Stage Rage

As someone who attends the theater on an average of five times a week, little things start to bother you. So screw a best-of list. Let’s dish the worst things about going to the theater—other than having to see yet another David Mamet play.

1. I can’t believe I even have to say it, but those pre-show announcements about turning your cell phones off and unwrapping hard candies? They’re not included as a joke, despite the laughter they always engender. And the ones who laugh hardest always seem to be the ones who crinkle cellophane during a dramatic pause.

2. But bigger than candy are three staging techniques that have never ceased to puzzle me. Particularly audience interaction.

Does anyone actually enjoy audience interaction? Does a single ticket buyer hear that a play or a musical will include an actor breaking the fourth wall to draw attention to them in front of the entire audience, and think, “Oh goody”? I’m genuinely curious, because surely someone must enjoy it. Otherwise, why would so many playwrights and directors remain so intent on including those terrible, panic-inducing moments in their plays? I spent most of Hair in near-hysterics that one of the tribe members would bother me, and though none of my theater companions have ever suffered from the threat of interaction as badly as I do, they certainly don’t enjoy it. Programs alert ticket buyers when herbal cigarettes will be smoked; is it too much to ask that there also be a notice warning us all that we might have just paid money to be accosted and humiliated in our seats?

3. Actors may enjoy the sadistic delight in making audiences squirm, but surely even they must have qualms when their director tells them to stay in character on stage as the audience wanders in prior to curtain time. Watching those poor souls (almost all of whom are alone) as they try to occupy themselves with mindless chores or feigned sleep—the two most popular pre-show tableaux—is awkward and straining for audience members. Should we lower our voices? Should we be paying attention? Why has this been staged if it’s not important to the story? More importantly, is the actor as uncomfortable as we are?

4. Which brings me to my last grievance: nudity. Specifically, male nudity. God knows I’m not a prude, but I’ve been to far too many shows in the last year that featured gratuitous male nudity. The worst instances were in tiny black box theaters that thrust the performer (and his junk) into the faces in the first row. For every Take Me Out or even In the Next Room, two shows about masculinity and masculine power that featured revelatory nude scenes as part of larger themes, there’s something like The Great Recession or La MaMa’s Romeo and Juliet, which dresses up its performers’ lack of clothes as something arty and thought-provoking. Well, The Great Recession actually didn’t bother to make its nude actor seem like art. He was mostly just there for a cheap laugh while moving sets.

Maybe that’s the underlying problem with theater right now: Everyone’s happy to take the easy way out (unwrap your candy when you feel like it; cast a beloved TV star so the show doesn’t actually have to be good; churn up word of mouth by including a hot naked actor). I’m sick of the easy way if it means that the end result suffers. Bring on the challenging, adult shows in 2010, the productions that don’t dismiss its audience or ignore it altogether in pursuit of some mammoth play-length inside joke (which pretty much leaves the Fringe Fest out), the plays that make us think after we leave without hammering in its “controversial” subject material (bye bye, Mamet). We’re New Yorkers, for chrissakes. We can handle it.