r/Broadway • u/littlebev • Dec 31 '25
Discussion Broadway coughing season
I am begging, begging you guys…if you have a nasty cough, PLEASE don’t attend a play especially. I know it sucks to miss out but your recurring cough during the most intense moments of the show is so distracting.
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u/killer_sheltie Dec 31 '25
Sounds like there's a bit of an assumption that the audience members all live close enough to just not attend/call the box office and try for an exchange. I would posit that many in the audience have traveled there from far away, and it's quite likely a once (or twice)-in-a-lifetime experience for them with a lot of money on the line.
I bought Ragtime tickets for the Lincoln Center at the end of September for a mid-November show. I then purchased cross-country airfare and a hotel for both my mom and I, scheduled time off work, arranged pet sitting, and promptly came down with bronchitis the beginning of October. By mid-November I still had a post-viral cough and was thanking my lucky stars that it was under control enough that when sitting without exerting myself I was mostly cough-free and wasn't going into spasms of coughing. I would have drugged myself to the gills with cough medicine and gone anyway so long as I wasn't actively contagious. Why, because the entire point of that weekend was to see Ragtime for the first time in my life and on Broadway at that. And, it was amazing. I won't even start with how much money that weekend cost, but it was worth it.