Stage door at musicals.

The amount of space stage door nonsense takes up on these and other theatre boards is absolutely ridiculous. Get a life people! Most performers will paste on a smile and be pleasant to you for a few seconds,but you're really just an obstacle on the way to a meal or a pint or their real friends!

Come to think about it, it’s quite remarkable that Bernadette is able to perform in MUSICALS without moving her face. Like she only uses eyes, lips (barely), body and I guess expression through voice to convey emotion. It also helps that her style of comedy has always been somewhat dead pan/ blasé.

Yeah, maybe it's just the socially anxious side of me, but I have never entertained the idea of going to a stage door. I suspect it may have been a slightly more palatable experience in previous decades when the signing of a programme and a quick "loved your performance" was the normal interaction, but nowadays when big stars are in something it must be chaos. Everybody wants their moment, everybody wants their conversation, and everybody wants their very own blurred selfie.

What on earth would I say to Bernadette Peters on a cold London street that has any value for either of us?

Stage door Johnnies have been a thing forever, being referenced regularly by the 1920’s. “Fangirl” type super-fans are a more relatively common and recent phenomenon, and they along with eBay autograph traders form a large percentage of a busy stage door crowd.

The truth is most of these interactions are entirely transactional. The stars are used to it after X years/decades, some don’t mind it, others hate it, some get a nice ego massage. Most just want to go home.

Stage door Johnnies are really just a proto-superfan, but with more direct intentions to romance a performer from the show. To be honest, not unlike modern super-fans (some of the conversations I’ve overheard at the likes of Wicked, going right back to Idina’s West End run and the infamous day seat queue, are very embarrassing).

My view is this: by all means try, but it isn’t an entitlement or the point of the experience - that is the show. Sadly there are some people - and not a small number - who actually prefer stage dooring than watching the show. They feel they are actually paying for their own “moment” with their performer. This can frequently bleed into their behaviour during a performance. Thinking back to Wicked once again as the ur-example, being noticed by their favourite was more important than anything else.

Take your chance, if you don’t get a photo or autograph, bad luck. But you are not entitled to an actor’s time when they leave the stage.

I recently purchased a cheap ticket caught a matinee of Brokeback Mountain, towards the end of its run.

At the end of the performance there was quite a large crowd at the stage door.

Lucas Hedges came out and very politely took the time to speak with people, sign various programmes, etc and take selfies.

When he go to me he was quite taken aback at the fact that I did not have a programme to sign or want a selfie to be taken I simply shook his hand, complimented him on a sensitive and nuanced performance and wished him a safe flight home.

Whilst I appreciate that he was here to work, I also recommended that he enjoy what he can of the city whilst here.

As I say, not only was he taken aback, he actually seemed quite moved.

Sometimes, it's the little things that have the greatest impact!

It amazes me how the things that go on for decades are always being touted as something new and unbearable thought up by the present generation. There may not have been smartphones to take selfies with in the past, but there have always been superfans. I remember reading Tallulah Bankhead's autobiography - she had a lot of success in London early in her career - and apparently there were lines of fangirls buying tickets for return performances back then too.

Silent film stars could barely move in public and there are photographs and accounts of trains being swamped with fans while they travelled and tried to disembark at any given station. The crowds at film premieres were apparently far more overwhelming than they are today too.

I was just reading the last few posts and also thinking of Tallulah. Her SuperFans were the Gallery Girls, who behaved badly when other actors were on stage, talking and cat calling, but SCREAMED with joy when Tallulah came onstage, they totally worshipped her. This was in the 20s.

Social media has made things slightly more "interactive" of course, but it's all the same game in a different medium. Whether you're named in a gossip column and receiving sack loads of fan mail in the 1950s or getting thousands of likes on instagram in 2023, there has always been celebrity culture.

Some actors embrace it, some hate it, but if you achieve a significant level of recognition for your work, it does become inevitable I guess. It isn't something that the fans are owed, but I think history looks back more slightly more kindly on those who take the time to sign autographs and say hello.

I've never stage doored, it doesn't interest me, nor do I imagine that meeting me is going to interest the actor in question, but if an autograph and a selfie is a big deal to you, I mean you can always try. I don't think that the kind of actors who appear in musicals are generally likely to be mobbed everywhere they go though, so maybe the limited interactions at stage door are an ego boost.

I read a book of anecdotes by Broadway actors years ago and one of them said theatre in a city like New York (or London) is a funny business - you have fans at stage door asking for autographs, then you walk a couple of blocks and no one knows who you are!

Definitely worse back then!! Celebrities were way more mysterious because the only way we had access to them were tabloids etc, so to meet one in real life was huge. With social media and people sharing what they are for lunch perhaps the para social nature of celebrity-fan relationship is worse but generally people see entertainers as humans these days thus a quick selfie is usually enough. If that.

I was an autograph collector who got into going to theatre shows so stage dooring was my introduction into theatre. I do it a lot less now, a crazy amount of programmes taking up storage space, getting older, having met a fair share of big names etc.

I don't expect that everyone will/has to stop. If it is a big name usually I can check with other theatre fans/collectors whether they do sign, what they sign, whether it is one only as sometimes I might have something else I want them on.

As said above there has been fans following stars for years so nothing new but there should be no entitlement amongst the fans.

The Bat Boy concert was a one off and there were likely fans of the show and the performers. Plus when a crowd begins to develop others often seem to join it and they can soon swell. I always found the best thing to do is to not be too obvious you are waiting so crowds don't get too big or if you see other regular theatre goers you might just chat to them but stood out of the way and not blocking the SD.

A small group is always okay as if a couple of performers leave together and they are happy to sign or do selfies for those who want that then one can sign for a few people and the other for the others and then swap over.

I always felt that despite being passionate fans of the show the Rocky Horror Fans are always well behaved at the Stage Door in their crazy costumes. A lot of that cast has been with the show for a while and they know the fans, will do a selfie, the conversation might be are you coming next week or I'll be coming again when you are in "whichever city" and there is no too much taking up of the performers time.

Yep some shows do have superfans who will follow tours or even certain performers around. They have as much right to buy tickets and SD as anything but why do you need a selfie each time and they have no more entitlement than anyone else to meet said performers. There have been a few incidents were local fans and "fangirls" have had words about who has the right to meet said performer's first.

If I've may been waiting to complete a programme and already have the main star and others are waiting for the main star but haven't recognised them when they have left I've been moaned at for not telling them the main star had walked past. How do I know who is waiting for who, I'm concentrating watching for someone else.

If Bernadette and Lea are arriving and leaving the Gielgud Theatre and not being seen then I would be interested to know how they are slipping in and out. I cannot remember the exact layout of it. Big names like the late great Dame Angela Lansbury always used the SD but didn't sign or do selfies but waved to the fans. The Palladium has several ways out too from memory.

Before autographs became such big business it was sometimes a fun challenge to work out which way an elusive performer might go in. Some stars would send an assistant out to take things in to be signed and prefer to do them in their dressing room, the assistant might say I'll bring the things back but when "the star" leaves they'll say hi but won't stop to sign/do selfies etc and that way you often got a nicer signature.

Having worked in West End theatres for a number of years I have seen staged dooring from the other side. There are many performers who don't like the stage door experience at all and can be quite abrupt. Some others don't mind as long as people are polite and don't take too much of their time. On the other had I have seen some fans being nice while others have been pushy and even aggressive.

The stage door experience can be tricky, depending on the amount of people waiting and on the willingness of performers to spend more or less time.

I have met lovely performers who have been pushed to the limit by obsessive fans who went to see them to stage door far too often. I have also met some not so nice performers who put on a smile to meet fans only to slag them off as soon as they are out of the way.