DRY MARTINI
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Posted March 2008 |
“Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. ‘Incredible imbecility!’ he cried.”
—“The Five Orange Pips” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
How does one even begin? When one is confronted with folly that beggars description, how can one find adequate words? And then, once suitable words have been found, what can one actually do to address the situation? There is only one solution, really, and for that I have taken my cue from Sherlock Holmes in the tale “The Five Orange Pips.” One must join the estimable sleuth; raise one’s own fists in the air and rage, rage, rage against incredible imbecility.
In the spirit of the redoubtable Holmes, I want to take this moment to officially launch The Double Eyes (the Incredible Imbecility Awards), for deranged and demented theatre customs and conventions. I offer up for nomination three incredibly imbecilic practices that simply must be stopped.
Case in point, the first. You enter the theatre filled with a sense of glorious anticipation. And why not? After all, the playwright has carefully crafted a work that is intended to capture the imagination. The director, actors, designers, and technical crew have collaborated to create a stellar work that complements the playwright’s transcendent vision. What could possibly impede your delight? But wait…out onto the stage lopes an individual with a deceptively friendly smile. He gives the audience a general wave of salutation and then out comes…The Scroll.
When you awaken fifteen minutes later, it will feel as though the life force has been drained from your being. You will recall, as from a nightmare, how the individual in question droned on for fifteen long minutes (Fifteen minutes? Was it only fifteen minutes? It felt like a lifetime. A boring lifetime.) explaining why you should “put your hands together” in gratitude for the corporate sponsor of the show, the corporate sponsor of the festival, the media sponsor, the sponsor’s mother, the sponsor’s tutor, the sponsor’s ailing pet iguana. And then, if the individual is so inclined and is really feeling the Holy Spirit, he will ask you to thank yourself. I don’t want to be asked to thank myself. I didn’t come to the theatre to thank myself. And at that point I don’t feel like thanking myself. I’m angry at myself. I’m cursing myself out for coming here in the first place.
People: this irritating, recurrent practice must be halted. If a theatre wishes to thank its sponsors, by all means let it erect a large poster, feature the sponsors prominently in the program, have the sponsors over for dinner, send them a singing telegram, whatever. But don’t squander the first precious minutes of a play boring the audience. Let’s move on.
Case in point, the second. In the theatre there are good and bad seats. Granted, it’s no fun being stuck in the farthest row of the third balcony, but someone’s gotta sit there. Here’s where things take their imbecilic turn, though. As the lights drop at the beginning of the show, the less inspired individuals in the nose bleeds automatically assume that the seemingly empty seats they spied in the orchestra are, in fact, unoccupied. And so ensues the great clomping, shuffling “excuse me-ing” migration. Scampering feet stamp down stairs, programs slither as they are kicked under seats, until finally the hopeful seat-interlopers approach the object of their obsession—only to meet face-to-face the actual seat owners, tickets in hand, arriving late. Or, even worse, other empty seat territorialists approaching the exact same seats. Now the audience is compelled to endure the explanations, negotiations, apologies, and final resolutions. And what of the show? Ohhhh, the show—yes it’s been going on for some time, but you may have missed that for all the tumult and commotion.
When you spy an empty seat, the rule must be: be certain the desired seat is empty before you make even the slightest move. If you don’t know, don’t go.
Fine. Once you have endured these interruptions you will at last be allowed to enjoy the rest of the show. Right? Wrong. Through the darkness, as though a phantom had risen in the audience, you may spy tiny lights flickering among the seats. What can they be? Faulty electrical wiring? Theatre pixies? Nothing quite so interesting. They are, of course, just your fellow spectators, whose determination to stay “connected” cannot possibly wait until even the end of the first act to check their cell phones for text messages.
You, patient as ever, breathe in and out, and following the rules of theatre protocol, tap the errant individual on his or her arm and whisper “WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU? CAN YOU NOT WAIT UNTIL INTERMISSION? DO YOU THINK THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THE PANEL LIGHTS? DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND EVEN THE MOST ELEMENTARY PHYSICS? LIGHT TRAVELS SWIFTLY AND IN STRAIGHT LINES. EVERYONE, BUT EVERYONE, WHO IS IN THE THEATRE WHO CAN DRAW A LINE FROM THEIR EYEBALLS TO YOUR PHONE CAN SEE THE FLICKERING %#*&ING CELL PHONE LIGHT. TURN IT OFF. NOW!”
Let’s be reasonable. If the message is so important that you can’t wait—you really shouldn’t be at the show.
Perhaps you have your own stories of WRAIITH (Withering Recurrent Acts of Insane Imbecility at the THeatre). If so, send them in now for next year’s Double Eyes. Don’t delay. The field is, most unfortunately, very competitive.
An award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Clem Martini is a three time winner of the Alberta Writer’s Guild Drama Prize (Nobody of Consequence, Illegal Entry, and A Three Martini Lunch), a Governor General Drama Nominee for his anthology A Three Martini Lunch, and is the Past President of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. His trilogy of novels, The Crow Chronicles, has been distributed world wide, and translated into Dutch, German, Swedish, and Japanese. A Professor of Drama at the University of Calgary, Clem lives in Calgary with his wife and two daughters.