How Is a Theatre Lobby like a Church Narthex?

Lobby at the Center for the Arts at the University of Montevallo

“I'm not a hero, I'm just a guy in a lobby.”

Jeff in Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero

All the action of the play Lobby Hero takes place in the vestibule of a Manhattan high-rise on a rainy night. So it’s an apartment entrance way, and not the foyer of a theatre. I designed this interesting show at Birmingham Festival Theatre in 2010. And, I like this quote from the work, “I'm not a hero, I'm just a guy in a lobby”; but I want to talk about the reception area for a theatre, not the setting for this play.

To hear a bland dictionary description of a theatre lobby might put you to sleep: this area is called a foyer, and the space belongs to the “front of house,” or the area just before the audience chamber.  The foyer most usually contains a box office, restrooms, seating, and the entrance to the auditorium. But it might also include a coat check, a concession stand, a bar, a stall to buy play merchandise, and historic or present photos and displays featuring the previous  or current productions and those who worked on them.

Lobby at Terrific New Theatre

Over the last few decades, some theatres have made the audience experience in the lobby more interactive. According to American Theatre (the magazine for American non-profit theatres) these encounters might include “sharing a personal secret on a Post-it note, dropping a marble in a jar to vote on a hot-button issue, or even labeling parts of the human anatomy.”

TimeLine Theatre Company, a smaller group in Chicago, has excitedly embraced similar ventures. American Theatre quotes Artistic director P.J. Powers remembering how the practice started: “The lobby display for Tesla’s Letters in 2007 “included a more elaborate, immersive, museum-like design, and it set a new bar for what we do. Now, with each production we consider our lobby space in the same way that we rethink our flexible black-box theatre—as a blank canvas to be transformed, reconfigured and reimagined so that the audience steps into the world of the play from the moment they cross through the lobby doors.”

Philosophically, the lobby of a theatre serves the same purpose as the narthex (or entrance area) of a church. The church antechamber was originally created as a place for catechumens (soon to be baptized Christians) and penitents to convene and hear the sermon without entering the church proper (which was forbidden at the time). I remember one of my priests, Francis Walter once saying that we really begin preparing for church as we dress at home. We may put on clothes that are a little fancier to attend a service. And even as we drive or walk toward our house of prayer, we alter ourselves into a more meditative mood.

Then, as we walk through the narthex, we transition from the secular world into a space of sacred worship. This act is, according to Father Walter, a physical symbol of the process of shedding our worldly concerns and adopting a spiritual attitude. We might be greeted by ushers, or softly chat with friends or newcomers, but as we move down the aisle, we become more and more prepared for communal devotions.

Lobby at Birmingham Festival Theatre

Likewise, we might start our trek to see a play at home, dressing up a bit for the occasion. If we are conscious about this process, we will interact in a meaningful way with our companions as we walk or drive or take public transportation to the playhouse.

Perhaps we will discuss what we do or do not know about the particular play or playwright — or about the actors or designers that we are excited about seeing. We might conjecture or imagine, theorize or joke about what the show will reveal.

But as we enter the lobby, our thoughts and emotions are washed away as we are set adrift in a space in between. In between our mundane lives and an existence unlike anything we have ever seen before. Because of the ephemeral nature of theatre, even if we have seen this same play, with this same cast, the show will be different tonight. Much like the ocean, with its waves moving into shore and then withdrawing, a play is the same and yet never ever, ever the same.

Good theatre, like good church, tells us that human life is brief, transient, evanescent; and yet it is eternal, perpetual, immortal. As Annie Dorsen has written, “Over the course of its long history, theatre has generally served to reflect, invoke, or extend what we understand a human to be. We rig the mirror held up to nature to tilt towards man, displayed within an ever-changing diorama alongside the various institutions of his time: the gods, God, society, the state, the family. One could say that part of the cultural work theatre does is to preserve a collective understanding of what a human is and to assure us that we are as we have always been.” And yet, are we?

Like the church narthex, the theatre lobby prepares us for transition, for transformation, for conversion, for evolution. Theatre, like liturgy, can rearrange our thinking and open our hearts, renew our spirits and seep into the very bones and sinews of our bodies—breaking us open to be new people.

Playwright Arthur Miller said, “I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.” And also, “The mission of the theatre, after all, is to change, to raise the consciousness of people to their human possibilities.”

Next time you attend a play, pay attention to the lobby and note if it helps or hinders your divestment of self to prepare you to become a new being!Maybe you will even say: “I’m not just a guy in a lobby, I’m a hero!”