I’m in one of those tiny university or community theaters with about only 10 rows of audience seating, and the play begins. The actor with the opening lines is not projecting very well, and the person in front of me turns around and hisses, “Turn it up!” To which I respond, “I’m a patron, not part of the stage crew.”
A minute or so later, in this opening scene, they turn up the house lights for some effect, during which a patron walks in late and takes the empty seat on the other side of the guy to the right of me. The late patron says loudly to the guy between us, “Hey! Is it Red Hat or Cisco that you work for?” to which the man whispers, “The show has already started.”
In the opening scene of the next act, a character is lying in a bed, and all of the other actors are looking at her. Nonplussed, she eventually stammers, “I’m thinking of a number…,” and another character says, “2014,” which I recognize as the Unicode representation of an em dash. Then the actor begins her part, and I realize that she had forgotten her lines and was asking for a line number in the script to remind her where they were.
It’s intermission and everyone except me leaves the theater for concessions or to use the restrooms. After about 2 minutes, no one has come back, and an usher comes in and says to me, a little annoyed, “That’s it. We’re stopping now.”