BAM Strong — Attraction in New York

This review is for the abysmal treatment my mother recieved last night at a performance for Cyrano. Due to the removal of the typical student rush ticket program, where tickets set aside for students for 10 dollars right before the performance are usually available, we had to get tickets through the todayTix lottery. That's fine - I tried for a week until I got tickets, and was warned that they would be on cushions right near the stage. That's fine - I was expecting cushions and as a student with a very small income affording tickets upwards of a hundred dollars (195) is beyond me.

Now. The cushions were not as much cushions as legless chairs, covered with a cloth. Propped right in front of the stage. I keep worrying that my constant leg shifting would distract actors as the seats were uncomfortable. But due to the length of the play, I didn't realize until the intermission, an hour and fifteen minutes in, that my mom had been seizing up due to horrific leg cramps. My mother is in her sixties, with poor circulation and diabetes. She told me honestly that she didn't think she could last another hour and a half without yelling in pain. I told my mother to talk to an usher because I had noticed some empty seats in the front row behind us. Surely, halfway through, no one would begrudge an elderly woman a seat.

Of course the ushers told her they couldn't make that call, likely because showing simple kindness in most workplaces today puts jobs in jeopardy. But even a manager she talked to said he could only offer her to buy a ticket. These miserable 8 measly seats they decided to put for lottery could have easily been actual seats around the theater where there were unfilled seats. In fact, standing tickets would have been more humane.

My mother ended up leaving with me not realizing it. And I am truly livid at BAM for trying to give little signs of beicoming inclusive by broadening the scope and diversity of those who appear on the stage while not caring about the audience. By removing pathways for marginalized people to see plays by making them play lotteries, and then treating those lucky enough to score the poor people tickets with complete disdain and disregard for their well-bein, with no regard to the accessibility of these tickets, and with a complete lack of compassion.

Perfectly empty seats had remained empty and yet no one wanted to offer them to a theater goer who merely asked to be moved out of pain?

BAM should be ashamed. Inclusivity and diversity starts with seeing the poor and the sick as humans, and they...

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