Audience Etiquette Monitor

This blog post is dedicated to Candice who blogged about rude theatre patrons yesterday.

Tonight, my parents, my grandmother and I finally got to see Curtains at Hale Centre Theatre. I've been waiting forever and it was totally worth it! I'm going to try to see it again. It was hilarious and the music and dancing was fun.

Before the show started, my mom pointed to a guy in the row in front of us who was talking to his kids. She said, "I bet that guy talks through the whole show." I told her that wasn't going to happen, because I was not afraid to tell him -- or anyone else -- to be quiet.

Fortunately, him talking didn't seem to be a problem, because about ten minutes into the show, he fell asleep. I could tell because he was snoring. Somewhat loudly. I missed an entire song because I kept hearing him. One of his two tweens woke him up at one point, but when he fell asleep the second time he started snoring even louder. It finally culminated in a snort loud enough that the entire section I was sitting in turned around to stare. And by entire section, I mean at least 50 people that I noticed from my peripheral vision.

You would think a snore that loud would wake him up. Oh no. Not this guy. He got in at least one more decent snore before I leaned over my grandma and two other people and whacked him with my program. If he had been any closer to me I would have been more gentle, or if we had been closer to the aisle I would have flagged down an usher, but I had all those people in between us and I was in the middle of the row and no one else was doing anything!

The guy did not react to my first whack, so I hit him again, harder, in the head. He snorted awake and looked at me with surprise. I said something like "You were snoring really loudly!" To his credit, he stayed awake the entire rest of the show -- both acts. I was surprised that he stayed for the second act. He even shushed his clearly restless kids a couple of times. He could have quieted them more, but it was obvious he was trying and I appreciate that.

During intermission, the guy sitting in front of the guy who had fallen asleep flagged me down and gave me a thumbs up. He'd wanted to do something about the snoring, but didn't know what, so he was grateful to me. Then I ran into Lizzy, who is an usher at Hale and a friend of mine. She had heard and seen the whole incident and re-enacted it for some of the other ushers. I was embarrassed but proud. But hey, it had to be done, right?

Just call me the Audience Etiquette Monitor. I stand up for all those in the audience who don't know what to do with a rude audience member; It's one of the few times I'm brave. I will continue in my crusade as often as I need to in order to enjoy whatever movie, play, or recital I'm watching!