On Broadway

Strousdburg High School
Spring, 1999


We often took our high school students to Broadway.  Our high school was only 1 1/2 hours from Manhattan so a few times a year, we had open field trips for kids to see a Broadway show.  We would buy a block of tickets which gave us great discounts and made it affordable for a large group of kids.

And our students were a pretty good audience.  They had been exposed to enough theatre in Stroudsburg and NYC that het knew how to behave.  But we still made it a practice to review our expectations of good audience behavior before each performance.  No whistling, talking, whispering, singing along, sending messages, tapping, taking photo, making comments during the show, etc., etc., etc. Be generous with your applause, etc. Be polite.  No running to the restroom during the performance. No fanning yourselves with your programs.  The audience has come to see the performance, not you.  No one wants to see or hear from you.

As one of the adults gave our standard speech, a kid or two would inevitably mouth along with what we were saying.  It was his own private protest to what he thought was the absurdity of our expectations.  We would usually ignore this type of kid because his classmates would elbow him until he stopped.  And sometimes he got hurt just a bit and that was okay.

Usually, we sat on one section as a large group.  It would be just the 100 of us tucked away in the corner of the balcony. But for one play, we were scattered all over the balcony and the mezzanine.  That meant we, the adults, had to split up and give our expectation speech several times.  I took the balcony and I went to each pocket of students and I gave each new version of my speech with more and more gusto.  I think I gave the speech five times and by the time I got to the fifth group, I had given them so many ultimatums, that it was almost comical.

“And if you do any of these things, you will be sorry,” I tell them with a tone that left no intent to debate. “I’ll beat you until you bleed.  I will publically humiliate and ridicule you.  I will make you walk home.  You will never get to go to another play again.”  I went on and on in my attempt to make my position perfectly clear: there was to be only appropriate theatre behavior.

I finished with the last group and posed my closing question: “Do I make myself perfectly clear?””

“Yes”, they responded in unison and with a slight tone of fear in their voices.  I felt a little smug, “Good, do you understand the consequences?”

“Yes”, they replied with compliance unusual for high school students.

“Good, then enjoy the show.”  And I walked back to my seat and reported in to the other chaperones that all of our students in the balcony have been addressed.

A few minutes later, I stood up and looked around.  I took a quick inventory to determine if everyone was behaving.  I noticed the last group of students I addressed is talking to an adult, a stranger.  And they are pointing at me.

“Lynn”, I said to the chaperone sitting next to me, “do you recognize that woman our kids are talking to?”

Lynn stood up and twisted her whole body to get a good look. She put her hand over her brow to block out the glare and she stared for a second or two.  She turned to me and pointed directly to them.

“Those kids” she asked?

“Yea,” I responded.

“They aren’t our kids.”