Performance etiquette for the oblivious

My Facebook and Twitter feeds were overflowing Sunday night with angry comments about the “Kanye debacle.”

For those of you who did not tune in to the MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech for “Best Female Video” to say that Beyonce should have won.

The audience booed, Beyonce looked appalled and T-Swift ... well, as Katy Perry so eloquently stated in her Twitter: “It’s like u (West) stepped on a kitten.”

MTV awards shows are notorious for having stunts scripted in – most recently, the Sacha Baron Cohen/Eminem “feud” at the MTV Movie Awards. This, however, was all West’s doing.

Although he apologized later, it made me wonder how MTV allows its performances to suffer such drama and even humiliation.

Isn’t there such a thing as performance protocol?

Which brings me to my “commandments” of performance. These are pretty much the common law of the theater, the etiquette used at a show.

I think we can establish first and foremost, however, that snatching the microphone from someone in the middle of a speech is a no-no.

But here are the rules that may be less obvious to those of you who have never been on stage:

1. Please, please, PLEASE turn off your cell phone – putting it on vibrate doesn’t count. As a veteran of the stage, I can’t stress enough how distracting it is to hear the Nokia tune go off or to see a face illuminated by their Blackberry screen while performing. Not only are you disrupting the actors on stage, but audience members as well. Therefore, all electronic devices off – it’s just common courtesy, folks. 

2. Use the bathroom before the show and during intermission. While this is mainly so you do not miss an important aspect of the show or interrupt other audience members, it’s also because we should do everything in our power to avoid the awkward crawl over other people’s laps and legs.

3. Yes, it is something to be proud of when you know all the lyrics to a show. But please, keep sing-along time to the privacy of your car and not at the theater.

4. Remember the golden rule of roller coasters – keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. I can’t tell you the amount of times I have had to deal with someone else’s shoe in my face or kicking the back of my chair or an elbow jabbing in to my side because the person next to me decided to commandeer the armrest. There are such things as “personal bubbles.”

5. Finally, the most important form of etiquette – no talking. This, er, goes without saying.

So whether you’re seeing a production, are the host of a show or giving an acceptance speech, knowing performance etiquette will always help you stay classy – and avoid being “tweeted” about later.