At a recent performance of “Shows for Days” at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, a woman in the second row was texting on her cellphone. At one point in the second act, Patti LuPone, who stars as a community theater diva in Douglas Carter Beane’s love letter to the theater, grabbed the phone out of the woman’s hands as she exited the stage. She gave it to the stage manager, who then returned it to the woman at conclusion of the play.This incident came right after another brouhaha at a performance of “Hand to God” on Broadway. Just as the lights were about to dim at the start of the show, a young man in the audience decided to crawl on stage and plug his cell phone charger into an electrical outlet which was part of the set. (The show opens in a Texas church basement.) Theater security and the house manager quickly descended to correct the egregious and moronic offense — not to mention that the outlet was fake. The whole event, which was captured on video, had over a half-million hits within days after it was posted on YouTube.The ringing of cell phones and texting during performances have been the crude side of audience behavior for some time now, despite repeated warnings to turn off all electronic gadgets prior to the start of the show. Indeed, in 2009, LuPone interrupted her performance during the run of “Gypsy” to yell at one offender. A couple of years later, at a performance of “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812,” an irate critic grabbed the cell phone of the woman sitting next to him and threw it across the room after she ignored his repeated requests for her to stop texting. She slapped him and while the show was in mid-performance, marched across the playing area to complain to management. And that’s not all. House managers complain of having to dispose of pizza boxes and take-out containers at the end of a performance, not to mention other refuse. Has audience behavior gotten worse? “I think so,” said a house manager of a long-running hit recently “More than half the audience on any given night has never before been in a Broadway theater and they simply don’t know the etiquette.” The manager said that he has instructed his ushers to walk up and down the aisles both at the beginning of the play and at the end of intermission, holding up a cell phone and loudly asking the audience to refrain from using them. A page within the Playbill also has a graphic of a cell phone with a crossed-out symbol. Other than these precautions, he added, there is little else that can be done. “When a cell phone goes off, the shushing around it can be even more disturbing,” he said. “A man and a woman nearly came to blows after the man told her to stop texting during a performance and she told him to mind his own business. He was well-meaning but his actions made the situation more disruptive.” He advised that audience members should alert staff at intermission and let them handle the situation. The incident at “Hand to God” was so moronic that there is some suspicion that it had actually been staged. That a camera just happened to be filming at the time seems a tad too convenient. Playbill tracked down the offender — one Nick Silvestri, a 19-year-old college student from Seaford, Long Island — who claimed a certain naiveté. The producers of the Robert Askins comedy, which has been lagging at the box-office, were quick to exploit the widely-publicized incident with a playful ad on its website. “Need a charge?” was the legend under a picture of Tyrone, the demonic hand puppet which wreaks havoc in the play. That in turn was quickly followed up by another social media campaign in which Tyrone is pictured with arms raised up under the words, “Don’t Cry for Patti LuPone,” a sly reference to her Tony-winning performance in the title role of “Evita.”
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