Audiences for Touring Broadway Shows are Exhausting

I have reached the point where I started to dread going to see touring Broadway productions, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the performers on stage.

The productions themselves are often excellent. The casts are talented. The orchestras are strong. The staging and technical production is impressive given the realities of moving a major show from city to city.

The problem is increasingly the audiences.

Over the last few years, I have noticed a steady decline in theater etiquette at touring productions. Not occasional distractions. Not the inevitable cough or dropped Playbill. No, I mean a constant stream of behavior that would have been considered unacceptable not very long ago.

For example, yesterday was Beauty and the Beast at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. The Fox! People were still up and down all night, phones out the whole time. The woman in front of me had hers up maybe ninety-five percent of the show. Scrolling. Texting. I swear to God she was on the Applebee's website.

Earlier this year I saw Les Misérables in Fort Lauderdale. I traveled nine hours each way. Hadn't seen it in thirty years. I watched more people going back and forth to the bathroom than I watched the show.

That's not two bad nights, either. Phones stay out through half the show even after the announcements. Not a quick glance. More like someone at home half-watching Netflix while they scroll Instagram and wait on DoorDash. People talk at normal volume during scenes that matter. Whole rows get up two or three times in one act. Screens pop on because somebody needs to check a text or confirm what time it is. People rush out before the end like their team is losing and they're trying to beat traffic.

The part that gets me is most of them don't seem to notice they're ruining it for everyone around them.

Broadway and the West End are completely different.

That's not because New York and London audiences are magically better. The expectations are different. Somebody might actually say something if you're lighting up the row with your phone.

On Broadway, once the lights go down, people mostly act like the show has started. You watch. You don't become part of the performance. Same thing in London.

If you're on your phone or talking through a scene, house staff might step in. And the people near you are usually not shy about letting you know it's not okay.

At a lot of touring stops that pressure isn't there, and neither is the staff. You get the speech about silencing your phone. You don't get an usher when half the row ignores it.

Tickets cost more every year. The marketing still says "premium theatrical experience." But the room often feels less respectful than it did ten years ago.

I've never bought the "people paid for their ticket" excuse.

Everyone paid.

The person behind you paid.

The people across the aisle paid.

The cast spent months on the show you came to see.

Your ticket doesn't buy you the right to wreck it for everybody else.

Live theater only works if the room agrees to pay attention together for a couple hours. That's the deal.

When half the auditorium is checking notifications, talking, or wandering in and out, the deal falls apart.

None of this is hard.

Silence your phone.

Keep it in your pocket.

Go before the show or at intermission unless you actually have to.

Talk after the curtain call.

That's not snobbery. That's not elitism.

It's basic courtesy. It's being polite in a dark room full of strangers who are there for the experience.

The shows are often exceptional. Same talent and production quality that ran in New York or London, same performers that are there to pull you into their world for the experience.

But the weakest part of the experience keeps being the audiences.