Patrons

[Van]

I'm waiting for the complaints to start rolling in. We open A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday night. Hmmm Tennessee Williams, set in the south in the late '40's, what do people do ?
Smoke, A lot! Of course since we are now so cuturally, and medicinally, sensitive we no longer smoke cigarettes on stage we smoke herbal cigarettes. God I hate the smell of herbal cigarettes. I'd rather smell a real cigarette than an herbal one. I got home from techs the other night and all I could smell was those nasty herbal cigarettes. I know the patrons are going to freak. People will be runing for the doors, and it's really not fair. It's a wonderful script, and this is an incredible production of it. I wish someone would invent a non-smelly, realistic, combusting cigarette. The fake ones with the powder in them suck, the herbals either smell like a fire in a poppuri factory or a Grateful Dead concert.
Oh well this is one time I'm going to be very glad I don't work front of house!

 

[Eboy87]

... or (smell like) a Grateful Dead concert.

:shock: What kind of herbs are they using!

Has anyone brought up the point about the 4k feedback from the hearing aids during the senior matinee?

Just remember... they're paying our salary, smile, nod your head and say, "yes ma'am".

 

[kiilljoy]

I I wish someone would invent a non-smelly, realistic, combusting cigarette. The fake ones with the powder in them suck, the herbals either smell like a fire in a poppuri factory or a Grateful Dead concert.

We had smoking in my last show, and one of the actors suggested this cigarette brand called "Eclipse". It's in a kind of a new-agey blue box. We got them gas stations, I know Quik-Trip had them, at least here. They light, smoke, show the cherry, but don't produce any ash. The cigarettes actually steam the tobacco or something, and they virtually don't smell. We were using them in a 90-seat house in a basement with bad ventalition and I could smell them during run-throughs about 5 minutes after the cigarette was lit, then for about another 5 minutes, and then the smell was gone. Others involved claimed not to be able to smell them at all.

Except that Dallas has a law about smoking tobacco inside public places that are not bars. So we had to revert to the tried and true nasty herbal cigs.

I don't exactly have a patron story, but one summer theatre I worked at for a couple years housed us in some dorms that we shared occasionally with high-school and jr high cheerleaders doing their summer camps. They would scream and run around outside our rooms in the wee hours of sleep time.

 

[Charc]

Cheerleaders you say...?

 

[kiilljoy]

Cheerleaders you say...?

We had the ice machine on our floor, so they would come down in loud groups of 20 and fill large coolers at 3am in the morning.

And I'm not even sure if they were high schoolers. I think most of them were Jr High, and we college kids didn't have a lot of patience for them. I was walking back to the dorm, and three of them were walking side-by-side down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, not paying attention, and had I not moved, they would have walked right into me.

 

[Spikesgirl]

I'm waiting for the complaints to start rolling in. We open A Streetcar Named Desire on Friday night. Hmmm Tennessee Williams, set in the south in the late '40's, what do people do ?
Smoke, A lot! Of course since we are now so cuturally, and medicinally, sensitive we no longer smoke cigarettes on stage we smoke herbal cigarettes. God I hate the smell of herbal cigarettes. I'd rather smell a real cigarette than an herbal one. I got home from techs the other night and all I could smell was those nasty herbal cigarettes. I know the patrons are going to freak. People will be runing for the doors, and it's really not fair. It's a wonderful script, and this is an incredible production of it. I wish someone would invent a non-smelly, realistic, combusting cigarette. The fake ones with the powder in them suck, the herbals either smell like a fire in a poppuri factory or a Grateful Dead concert.
Oh well this is one time I'm going to be very glad I don't work front of house!

Oh, Van, you have my sympathies - we just went through that with "Wait Until Dark" - our bad guy has to light up in the first scene, our husband in the second and the heroine in the last. They wrote us up on the Editorial Page for smoking on stage. Yes, we were using herbals and and the longest a cig was lit was less than three minutes. That didn't stop the mass - the office manager was actually able to swing it around and glean us some publicity from it. We did have to post a warning in the lobby that we were using herbals.

Nothing is so good or correct that it can't be taken to an extreme and cause more harm than good.

Char5lie

P.S. ours smelled like a locker room - sure glad I was in the booth!

 

[Van]

Well... Guess what it wasn't the Smoking that everyone's talking about, read this.
http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2008/04/theater_review_a_violent_inven.html

If you don't want to read the whole thing just scroll down to about the 6 or 7th paragraph. You'll see what everyone in town is talking about.......

 

[Spikesgirl]

Well... Guess what it wasn't the Smoking that everyone's talking about, read this.
http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2008/04/theater_review_a_violent_inven.html
If you don't want to read the whole thing just scroll down to about the 6 or 7th paragraph. You'll see what everyone in town is talking about.......

Many a times I've wanted to hurl something at a columnist. Are you sure it was an accident?

Seriously, great review though. We did "Streetcar" in the same old traditional way and it would have been great if our SD had stretched a little more. Just goes to prove what you can do with some 'thinking outside of the box"

Char5lie

 

[Grog12]

Lets see...I've done Wait until Dark and The Glass Menagerie in the past 2 years and had all the same problems as Spikes and Van....silly audience..."Does he really have to smoke on stage?" God I just want to strangle them sometimes...

On an unrelated side note Char5lie how in the hell did you get a lit cig into a building in CA...don't FBI agents come shooting out of the toilets if you just light a match?



And Van...that is probably one of the funniest things I've read in a while!

 

[Spikesgirl]

Lets see...I've done Wait until Dark and The Glass Menagerie in the past 2 years and had all the same problems as Spikes and Van....silly audience..."Does he really have to smoke on stage?" God I just want to strangle them sometimes...
On an unrelated side note Char5lie how in the hell did you get a lit cig into a building in CA...don't FBI agents come shooting out of the toilets if you just light a match?
!

Sorry, didn't notice your question earlier, Grog. Well, we didn't take a lit cigarette into a building. We lit up once we were inside - do it all the time. I think the Feds are busy trying to track down all the 'undesirables' who try to fly in and out of the state and keeping parents from smoking in their cars to come after us.

Interesting visual, though Guess that could be considered 'standard' behavior?

Char5lie