The Rocky Horror Show is currently on Broadway. Since previews began, they’ve put out a couple increasingly emphatic statements about call-outs — specifically, trying to acknowledge that there are of course Rocky Horror Picture Show fans in the crowd who have been trained to interact with the movie across years and years of screenings, but who in a theater situation are kind of disruptive and in some ways not letting the show be its own animal. The current statement on the website ends with, “Choose your call-outs carefully—as this is a Broadway musical, not a midnight showing of the film.” I have to confess that I have never been into the Rocky Horror universe, so I can’t speak to any of this, but I sympathize; it feels like they didn’t expect this to be as challenging for the performers as it is. Then again, at least this is borne of love for the source material. Based on the Broadway subbreddit, overall theatergoer behavior everywhere else has been atrocious. We don’t pay these people enough already, but we REALLY don’t pay them enough to try and perform through people yelling and singing along and filming and skimming their phones and eating potato chips. There is a TIME and a PLACE for POTATO CHIPS!!! Don’t drag them into your bad behavior!
