It had to happen sometime

posted by Cheshire on Sun, Mar 22, 2009
in Making Theatre

Thirteen years of pizza, beer, and plays. Thirteen years. And yet somehow, last night was the first night we ever kicked someone out for being too drunk and obnoxious.

Ironically, I started off the night worrying that the crowd was too tame. Actors feed off the energy the audience gives out. It's difficult to gauge that energy when you're putting on a drama, but with comedy it's obvious. As I was reading the crowd before the show, it seemed to me that it was a little too quiet for my tastes, especially since I had my brother-in-law and his wife with me, and I wanted them to have a great time.

When the play began, I was pleased to see the audience warm up quickly and with it pretty much from the start. Sometimes it takes the crowd a little while to get started, but last night they were good to go. I relaxed.

But then I started to hear rumblings a couple of rows behind me. It sounded like someone was commenting loudly to a neighbor about what was happening on stage, and I began to have terrible flashbacks to my hard-of-hearing, hard-of-comprehending stepfather, who made movie- and theatregoing difficult for everyone around him. The person behind me kept making enough noise that people around her started to shush her, and I turned to see who it was. She had an angry look to her and was muttering something. It became increasingly apparent that she was locked in a battle of wills with someone behind her who wanted her to shut up. She kept saying "I'm not being loud" loud enough for everyone around her to hear, and she called her target an asshole several times.

Meanwhile, the audience had quieted down noticeably. They weren't laughing the way I expected an audience like that to laugh at the rude mechanicals, and the energy in the house had nearly drained away. They were down to the level I feared was going to be the case from the start.

Diana, our stage manager, arranged an ingenious interlude between scenes while Melissa, who was running the house last night, came over to ask the woman to quiet down or leave. At first she couldn't even get the woman's attention. It seemed the woman finally acknowledged Melissa and indicated understanding.

The next scene started up again, and there was still tension in the house. The woman quieted for a bit but then started back up again. Melissa's husband, Jon, also happened to be in the house with their two boys, and finally he turned around and asked her to be quiet. (He's a middle-school teacher; he deals with misbehavior all the time.) She did manage to rein it in a bit more after that, but the damage was done: the audience was enjoying themselves but tentatively so. She had to go.

As soon as the house lights came on at intermission, Jon and I went straight to Melissa and Diana. It was the funniest thing: we all looked at each other and knew what everyone was thinking: "We're doing this."

Jon, our former intern Read, and I went and stood in front of the woman, and Jon did most of the talking. The woman wasn't budging. It had become obvious to us by now that she was extremely drunk and not comprehending what people were saying to her. She was with a friend who was in a horrible position; she wanted to be supportive of her friend but also had to tell her that yes, she was being too loud. We told them that if they didn't go, we were calling the police to come and get her. By then Melissa had come over and had her cell phone out.

The friend finally got the woman to agree to go. "Well, are you going to pay for my cab ride home?" the woman asked. "No," we all said simultaneously. "If I go," she said, "I'm never coming back here." "That's cool," we said.

"This is so Berkeley," she said, as she finally went up the stairs and out the door. "This would never happen in New York." On our way up the staircase I could hear Melissa back in the theatre saying something to the crowd and getting a round of applause. Upstairs we escorted the woman and her friend out, and La Val's manager, Javier, ran out to get a good look at her so he could prevent her from coming back.

Melissa and I were both shaking after that -- we'd never had to kick anyone out before. But the show went on. At the end of intermission Melissa had the crowd firmly on her side as she gave out the audience prize, and we started up again.

The crowd seemed much more relaxed and ready to have fun, and the actors delivered mightily: this Act 2 was among the best performances of the run. It was capped by a brilliant ad-lib that not only brought down the house, it made me cry I was laughing so hard.

What could have been one of Impact's worst nights ever was transformed into one of the best. I'm glad Jon, Read, and I were there to back Melissa up, and best of all, my family had a great time and enjoyed being part of Impact history.