A good actor knows how to focus on their work and tune distractions out.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
"Hey if they are smoking on the stage they should pass out cigs to the audience."
Because of modern fire codes, it's against the law to smoke onstage in the United States. Sometimes, it's possible to get an exemption from the Fire Marshal but that entails having a detailed fire plan and posting people with fire extinguishers backstage as firewatch.
CJinPA said...
"I was under the impression that the lights prevent the actors from seeing much of the audience."
That is mostly true. Also, while the stage is brightly lit, the audience is in darkness when the houselights go down.
One of the trickiest things to do as a lighting designer is to set up the lighting so that you don't blind the performers to the audience when there is something that calls for audience participation.
I cant stand live theater anymore. There is no fast forward.
1) 37 Rules is way too many, get over yourselves.
2) if noisy food eating is a problem, don't put on a show in a theater that sells food.
I saw Jersey Boys at the Kravis Theater in West Palm Beach. We had front row seats. The performers smoked a real joint in front of us. My daughter smiled when I turned to look at her to see if she was thinking the same.
"I feel sorry for the actors on stage. They can see us, the audience."
No they can't. Maybe front row, but the stage lighting means you just can't see out there. Not in any detail
loudogblog said...
A good actor knows how to focus on their work and tune distractions out.
Yes, but an ordinary audience member is entitled to not have to try to do that with the idiot loudly chewing right next to them.
This isn't about protecting the actors, it's about protecting the other people who paid to see the show
37!!? Definitive Rules? 37? Christ, I don't think even golf has 37 rules.*
No wonder nobody goes to the theater anymore.
* Not true, but the "definitive" ones are not extensive--Show up at least a half hour before tee time; keep it moving; don't talk while anyone is swinging; fix your ball marks and divots; and tip the cart girl well.
I saw Jersey Boys at the Kravis Theater in West Palm Beach. We had front row seats.
You couldn't pay me to see the Jersey boys. Did you see Chris Christie there?
"Theater is just not the place for crisps — or chips, for my American cousins. Unless you wanna use the empty bag to pass a cash bribe to someone."
Movie theaters were always places to eat, but live action performance theatres? The Brits really have become barbarians. Sure, patrons must have eaten and had cockfights and baited bears in theatres back in Shakespeare's day, but they really ought to
have advanced since then.
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