#59 I think it's still rude even if the play hasn't started. Before the play starts, everyone is in a frenzy trying to prepare and doesn't need a bunch of idiots yelling in the auditorium. As someone who has performed a lot, I can say that it's quite annoying, distracting, and even nerve-wracking when people in the audience are yelling even before the performance starts.

Yep, doesn't matter. Well-bred people who know how to behave at a performance, don't shout to announce their arrival. On the other hand, well-bred people don't respond with the command to 'sit down and shut up" either (although I understand what tempted the teacher to respond in this way).

The only reason that I don't know how to feel about it if it was before the performance is because when I was working tech for my high school plays there were a ton of the actors who wanted to know when their parents arrived. They would be asking tech to let them know, calling their parents from backstage, and stuff like that. The only parents we ever had yell for kids before the show were the ones who's kids were looking for them.

I meant that they were calling their parents using cell phones from backstage, not that they were yelling to their parents from back stage. That would have been crazy because before the performance started it was always those of us on the tech crew that were doing the most stage yelling. It was mostly at the actors to stop breaking our freaking set pieces.

100 - I know your pain, I was in the tech crew at my old school. I still am a techie (in my second year at drama school right now), but the cast are better at not screwing stuff up for the crew =P

parenting

ahh another teenager who thinks they're all that. teacher probably would've smacked you down into the chair.