Do people attending plays & musicals have a moral obligation to the performers to try to stay awake? [View all]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/why-pay-100-and-more-for-a-theater-ticket-if-you-sleep-during-the-performance/2018/05/10/8235ad18-5214-11e8-b00a-17f9fda3859b_story.html?utm_term=.b60d7041e2f5

The esteemed Manhattan theater in which I spent several hours on a recent Saturday night might as well have been a dormitory. Up and down the rows and aisles, people could be seen in various states of drowsy repose. A woman in the row ahead of mine had her head thrust all the way back, as if she were paying the audience member behind her to shampoo her hair. A younger man at the opposite end of the row behind me was fighting to stay awake, his droopy head snapping back to upright each time his eyelids became heavy. The woman next to me slept through the entire first act. She opted not to return for the second.

I continually shifted my gaze from the actors droning away in this more than usually dreary piece to observe the more entertaining tableaux their customers were creating. A young woman cuddled with her seatmate, lapsing blissfully into dreamland. An older gentleman sat ramrod straight, his eyes gently closed: He could have been the model for a bust titled “Eternal Rest.”

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Perhaps even more to the point: Do people attending plays and musicals have a moral obligation to the performers to try to stay awake? Would earlier curtain times offer some mitigation of crowd fatigue?

I recently talked about the impact of audience snoozing with a highly regarded director of contemporary and classical plays, and what he told me shed light on how even one sleeper can take the air out of a performance. Sometimes, he said, actors can lose their edge at the sight of dozing spectators. (Many times, I’ve seen people in seats in the front row hunched over in slumber.) When the actors exit the stage, the idea can be conveyed to other members of the cast waiting to go on that, well, tonight is just not a good house. And being human, the cast, the director said, might perceptibly deflate, maybe even pull back a tad on the reins of their performances.