In two recent columns, Miss Manners—arbiter of etiquette for those who need to align traditional values with present-day realities—has addressed crowd behavior at the legitimate theater. I find her advice heartening,

In a May column, one of the syndicated columnist’s many “gentle readers” asked “When is one obliged to join a standing ovation?” This was not a simplistic query. It was framed and expanded upon beautifully: “My understanding is that standing ovations are reserved for truly outstanding performances, and that applause while seated will suffice as a show of appreciation for other performances. However, if one’s fellow audience members judge a performance worthy of a standing ovation and rise, is one required to join them? Is it rude to remain seated?”

Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) responds with equal precision, starting with the candid question “Do you always feel that you have to vote with the majority?,” then moving towards a related one that gets to the heart of the matter: “Is an ovation a vote, which is to say a sign of high approval of a performance? Or is it a polite gesture, a way of thanking the performers for their efforts, whether or not you thought these were successful?”

Then she unleashes a full, carefully thought-through three-paragraph response, explaining that “modern American audiences have the notion that wild enthusiasm is owed in return for any effort, and that leaving an auditorium when the piece is over without a huge show of appreciation is like leaving a party without gushing to the hosts. …

“Not quite,” she concluding that “this is true of amateur performances, especially those to which one has been invited by one of the participants. But professionals ought to have the thrill of knowing that a standing ovation is a true triumph.”

The complete response can be seen, among other places, here.

Then, just last week, another theater-etiquette question arose in the Miss Manners column. This one asked how one should behave when one wants to stay and applaud a curtain call, while others seated nearby are grabbing their coats and fleeing for the aisles.

“I’m not talking about declining the opportunity to spend 10 minutes in a standing ovation,” the reader elucidates (avoiding the need to reprint the response above). “I’m talking about scrambling to leave before the house lights are on. Do I have your permission to become so entranced by the goings-on on stage while standing and cheering that I block the people who are trying to trample over me so they can avoid the crowded traffic in the parking lot?”

Again, the divine Miss Manners takes a stand at odds with those who insist there is a single proper way to behave at the theater. (I hate those people.) She wisely acknowledges that people attend the theater for a variety of reasons, and they leave for a variety of reasons as well—a babysitter, perhaps, or a train.

That would be enough of an answer, but she blessedly doesn’t stop, and unleashes a manifesto of clued-in theatergoing:

“Miss Manners adores the theater and claps enthusiastically to express her enjoyment. But that is because she holds with theatrical tradition in considering the curtain call the proper time for the audience to express its opinion, not for it to give thanks.

“When she does not enjoy a professional performance, she does not avail herself of the opportunity to boo, because she is too shy. But she admits to relishing it when a more robust attendee lets it be known that a production is pretentious or vulgar.

“Does that make her disrespectful of the feelings of the artists involved? On the contrary, she respects them by not treating them like children who are told “Good job!” for every effort, no matter how misguided. Or like amateurs, whose invited guests should properly offer what compliments they can.

“The upside for professionals, should others discriminate, would be knowing that the applause meant genuine appreciation, and that standing applause signaled an extraordinary success.

So please don’t block the aisles.”

Again, I recommend reading the whole column, here.

You tell ‘em, Miss Manners! Live theater is considered an artform of intimacy and honest emotions. Manners are necessary to maintain order, but should stop at the point where they tell people how to think and feel. Ovate and egress as you wish; Miss Manners has spoken.

As ever, these stage-oriented strips are drawn from the invaluable resources at GoComics (http://www.gocomics.com) anDaily Ink (http://dailyink.com), two sites to which I heartily suggest you subscribe.

I put the Ripley’s Believe It or Not item in here because Jean-Paul Sartre was given the prize for Literature, not philosophy, and his personal favorite writings appeared to be his plays. The cat quote’s included because Joseph Wood Krutch was one of the most esteemed theater critics of 2oth century America.

“In this house? This same house?”

“Yes, my great-aunt bought it cheaply. Probably because of what happened here during the Siege of Gotham City.”

“Uh, the realtor didn’t mention anything.”

“You don’t know what happened in this house? This is where Deputy Commissioner Cody cowered behind his wife instead of leading his officers against Bane.”

“That’s awful. But I thought he died a hero.”

“So did Two-Face, right?”

“I beg  your pardon. This is getting…”

“But that’s not why we’re here. This is about zoning. We have the ordinances right here. We need to respect the heritage of a part of town where a huge bat symbol was burned onto the side of a highrise.”

“We understand that. For six whole months, this was a thriving community of master criminals of indeterminate ethnic origin, British character actors, cat burglars and orphan boys. We get it.”

“Then we agree.”

“But some say property values were never lower than when the city was under siege for six months and the citizens were unable to leave because of a nuclear bomb triggered by the bridges.”

“This isn’t about property values. It’s about our city’s cultural history.”

“Is that why you want us to leave the huge hole in the front of the house that a tank made when it was diverted by Catwoman’s twisting motorcycle?”

“We’d like you to expand it. Catwomen are still an exploited minority in this city.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Say, have you heard the joke about Bane and the corporate banker outside the conference room?”

“Don’t tell that one.”

“It’s OK. I once dated a Blackgate prisoner.”

Nina Dicker as Titania (reclining) and Dawn Williams as Peaseblossom in the Summer Youth Ensemble production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Aug. 23-26 at Long Wharf Stage II.

The Long Wharf is doing another Summer Youth Theater Shake It Up Shakespeare project in late August. Only one this year—last year they did a modern musical drama, Threads of a Spider Web, and a pop-fueled take on Hamlet.

This time it’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream scored with early rock & roll hits such as “Rock Around the Clock” and “Hound Dog” plus contemporary tunes from Florence + The Machine and Christina Perri.

The songs are sung by the teen performers, backed by a live band. The kids have input into the music, which is used to underscore character traits and plot points. (Last year, “Bohemian Rhapsody” was done by the Players with lyrics changed to “Mama, I’ve just killed a man/Poured some poison in his head…,” and the Ghost of Hamlet’s father sang Coldplay’s “I Used to Rule the World.”)

The production, as in previous years, is dominated by members of the Taubl family, an artistic bunch who when not doing theater also comprise their own classical music ensemble. Brothers Jack, James, Jeremiah and Sam Taubl are all in the cast, and their mom Carol is the music director.

Also on stage: Lauren Buonasora, Chloe Chappa, Nina Dicker Gabriel DiMartino, Matthew Johnson, Bowen Kirwood, Jane Logan, Alex Luft, Celine Montaudy, Tommy Ordway, Ethan Pierson, Ryan Ronan, Maya Rose, Rachel Skalka, Henry Tobelman, Kira Topalian, Erik Van Eck, Emily Walters and Dawn Williams.

The rockin’ dream, directed by Long Wharf’s Director of Education Annie Martino, wafts from Aug. 23-26 at Long Wharf Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. (203) 787-4282, www.longwharf.org. [Note: when originally posted, the evening times were incorrectly listed. 7 p.m. is correct.]

Hallie Martenson, Peter Chenot, Steve Scarpa and Hilary Brown following the reading of Lou Harry's play Clutter at the Institute Library July 21, 2012.

The play reading I helped set up at the Institute Libarary July 21 went very well, thanks. The audience was bigger than we’d expected, for a reading of a new play on a balmy Saturday in New Haven during summer break. The listeners were not only attentive but full of constructive comments which the playwright, Lou Harry from Indiana, says he will take to heart.

The play, Clutter, had not been read in public before. The cast—Hilary Brown, Peter Chenot, Hallie Martenson and Steve Scarpa, all from New Haven Theater Co.—did an extraordinary job of embodying the Clutter characters Eddy, Bev, Barbara and Bobby. In the first few minutes of the single rehearsal we had beforethe audience arrived, I knew everything would be OK.

In fact, the whole afternoon was so satisfying and encouraging that I’m eager to keep going with more readings, and so happily is the Institute Library. One of the attendees actually brought a script, suggesting there are plenty of other new works out there to explore. But I’m also happy to do older plays, especially ones which don’t get much exposure because of the size of their casts or other uncommercial concerns.

If you’d like to get involved in the planning and presentation of more playreadings at the Institute Library, please contact me at chris@scribblers.us.

Thanks again to the Institute Library, the NHTC, Lou Harry and everyone who attended Clutter.

Erin Davie, the Goodspeed's new Julie Jordan (and erstwhile Guenevere).

The run of Carousel at Goodspeed Opera House has barely begun, and now is contending with a major cast change. Teal Wicks, who’s been playing Julie Jordan–the young seamstress smitten with the lowlife Billy Bigelow who runs the show’s titular merry-go-round, has gotten a national touring gig with the revival of Frank Wildhorn’s Jekyll & Hyde.

Starting August 8, the new Julie Jordan will be Erin Davie, the Guenevere from the Goodspeed’s 2009 production of Camelot. She also came through Connecticut on the national tour of the 2000 jazz musical Swing! Her New York credits include Grey Gardens (as Edith)(, Curtains (as Niki Harris), A Little Night Music (the 2009 one, as Countess Malcolm) and the Encores! presentation of Applause. Regionally, she’s done Sunday in the Park with George in St. Louis and, just a couple of months ago, in D.C., the Arena Stage world premiere of Rupert Holmes’ non-musical stage adaptation of the John Grisham novel A Time to Kill.

Carousel is the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical presented at the Goodspeed since the theater did Allegro in 1968. Rob Ruggiero, who did a magnificent Showboat for Goodspeed last season, directs.

I met this guy Lou Harry about a year ago. We were both part of an Annenberg/NEA fellowship where dozens of theater critics spend a fortnight creating a website in L.A. and bombarding the arts scene there with reviews and snarky commentary.

We kept in touch. Lou lives in Indiana, where he’s the Arts Editor for the Indianapolis Business Journal. But he travels a lot, so we’ve met up a couple of times in New York City. This week, I finally get to show him New Haven.

Outside of his arts journalism, Lou’s written many books—trivia books, guides to Kid Culture and Guilty Pleasures, the novelization of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and a novel (The High-Impact Infidelity Diet, co-written with Eric Pfeffinger) which was optioned for the movies.

He’s also a playwright, with a bent for commonplace happenings and understated dialogue about people undergoing interesting transitions in their generally unexceptional lives.

While Lou’s in town, we’re holding a reading of one of his plays, 2 p.m. Saturday July 21 at the Institute Library, 847 Chapel St., New Haven.

I’ve cast four actors from the New Haven Theater Company—Hilary Brown, Peter Chenot, Hallie Martenson and Steve Scarpa in the lead roles. They’ll be script-in-hand, of course, but we’ll see if we can work out a few little staging ideas.

The play’s called Clutter, and it’s about four formerly frolicsome friends aging past their partyhappy youth, still finding themselves.

We’re hoping this reading really works out so we can do a whole lot more at Institute Library in future. Please come and support new work.

From the Forever Nuts/Classic Screwball Strips compilation of Bud Fisher’s immortal Mutt & Jeff (NBM Publishing, 2007).

The Ben Allison Band with Robert Pinsky

8 p.m. June 27 in Morse Recital Hall, Yale. Part of the Music at Dusk series of the 2012 International Festival of Arts & Ideas.

I balked at writing about the Robert Pinsky/Ben Allison concert here; this is my theater blog, and my opinions of the music events at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas have been parceled out to some of my other outlets, such as ct.com and Daily Nutmeg.

But there was of course a special literary performance heft to this pairing of a popular poet and a precocious jazz musician, which made me hope I could find a way to cover it in a theater mode.

Then Pinsky whipped out a poem by someone of than himself. “I will read a poem to you as if it’s a poetry reading at a university,” he said. Then, he announced, he would read it again and the band would jam on it.

It was Ben Jonson’s immortal “His Excuse for Loving”:

Let it not your wonder move,

Less your laughter, that I love.

Though I now write fifty years,

I have had, and have, my peers.

Poets, though divine, are men;

Some have loved as old again.

And it is not always face,

Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,

Or the feature, or the youth;

But the language and the truth,

With the ardor and the passion,

Gives the lover weight and fashion

If you then would hear the story

First, prepare you to be sorry

That you never knew till now

Either whom to love or how;

But be glad as soon with me

When you hear that this is she

Of whose beauty it was sung,

She shall make the old man young,

Keep the middle age at stay,

And let nothing hide decay,

Till she be the reason why

All the world for love may die.

“Nobody wrote ear candy better than Jonson,” Pinsky opined, emphasizing the poem’s conversational quality. Which is, of course, a rather obvious thing to say about a playwright, not to mention one from an age where poetry and plays were always performed and rarely read. But many of the Pinsky fans filling the Morse Recital Hall auditorium beamed as if he’d imparted some extraordinary insight.

He ventured into Elizabethan territory again later in the concert with this joke: “Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual. Or heterosexual or bisexual.”

Pinsky was caught in a moment, and can perhaps be excused. He was caught in many of them, clearly loving the limelight.He lives to make people appreciate poetry, and this was a splendid opportunity. Many poets would probably get flustered when they realized how much time they’d have to stand on stage doing nothing while the band played on. Not Pinsky—he’d done shows with the Ben Allison Band before, enjoyed “winging it” with little rehearsal, and was happy to tap his toes and grin. Allison’s not a particularly effusive frontman, conducting his mates with twitches and glances (a broad grin when he wants a good groove to continue, a fevered brow when he’s ready for a section to switch).

The instrumentation of Ben Allison’s band was himself on stand-up bass, his longtime guitarist collaborator Steve Cardenas, the band’s new drummer Rogerio Boccato and a guy who’s been doing a lot of shows with them lately, rock-savvy guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook. It was Seabrook who stole the show, adding experimental, improvisational flourishes that the refined Pinsky, and even the cool Allison, were incapable of.

Robert Pinsky’s no Allen Ginsberg, nor does he want to be. But with his black shirt and swinging attitude and jazz compadres, he begged comparison. It was Brandon Seabrook, with his unlikely choice of banjo as a modern jazz axe, his raw strums and plucks and wild-eyed demeanor, that brought some real risk and fun to this otherwise precious mixture. He punked out the proceeding with power chords (on rhythm guitar, countering the smooth lines of Cardenas), bringing the punctuation to the Pinsky poetry.

Circa

Presented by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas through June 30 at the Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, New Haven. http://artidea.org/

DirectorL Yaron Lifschitz. Associate Director: Ben Knapton. Producer: Danielle Kellie. Tour manager/director: Diane Stern. Technical Director/Lighting Designer: Jason Organ. Costume Designer: Libby McDonnell. Performers: Valerie Doucet, Casey Douglas, Freyja Edney, Darcy Grant, Scott Grove, Emma McGovern, Lewis West.

The flying upstarts of Circa, it seems, can do whatever the heck they want to. And what they want, it seems, is to chill. These acrobatic Australian theater-circus artistes so smooth and together and connected and flexible that they have no need for bombast or fanfare. They mock the very concept of spotlghts and grandstanding. They don’t even bother with little trampolines or stools  or other accessories that many acrobatic acts require to get started.

This laid-back, bare-bones approach makes their act all the more astounding. Without the artifice, you’re witnessing pure breathtaking artistry.

A guy simply clambers up another guy’s back and stands on his shoulders. Then a third guy scampers up BOTH of them to create a 15-foot-plus stack of people. He leaps off, and the other two simultaneously break into leaping roles. It has the effect of a broken thermometer with the mercury rolling free. Circa then regroups for some fresh derring-do without the need to acknowledge the greatness of what they’ve just achieved. They don’t look back. They don’t look down. They climb and flip and fly and leap, but they don’t strut or preen or pose.

Their presentation is riveting in whole other ways. It’s honest and intimate and moving. In one routine, Circa gives whole new meaning to the phrase “She lets him walk all over her.” A man stands gingerly upon the backs of a woman’s legs. Soon he is standing on her thrust-out posterior. He maneuvers himself onto her shoulders, then—nowhere else to go but up—her head! Throughout his climb, the woman maintains a straightfaced, almost sullen demeanor.

In a less dominant male/female encounter which comes a little later in the variety-filled yet neatly modulated 90-minute show, a couple entwine themselves so that form a Y with their legs, the base of the letter elongated because the woman is standing on her head.

I don’t really want to be the “Been here, done that” guy again, but last week I felt obliged to point out that while the National Theatre of Scotland’s storytelling-cum-environmental-interaction model for The Strnage Undoing of Prudencia Hart (playing at the festival through June 30 in the back room of the Wicked Wolf Tavern) was indeed intimate and imaginative, but not rare in New Haven, where the Yale Cabaret does like-minded shows on a frequent basis (and in fact is doing three in repertory this summer; http://summercabaret.org/). Similarly, Circa’s mix of movement, acrobatics and physical leaps of fancy have landed in the land of Pilobolus and Momix, which have been doing such experiments for decades.

Circa compares well to those Nutmeg-based movement troupes, and certainly announces itself differently. The Circa show begins with solo turns, individualized antics and specialties, then gradually turns into duos (with undertones of dramatic relationships), then morphs into a fevered group grope, where they hurl themselves at each other with abandon. Some of this is Pilobolus-like, in the way that the performers clamber up and down each other and form bonds that register as both physical and emotional. But certain specific routines, as when a solo man conducts the crowd in finger-snapping as a brief respite from the onslaught of full-body work-outs, smack more of Stomp. In another bit, a man stretches his body, arm and neck in a manner reminiscent of the great physical clown Bill Irwin. And the throbbing pop instrumentals and mood lighting conjure up Cirque du Soleil—though it must be quickly added that Circa greatly improves on the empty grooves that pass for Cirque du Soleil soundtrack music. The Australians flip and strut to the strains of the Cake version of the old pop standard “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps,” or a Jacques Brel ditty in the original feisty French, or a moody female cover (also in French) of a Radiohead song.

The Circa folk wear their influences on their sleeveless outfits, then. But those opening get-to-know-us silent solo turns aren’t false. They show that, while Circa belongs in several longstanding theater/circus traditions, they’ve found their own particular style and tone and personal identities. This is much more than an evening of stunts. It flows beautiful, builds artfully, entertains exquisitely. As an audience member, you’re not just gawking; you’re transported.

Overall, Circa lives up to its branding as a theater circus, an acrobatic display rather than a modern movement concert. It’s a muscular, spectacular display, evoking gasps and applause. So it’s particularly impressive that they’ve been able to add a patina of beauty, grace and gentle drama to the arrangement.

The troupe has several signature moves, including that aforementioned somersault-roll from a high-up upright position. They also have a tendency to shoot forward headfirst, which will remind some Arts & Ideas-goers of last week’s Mark Morris Dance Group slide-happy rendition of Vivaldi’s “Gloria.”

Circa performs these awe-striking antics without a trace of “attitude.” They don’t wink, or look smug, and do that obnoxious thing circus performers do with their hands to encourage applause. They don’t yell “Hey!” or explain to us how astounding or colossal something is before they do it. They don’t talk at all. Their preferred expressions are perplexed, vacant and deadpan. When being flung and tossed, they look bemused. When climbing a rope in high heeled shoes, or handing blocks to a colleague who’s doing a handstand on a table, so that he can handstand even higher and more precariously, they act as if these actions are the most natural in the world, and that they happen to have something else on their minds.

It’s that ho-hum demeanor, when matter-of-factly peforming mind-boggling feats, that makes Circa so distinctive and special.

You don’t need a special reason to see an act which does unimaginable things with their bodies for your amusement. But Circa offers a whole range of added incentives.

Here’s a final recommendation: Don’t be afraid of sitting in the front row, and don’t be afraid of bringing young children. I did both. One of the festival workers at the Cooperative High School site, Margaret Carl, suggested that my nearly-8-year-old daughter Sally and I sit near the stage rather than in the further-back seats that had been saved for us. It was a great idea, though the rest of the crowd (in a nearly sold-out auditorium) was shying away from that first row.

Close up, the casual air of the performers was felt even more keenly. The details of their difficult maneuvers could be more deeply appreciated. You could also see their tattoos clearly: that’s not a numeral “8” on one of the dynamic woman tumblers, it’s two interlocking “O”s. Just as Circa itself is an chain of hoop-jumping, headstrong yet intellectually intense individuals whose independent intrinsic strengths join together for a show of uncommon force and expression.

You’ll fall for Circa, even as they never fall themselves.