Providence theatre experiments with 'tweet seats'

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) - Sarah Bertness slipped into her seat at a recent staging of the musical Million Dollar Quartet and, when the lights dimmed, started doing something that's long been taboo inside theatres: typing away at her iPhone.

The 26-year-old freelance writer from Providence wasn't being rude. She had a spot in the "tweet seat" section at the Providence Performing Arts Centre (PPAC).

The downtown theatre is now setting aside a small number of seats - in the back - for those who promise to live-tweet from the performance using a special hash tag. They might offer impressions of the set, music or costumes, lines of dialogue that resonate with them or anything else that strikes them, really.

At Million Dollar Quartet, based on the true story of a 1956 recording session that united music greats Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, PPAC for the first time had cast members tweeting from backstage, too.