Here’s What I Think a Virtual Broadway Audience Should Look Like

If you’re a baseball fan like I am and, after months of waiting for the abbreviated season to begin, eagerly tuned into a recent game, you likely experienced more than a little bit of weirdness thanks to our current COVID-19 world: players wearing masks, broadcasters calling plays and kibitzing remotely, pre-recorded sounds of crowd noise, and, perhaps most notably weird – the empty stadiums. Well, empty except for the smattering of cardboard fan cutouts scattered about. Yup, weird.

In its efforts to at least achieve a less weird stadium feel, Fox Sports is now in the process of testing technology that replaces the handful of static cardboard fans with fully populated stadiums consisting of lively virtual fans.

Broadway has often looked to the sports world for marketing and ticket pricing strategies, and so I’m thinking that when Governor Cuomo gives the okay for theater to resume that Broadway, and the theater sector in general, should adapt Fox Sports’s virtual fan idea until enough audience members can safely return to fill the theaters in real life.

To that end, if Broadway does decide to create virtual audiences, here are my suggestions for theatergoer types that the industry needs to include to authentically replicate the real-life audiences we have all come to know -- and occasionally hate.

The Cell Phone Offender

If anyone ever took a poll, the “Cell Phone Offender” would probably make it to the top of the disruptor list and is therefore a vital member of any virtual theater audience. The irritating ringing, chatting, and texting during performances became so prevalent prior to this pause that there was already a movement underway on Broadway to require attendees to lock up their cell phones. Heck, the musical theater world has even written a song about these mobile device miscreants! So, at this point, how could a live performance feel the same without at least one cell phone offender in the digital crowd?

The Candy Unwrapper

For as long as I can remember performances have included the customary pre-show announcement that has become as ingrained in my mind as the Pledge of Allegiance: “If you need to unwrap any candy, please do so now.” While most people follow the instruction, there’s still always one who must unwrap a sucking candy right in the middle of a performance, and always at the quietest moment. And so, it wouldn’t be a true night at the theater without including this classic irritator in the virtual Broadway audience ecosystem.

The Loud Talker

Despite being surrounded by up to a thousand or more live human beings, there are still Broadway attendees who somehow believe they are alone in their own house while watching the show. The volume of their talking has gotten so obtrusive at times that actors have even been known to stop the performance to admonish these loudmouths. So, don’t forget to include at least one loud talker-type in your virtual audience, okay Broadway? Hello? Did you HEAR what I SAID?

The Snoozer

OK. I admit it. I have been The Snoozer on more than one occasion. That’s why I stopped going to three-and-a-half hour-long classic dramas with 8 PM curtains on Thursdays. Many people do not mean to turn into The Snoozer, but it happens. When the feeling comes over you -- the heavy eyelids, the slow head tipping, the drooling -- no amount of shifting in your seat or self-pinching can control the inevitable. The Snoozer can potentially go unnoticed, unless they are sitting in the first row, or morphs into their more offensive sibling – The Snorer. Either way, there is always at least one snoozer in the bunch.

The Drunk

The Shia LaBoeuf incident at Cabaret was a bit extreme, but I have no doubts that a good number of theatergoers (and performers) have witnessed some sort of bad behavior committed by an audience member who has had too many drinks before arriving at the show or purchased that overpriced show swag sippy-cup wine refill at intermission that they shouldn't have. This audience-member type may not be as prevalent as The Cell Phone Offender or The Loud Talker, but The Drunk is certainly familiar enough to earn a virtual seat at the bar -- I mean, in the house.

The Eater

Theaters have been selling concessions before the performance and at intermission for some time now. However, in a perfect world, you’re supposed to have enough etiquette and respect for the performers and the audience members around you to either finish your snack or put the remainder of it away before the lights go down for Act Two. But, as we all know, especially these days, we do not live in a perfect world. So, I expect to hear some good, solid, annoying potato chip munching in a bona fide virtual Broadway audience!

The Photo Taker

Along with the unwrap your candy announcement, the other widely known pre-show notification is, “The taking of video or photographs during the performance is strictly prohibited.” And yet. Ah yes, and yet: Audience members still do it. And actors have taken action to call out this bad behavior. So, I’d argue that a virtual Broadway audience needs at least one Photo Taker in the crowd so an actor can have the opportunity to embarrass them.

It may take longer than we’d like before fans can come together in real life to enjoy live theater as we did in the good ol’ pre-COVID days. So, until then, maybe a combination of digital technology and creativity can be the ticket to re-create a live-audience feeling until theaters are allowed back to full capacity? Maybe we'll also discover that all those audience transgressions that once disturbed us -- are now music to our ears.

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What are your most outrageous or unusual audience behavior memories? Share and comment. Looking forward to hearing your stories!

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Robin Rothstein is a longtime creative and business professional in the theater industry. Her work has been produced Off-Broadway, around the U.S. and abroad, and her short plays and monologues are published by Concord Theatricals, Smith & Kraus, and Heinemann Drama, among others. She has also written for Time Out New York, Broadway.com and The Clyde Fitch Report. For more background, please visit: www.robinrothstein.com