Audience behavior during Matthews' concert inappropriate for venue

After forcing myself to keep my mouth shut throughout the Dave Matthews concert at Centennial Hall Sunday night, I would like to take this opportunity to openly appeal to the UA community. I was shocked that many audience members did not seem to realize that we were in a THEATER rather than a raucous, stadium-type concert atmosphere! This is not at all to say that we should have sat silent and comatose in our seats, after all, it was a concert. Hey, I was as excited as anyone to be there - I stood and sang and yelled and laughed all the while. However, things I saw such as people standing up IN the theater seats, smoking a vast array of smokables, and treating the theater staff like something you scrape off your shoe, are positively unacceptable.

I understand the desire to be crowded up in front of the stage, as close as possible to whatever celebrity is performing, but the Centennial Hall staff needed people at least somewhere NEAR their seats- standing in front of them would have been fine! - because of fire laws. I was so embarrassed to see people mouthing off and blatantly ignoring and disobeying the ushers, treating them as if they were trying to make the concert unenjoyable for the audience. Which, of course, could not be further from the truth.

Obviously, Mr. Matthews expected his fans to be respectful enough of the "kicked-back," intimate atmosphere of a theater that he didn't bring along a team of those physically intimidating giants which usually keep order at big-name concerts. The Centennial Hall ushers are, for the most part, just students doing their job and shouldn't have to conduct themselves as "bouncers" to get people to be where they are supposed to be.

As far as the theater itself is concerned, I cannot stress enough the need to be more mindful. As a dance major I can say that to the UA's performing artist community, Centennial Hall is our "baby" and it is a privilege to both perform and be an audience member there. There are venues in which it is acceptable, appropriate and only moderately destructive to stand up in one's muddy Doc Martens IN the seat's chair, and light up whatever you wish to smoke and then grind whatever is left of it into the floor, but a proud theater which hosts some extremely prestigious, internationally renowned artists and performers (including our very own Dance Department) is NOT the one of them.

By Jessica Polsky (letter)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
February 27, 1997