Local theaters ready to bow to tweeters in the audience But distraction to others a primary concern
By Beth Teitell Globe Staff / December 28, 2011
To tweet or not to tweet? That's the question facing Boston-area theaters as live-performance venues nationwide start offering "tweet seats'' for patrons who feel the need to tweet about what they are seeing during the show, not just after it.
Purists are already complaining about the glow from all those tiny screens; think of it as secondhand phone. And Suffolk University English professor Thomas Connolly calls the trend a victory for marketing directors.
But tweet seat sections are gaining a fingerhold in Massachusetts. The Lowell Memorial Auditorium has tweet seats planned for the mid-January run of "Sesame Street Live'' and two subsequent shows. Tweet seats may be offered at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston's spring performance of "Avenue Q.'' the irreverent puppet musical for adults. It may also come sometime in 2012 at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts in Worcester and at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge, where the marketing director wants to figure out just where in his 225-seat venue tweeters can flex their thumbs without disturbing fellow audience members or the performers.
The marketing value of such an addition is clearly attractive. Subscription rates are falling across the country, and a younger audience remains elusive. Live tweeting - silent, of course - is seen as a way to enhance the experience for the tweeter and to encourage followers to see the show.
...
In the catalog of really bad ideas, this one is right up there with the M-16 rifle, the notion that the U.S. could create a new country in Iraq, buying pet food online, and the PC Junior. Hell, it's in a crass
- pun intended - by itself.
The social compact of our society is being torn by fast-buck artists who are trying to convince the body politic that annoying jerks are entitled to go to a public venue and conduct a distracting sideshow which degrades both the quality of the play and the rights of those who paid good money to watch the performance without being bothered.
THis is a new low, even for the cellular industry, which has been driving public and private etiquette ever-downward since the start of the cellular network. And, before anyone tries to compare this to being in a concert hall where the audience is served by waiters, I'll say that human beings have a great, innate ability to discern the difference between actors on a stage and someone walking by on the floor, and that a waitress bringing a bottle of wine to a table isn't one one-hundredth as distracting as an artificial device glowing like a sick firefly.
I'm going to write to the Boston Globe and to the venues mentioned, and tell everyone that I will not attend any show in a place that encourages snot-nosed brats to annoy those around them with their expensive toys. I urge the readers to do likewise.
Bill Horne Moderator