Local theaters ready to bow to tweeters in the audience

But distraction to others a primary concern

December 28, 2011|By Beth Teitell, Globe Staff

To tweet or not to tweet? That’s the question facing Boston-area theaters as live-performance venues nationwide start offering “tweet seats’’ for patrons who feel the need to tweet about what they are seeing during the show, not just after it.

Purists are already complaining about the glow from all those tiny screens; think of it as secondhand phone. And Suffolk University English professor Thomas Connolly calls the trend a victory for marketing directors.

But tweet seat sections are gaining a fingerhold in Massachusetts. The Lowell Memorial Auditorium has tweet seats planned for the mid-January run of “Sesame Street Live’’ and two subsequent shows. Tweet seats may be offered at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston’s spring performance of “Avenue Q.’’ the irreverent puppet musical for adults. It may also come sometime in 2012 at the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts in Worcester and at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge, where the marketing director wants to figure out just where in his 225-seat venue tweeters can flex their thumbs without disturbing fellow audience members or the performers.

The marketing value of such an addition is clearly attractive. Subscription rates are falling across the country, and a younger audience remains elusive. Live tweeting - silent, of course - is seen as a way to enhance the experience for the tweeter and to encourage followers to see the show.

The idea is not entirely new. Across the country, social media users have been live-tweeting performances for several years. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City offered tweet seats for its final performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore’’ in 2009, and patrons have live-tweeted “Avenue Q,’’ in San Jose and “Hello! My Baby’’ at the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, Conn. Tweet seats may soon play Broadway itself, at a “Godspell’’ revival.

At the Palm Beach Opera this month, tweeters updated followers on the tragic love story between an American officer and a geisha in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.’’ “Cio-cio san is telling it like it is! #pbobutterfly,’’ one tweeter wrote. “Butterfly will die. Goosebumps. #pbobutterfly,’’ wrote another.

At some performances, tweeters not only broadcast their thoughts but share additional information about the music or onstage action. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra offered tweet seats at several performances this fall, and at each, an assistant or associate conductor backstage tweeted insights about the music and answered questions in real time.

“It almost functions like interactive program notes,’’ said Christopher Pinelo, the orchestra’s vice president of communications.