I used to think the hardest part of watching a film was finding a good seat. These days, I’m more interested in what comes with the seat.I noticed it recently at a movie, sitting next to a mother and her teenage son. She spent a good part of the film on her phone and even answered a call, while her son kept talking beside her. I have no idea what they were discussing. I was too busy trying to follow the film.It wasn’t exactly a disastrous evening. Just one of those small irritations you tolerate because you have already paid for the ticket and, more importantly, don’t want to spend the rest of the evening wondering if you were unnecessarily rude to a stranger.Days later, at a theatre play, I was beginning to think I had simply become unlucky with seats. This time, it was a toddler who had clearly decided that sitting quietly through a plot she did not understand was not for her. She started talking, while her parents tried to keep her occupied. Eventually, her father began explaining the plot to her. I admired the optimism.I was starting to notice a pattern. Maybe it was the seats. Maybe I needed to stop choosing them based on the view and start checking the conversational potential of everyone around me. Then I remembered this wasn’t entirely new. A few months ago, at an evening comedy show, a man sitting right behind me took a work call and simply carried on. Not a quick “I’ll call you back”. An actual conversation. For more than 10 minutes. While everyone around him was laughing, he appeared to be having a perfectly ordinary workday.My usual response to these things is to sit quietly and mentally rehearse increasingly polite ways of asking people to stop. I have the patience to wait it out and just enough social anxiety to overthink how to say it. And by the time I have found the right words and tone, someone else has taken up the noble cause.Nowadays, I am tempted to check the fine print before buying a ticket. Because at this point, I need to know whether the show is on stage or in the seats around me. I came for the show on stage. I don’t need the bonus performance from the row behind me.— This rant comes from Shreya Varanasi, an audience member who believes the stage already has enough dialogue
