The tweeters are coming, the tweeters are coming…into the theater.

Center Theatre Group has joined the opera companies, orchestras and musical theater groups experimenting with “tweet seats” – sections of the theater in which the use of Twitter is allowed during a few seats at selected performances.

Last Thursday, I witnessed the phenomenon in the back row of the Kirk Douglas Theatre during the performance of A Raisin in the Sun. That back row had been set aside – for just that night — as a sanctuary for six experienced and invited tweeters, who were provided two free tickets apiece. Their guests were also allowed to join the online conversation using their own phones, if they so desired. Meanwhile, across town at the Mark Taper Forum, a box at the back of the theater was being used for the same purpose during a performance of Clybourne Park.

Both streams of comments were united in the Twitter-sphere at the hashtag #WhereWeLive – the name alludes to the themes of territory and neighborhood that were the topics of both plays. Of course both plays also are connected by the fact that Clybourne Park begins as a depiction of what was happening in the white neighborhood to which the black family in A Raisin in the Sun was about to move, circa 1959.

Photo by Danilo Lewis

The very idea of “tweet seats” will surely cause great fear and trembling among a vast majority of theatergoers, who are already annoyed by the distractions of occasional telephone lights as well as telephone sounds. I myself have been a militant in trying to shame fellow audience members whose phones ring or illuminate during performances. Just so you know my biases, I probably use my phone less than the vast majority of Americans. Although I occasionally glance at other people’s tweets, I don’t do it regularly, and I have never dispatched a single tweet of my own.

However, after watching the tweeting at the Kirk Douglas Thursday, I’ve got to say that I don’t think that the presence of tweet seats distracted anyone else who was at the performance. I doubt that most of the other theatergoers were even aware of it.

Before the performance began, we all heard the usual admonition against using phones during the play. The announcement did not tack on the phrase “except for you invited Twitter users in the back row.” Not too long after Raisin began, a screen light suddenly appeared on the phone of someone who was three rows in front of our tweeters’ row – and within seconds the closest usher had walked into the audience in order to tap the offender on the shoulder and tell him or her (it was dark, so I couldn’t identify the miscreant) to turn it off.

While CTG successfully managed to avoid distracting non-tweeters last Thursday, it might eventually face the temptation to expand the tweet seat section, at more performances. Expanding the tweeting territory by even one row would be a mistake. The light from the screens in the next-to-last row would probably irritate even the tweeters themselves who are in the back row. If there is a demand for more tweet seats, it would be better to simply add more performances in which tweeting is allowed – but only in the back row.

The fact that tweeters are consigned to the back row might, all by itself, discourage some potential tweeters – how many people choose to sit in the back row for any other reason?  The Douglas back row, however, seems surprisingly close to the action, compared to the back rows of the Taper or the Ahmanson.

Then again, if you’re going to be tweeting during a performance, you probably don’t care all that much if you have a close-up perspective. Depending on how actively you tweet while you’re inside the theater, you’ll spend a lot of time looking at your close-up screen, not the stage.

This, of course, raises the larger question of why someone would want to pay for a theater seat and then spend even one second looking at a small screen instead of the big stage. Personally, I can’t fathom it – to me, the theater is a place where I can forget, for a second, the multi-tasking demands of the outside world. I’ve heard or read plenty of comments from others who agree with this, who feel that the performance time is a rare chance to concentrate, not to actively communicate – at least not until intermission or until after the performance ends.

On the other hand, CTG marketing and communications director Jim Royce reminded me that critics themselves often distract themselves, ever so slightly, from a stage moment because they’re busy taking handwritten notes on the previous moment. While they aren’t immediately communicating with others, as tweeters are, that doesn’t mean that their note-taking is any less distracting to themselves and sometimes even to others (did you see Pauline Adamek’s story about how her note-taking at a Vivien Leigh monodrama irritated two other theatergoers?).

Actually, for that very reason, I haven’t been taking notes during most performances for at least the last five years. I’d rather watch the entire show without visual distractions of any kind – and then, if necessary, to remind myself of aspects of the production as well as my own reactions by reading the script after the performance.

Even when I was taking notes, during most of my years as an LA Times reviewer, I tried to write the notes without averting my glance from the stage. Not surprisingly, this meant that frequently I was unable to decipher parts of my notes – so the effort involved in taking the notes often seemed futile.

Fortunately, scripts are much easier to obtain now than they were when I began reviewing in the days before email. The words refresh my memory of not only the lines but also of the movement and the music and other non-verbal cues that took place during the performance. That’s why I no longer feel compelled to take notes.

Apparently avid Twitter users, however, not only feel compelled to take notes but also to share them immediately with their followers.

#WhereWeLive Twitter stream; Photo by Crystal Diaz

Although Lorraine Hansberry had no notion of Twitter in 1959, a couple lines in A Raisin in the Sun sound as if they could have been uttered by a Twitter aficionado. Beneatha, the play’s would-be doctor who is exploring the world in a number of ways that seemed unorthodox in 1959, is accused of “flitting” from one enthusiasm to another – much as the attention of a tweeter in the theater “flits” back and forth from stage to screen. Beneatha replies, “I don’t flit. I experiment with different forms of expression.”

Those words not only reflect the credo of a Twitter fan, but they sound like a tweet – in fact, they were a tweet on Thursday night. One of the Raisin tweeters reproduced them in cyberspace – although the lack of any additional comment prevented me from knowing whether that particular tweet had an ironic edge to it.

Another tweeter on Thursday wrote this comment, fairly early in the evening:

“Grappling with the participatory nature of this thing versus wanting to suspend disbelief and enjoy.” I’ll take option B, thank you very much.

Some of the actors themselves intended to tweet from backstage on Thursday, but not many did. However, CTG conducted an earlier tweeting experiment at a performance of the musical Bring It On last fall – an experiment that involved fewer audience members but more cast members, some of who did indeed tweet from backstage. If this habit spreads, surely this will result in some missed cues.

By the way, the Bring It On cast was very young, and certainly part of the rationale for tweet seats is the perpetual quest for younger audiences. But I can’t say the tweeters on Thursday at Raisin looked all that young. Most of them appeared to be at least 30.

For now, given that tweet seats don’t disturb anyone else in the theater, I can’t really muster up much outrage over their very existence. Royce compares them to seating areas for wheelchair users or deaf theatergoers – people with special needs (people with ADD, perhaps?).  These people are restricted in their choice of seats, but at least they get to see a play – and spread some instantaneous word of mouth. CTG can only hope their tweets will influence their followers to see the plays too, and then maybe the followers will tweet too. Under this scenario, word of the CTG production might spread around the world.

Of course, once tweet seats move beyond the experimental stage, they will probably cost as much as any other seats in the back row. For that reason, it’s probably impractical to suggest that theatrical tweeters should try to see the performance twice – first, without tweeting, so that the distractions won’t matter so much the second time around. Still, for anyone who can afford it, I’ll make that suggestion anyway.

Brandon David Brown, Deidrie Henry and Kim Staunton in the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of "A Raisin in the Sun"

Personally I had already seen this Raisin in the Sun production twice, so on Thursday I allowed myself to watch the tweeters more than the stage.  I noticed one woman in particular who seemed to be looking at her screen far more often than she looked at the stage. I later learned that she’s a dramaturg, so she probably already had a working knowledge of the play. That might actually be the best kind of audience tweeter – someone whose well-informed notes during previews might be of use to the director or the company. I didn’t see many tweets that appeared to serve that purpose when I read them after Thursday – but in theory, at least, tweets like these might actually benefit the creative process, not merely the marketing process.

AND OTHER THAN THE TWEETING, MRS. LINCOLN, HOW WERE THE PLAYS? When I first suggested in LA Stage Watch that some LA company or companies might want to consider staging A Raisin in the Sun and Clybourne Park in tandem, I knew that Ebony Rep was planning to revive Raisin at the Nate Holden Theatre, but I had not seen Clybourne Park. I had simply read enough about Bruce Norris’ comedy to know that it examined the same Chicago neighborhood into which the Younger family from Raisin was moving.

Nearly two months later, after seeing Ebony’s terrific Raisin, I brought up the idea again, this time more explicitly suggesting that Center Theatre Group might have the wherewithal to pull off such a double production. But I still hadn’t seen or read Clybourne. Of course when it won the Pulitzer Prize two weeks later, my hopes grew – surely CTG would want to present the LA premiere of a Pulitzer winner.

I was delighted when CTG announced last July that it would bring Ebony’s Raisin to the Douglas and would also stage Clybourne Park during the Taper season, but the two productions initially were not scheduled to overlap. Raisin was slated for a Jan. 22-Feb. 19 run, while Clybourne was scheduled for March 7-April 22. Oh well, I figured, close enough – at least the CTG would offer a chance to see Raisin before we saw its sorta-sequel.

Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos in the Playwrights Horizons production of "Clybourne Park"

Then, at some point and without fanfare, CTG arranged to move up the Clybourne Park production so that it played simultaneously with Raisin. Thank you, CTG

This is a golden opportunity to experience both a moving masterpiece of the American canon and an acerbic modern commentary on some of the same issues that Lorraine Hansberry raised so boldly and presciently in 1959 – in close proximity to each other, or even on the same day, if you choose to attend Raisin at a weekend matinee and Clybourne in the evening.

And, now that I’ve seen Clybourne, I’m happy to report that it’s well worth whatever effort was involved in bringing it to LA in time to play simultaneously with Raisin – and featuring the original Playwrights Horizons actors and the original director Pam MacKinnon, who will then move the play to Broadway in April.

Although Clybourne picks up on some of Hansberry’s concerns, the two plays differ dramatically in structure and tone, and the differences enhance the overall experience, adding welcome variety.

Clybourne’s two one-acts, separated by five decades in setting but sharing a common location, begin with what sound like trivial conversations – but Norris is skillfully setting us up to be surprised by the power of the scenes that follow.

In the first act, which takes place immediately after A Raisin in the Sun ends, Norris provides a fascinating answer to a question that’s still hanging at the end of Raisin — why was this particular house in a white neighborhood being sold at a price that Lena Younger could afford?

Damon Gupton and Crystal A. Dickinson

In the second act, set exactly 50 years later, we meet the great-niece of Lena Younger and two white characters who have familial ties to the people who lived in the neighborhood back in 1959. We also meet a white couple who have purchased the same house but plan to tear it down to build a bigger house  – and they are no more aware than Lena Younger was of the house’s saddest chapter.

The comedy of the second act reaches a feverish pitch as the polite facades fall and unspoken elephants in the room suddenly become visible. Shades of God of Carnage (which just opened over the weekend at International City Theatre in a sharp production staged by caryn desai) – but Clybourne Park has much more wide-ranging concerns than Yasmina Reza’s comedy.

This is a must-see example of the kind of scheduling that gives the theatergoer a chance to get more bang from the theatergoing buck by seeing two plays with similar concerns but very different perspectives – one right after the other. Of course it’s easier for CTG, with its three theaters and its resources, to do this than it would be at many theaters, but it sets an enviable standard that other theater companies – or theater companies working together in partnerships – should emulate.

A Raisin in the Sun, Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. Tues-Fri 8 pm, Sat 2 and 8 pm, Sun 1 and 6:30 pm. Closes Feb 19. www.CenterTheatreGroup.org. 213-628-2772.

Clybourne Park, Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., LA. Tues-Fri 8 pm, Sat 2:30 and 8 pm, Sun 1 and 6:30 pm. Closes Feb. 26. www.CenterTheatreGroup.org. 213-628-2772.

***All production photos by Craig Schwartz