Theater is not a social event?

"Happy birthday to you!"

Congratulations to the Minnesota Theater Alliance on turning five years old! To celebrate, you had a little party last night and unwrapped a couple of nice gifts: two shiny, new Minnesota artistic directors.

I was actually at this event. I completely failed to recognize the Guthrie's new AD, Joseph Haj in real life; and I caught a fleeting glimpse of a harried Sarah Rasmussen, the new AD of the Jungle, who had been stuck in traffic, hurrying down the street to the soiree as I pulled out to leave. This means that I failed at the whole "meet and greet" aspect of the party by not actually "meeting" or "greeting" either of the two guests who were there to be met and greeted. Sorry, guys. I'll catch you next time. I had to leave before the actual speechifying occurred, because, you know, rehearsal. But if you want to catch up on what Haj or Rasmussen had to say, the livestream video is still available.

In defense of the cell phone guy

Last week on News and Notes, we talked a little bit about the importance of not attempting to plug your phone charger into an outlet built into the set. What I thought would be an amusing little anecdote that would disappear into the wind has blown up into a huge furor on the interwebs. That incident, along with other cell-phone related shenanigans in theaters lately, has sparked off an explosion of actor anger at audiences.

Some of you may remember Broadway actor Patti Lupone's infamous mid-show rant against a picture-taking patron during a 2009 production of Gypsy. Ms. Lupone burst back into this fight last week by personally confiscating the phone of a texter in the middle of a show. Of course, there are plenty of theater diehards leaping to defend Lupone and all of the other actors who have stopped shows to admonish audience members for their lack of respect to the grandness of the theater.

In a recent interview about her cell phone swiping, Lupone expressed her exasperation on the subject:

"It’s getting worse. I’m hired to tell a story, and it takes a lot of effort and work to do that convincingly. It’s a handful of people who destroy that experience for everyone. It’s heartbreaking. Theater is not a social event."

Now, on a gut level, I want to agree with all the phone hatred. As a fellow theater maker (and honorary crotchety old guy), I feel the fear that these little electronic devices cause, and I know the anger that comes from that; but I must remind you all of age old advice about fear and anger that we received from a wise, old sage. Let's put aside our hatred for a moment and look at a difficult counterfactual:

Everything these people are doing with their phones is now the new normal. It's part of the tradeoff we as a society agreed to when we decided we liked having a direct connection to the entirety of human thought and knowledge available to us at all times of the day or night. You might as well admonish people against wearing clothing with nylon in it in your theater because synthetic fibers didn't exist in Shakespeare's time and will thus just absolutely ruin your mood.

More and more people cannot comprehend a life without immediate access to the internet, and if you read Playbill's interview with the 19-year-old who plugged in his phone during Hand to God you will plainly see that he is completely oblivious to the fact that any of his actions were bad. In fact, I would wager that in any other circumstance he has ever experiences in his 19 years on this planet, his actions would be considered necessary, bold and decisive. And, even though I will admit that his comment of "But you got a lot of attention from this, so maybe I made your show a little better" does make him seem like a self-important little twerp, he did eventually apologize.

Congratulations, theater world. You extracted your apology, and, as punishment, a teenager was forced to endure getting all kinds of attention. With that kind of incentive system, I'm sure we'll have this thing licked in no time.

Last week, I laughed in derision at this kid, along with the rest of the theater world. Now, after reading an endless deluge of commentary on the subject, I'm beginning to come around to the idea that the theater audience isn't exactly growing, and we are continuing to do our best to alienate and exclude newcomers who don't know our nitpicky little rules. That's not exactly a growth strategy for any industry.

Remember a few paragraphs back when Patti Lupone said "Theater is not a social event"? I don't know when or how this happened, but at some point in the 450 or so years between Shakespeare's day and today, we changed theater from a boisterous, live event where everyone from the groundlings to the royalty felt perfectly at home hurling words and nutshells at the stage into a staid ritual sternly demanding the audience to sit down and shut up. That's an attitude that's going to be a big problem for theater as time goes on. Our screens have made plain old "sit down and shut up" entertainment a cheap, abundant commodity, and the upcoming generations of possible theater-goers aren't going to waste all that time and money leaving their homes just to be passively entertained. Showing up anywhere with a group of people is the very definition of a "social event", and we ignore that at our peril.

But if you still want to blame cell phones for all that is wrong, be comforted in knowing that the lousy reception in many theaters will drain their batteries really quickly.

"Happy [blank] day to [blank]

I'm working on creating a new show right now, and one of the scenes is a surprise birthday party. As we worked on it, we all broke into an impromptu version of "Happy Birthday to You", as any good, red-blooded American would do in the real world. We ended up changing it so that the song was interrupted after the first note, because it's funnier that way; but after the change was made, I thought, "That's probably for the best. That song is copyrighted, and we can't afford it."

If you're about to argue in the comments below that I'm wrong about that copyright thing, then name me the last play, movie or TV show you saw where it was sung, and I will name you a producer who sent Warner Music a $5,000 to $30,000 check. Hell, I may owe them money for the opening header title of this article.

Thankfully, the confusing and somewhat dubious history of "Happy Birthday"'s copyright is being challenged in court. Someday, you may not have to worry about writing that check.

Wanna be on TV?

Did you know that MTV's Real World is still a thing? After 23 years, it's still a show that is cast, filmed and edited, and MTV's producers actually feel comfortable showing it to people. Yeah, I had no idea either.

So, if you're a shallow, self-absorbed single between the ages of 20 and 25 who's good looking enough for basic cable and has at least one well-developed psychological complex that is guaranteed to piss off someone you live with, then a certain reality TV show will be casting here in the Twin Cities tomorrow.

I just realized: Real World is almost too old to be on Real World.