Last Night, Fifi was at the Green Room Theatre, on the Franklin & Marshall campus, to see The Laramie Project, and let me tell you, she was impressed. But not with the audience, that’s for sure. More on that later.
What a tough little play to tackle. Well not so little, two and one half hours with two intermissions is not little. What I mean to say is, bravo to these talented actors for taking on such tough roles. This would be a mountain for even a troop of seasoned professionals to climb, and these young actors did a fine job.
The Laramie Project is based on hundreds of interviews and journal entries by the members of the Tectonic Theater Project gathered in the wake of the brutal beating, and subsequent death, of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student. Not only is this weighty material to cover, but each actor is tasked with playing multiple roles, including the interviewers, townspeople, doctors who cared for Matthew and even the monsters who perpetrated this heinous crime.
By the end of the production audience members were choked up and the cast received a well deserved standing O. Brava, little ones, brava! Your courage and talent are to be commended.
Ok poodles, time for a little theatre etiquette lesson.
Arrive early This is live theatre, people, and arriving late, or even “on time” is just plain rude. This isn’t a movie theater, churning out 20 minutes of previews while you purchase your tub-o-popped-corn and party-sized Milk Duds. There are real, live actors waiting in the wings to entertain you. Arriving at or after curtain can cause those poor thespians increased stage jitters while waiting through a 10 minute hold because some of you can’t tell time. Plus it pisses those of us off that managed to be in their seats at 10 to curtain. You don’t want to piss off Fifi, now do you?
Don’t pick your seat Again let me reiterate, this is not a movie house, with its free-for-all general seating paradigm. Seating is assigned. Just because you find an empty seat on the way to the one you’ve purchased, doesn’t mean you can squat there. Be assured that the seat’s owners will arrive, requiring you to vacate and relocate. Perhapses more than once, for some of our denser theatre goers.
Unplug Signs at the door remind us. Playbills beg us. Curtain speeches implore us: turn off your electronic devices. And they mean OFF. At show time, your audience peers don’t want to hear your pocket vibrate or see the glow of your mobile device just because you can’t go five minutes without a crackberry fix. And for those who “forget” to, at a minimum, silence your device? Tsk, tsk. Nothing ruins a good climax faster than the blaring of the “Oops, I Did it Again” ring tone you’ve chosen to torture us all with.
Lecture over.
Love you. Mean it.
Fifi
