Audiences behaving badly

In truth, it’s been happening for quite some time now, but it came to widespread notice last week when a formidable member of the theater community finally took action. During the July 8 evening performance of Shows for Days at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Patti LuPone and the rest of cast were terribly distracted by a young woman in the second row who was texting and showing the responses to her companion. At the top of Act Two, there’s a scripted moment when LuPone (who plays the diva of a community theater) reaches into the audience to shake hands. Without breaking character, LuPone shook the texter’s hand, seized her cell phone, and walked offstage and handed it to the stage manager, who in turn handed it to the house manager.

“Some people gasped,” LuPone told the New York Times. “Some people applauded.” (Note: The offender received her cell phone back at the end of the performance).

“Hey, buddy, what’s the problem?”

This widely publicized event came on the heels of another, even more bizarre incident in a Broadway theater the week before. On July 2, a 19-year-old college student named Nick Silvestri, who was attending a performance of Hand to God, discovered that the battery in his cell phone was running low. The only power outlet he could readily find was one that was on the set. So he climbed up onto the Booth stage and attempted to plug it in. (It turned out to be a fake outlet). Following the eruption that delayed the start of the performance, he explained to Playbill: “Girls were calling all day — what would you do?” At first, Silvestri didn’t understand the uproar. “I thought: ‘Why not?’. . .They were probably going to plug something in there on the set, and I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal if my phone was up there too.”

But later, in a press conference outside the Booth Theater on July 10, Silvestri expressed true remorse. “What I was I thinking? I guess I wasn’t really thinking. I don’t go to plays very much, and I didn’t realize that the stage is considered off limits.” He went on to offer a sincere apology to the cast and the Broadway community for his indiscretion.

“When’s half-time?”

Silvestri’s statement is both naïve and refreshingly revealing. No wonder he’s clueless: There are no standards of behavior in the theater anymore. Anything goes. Gone are the days of the dress code (white gloves for women, ties for men) in effect when I was coming of age. Today we wear the same attire to the theater as we do to sporting events. We come late and are annoyed when we aren’t seated immediately. We step on people’s toes without apology as we squeeze down the row. We bring our own refreshments. We talk, we text, we check our email, we unwrap our candies, and so on.

Theater has become a spectator sport, like any other. Recently, a student I took to the theater asked: “When is half-time?” Audiences leap to their feet and deliver indiscriminate standing ovations, just as they do when Ryan Howard makes it to first base in Citizens Bank Park. “Bravo!” has been replaced by “Whoo-hoo!”

It’s time for a new code of behavior in the theater, to show the art form the reverence it deserves, and, above all, to give respect to the actors. “I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work onstage anymore,” LuPone told the New York Times. Looking out at an audience whose laps conceal cell phones with shining screens, who can blame her?

Don’t quit, Patti, please! Hopefully, a new Emily Post for our theatergoing times will show up soon. And the first thing she’ll demand — for Patti’s sake, for everyone’s sake — is that we either turn off our cell phones or leave them at home.