As the cast and crew hurried to prepare for their 7:30 p.m. curtain call in Connecticut’s Norma Terris Theater last month, patrons filled the house and prepared to get lost in the production of Hello! My Baby.

For some, that meant powering on their smartphones and iPads and telling all of their Twitter followers about the musical with the hashtag #hmbmusical.

A growing number of theaters and performing groups across the country are setting aside “tweet seats,” in-house seats for patrons to live-tweet during performances, including the Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, N.C., and the Dayton Opera in Dayton, Ohio.

Rick Dildine, the executive director for Shakespeare Festival St. Louis — an outdoor theater festival that began using tweet seats two years ago — said tweet seats have “become a national trend.”

“Coast to coast, theaters are experimenting with how to use ‘tweet seats’ effectively,” he said. “The arts are evolving right now, they are participatory. … Social media is a tool we rely on, and we have been unafraid to experiment with it.”

Goodspeed Opera House‘s public relations manager Elisa Hale moderated the conversation from backstage during Hello! My Baby.

“This is sort of an enhancement … because there is a way to interact during the show,” she said.

Hale says there were “no negative comments” from patrons about the tweet seats, located in the back row of the theater to avoid disrupting other patrons.

Major venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington have not tried tweet seats and expect audience members not to access their phones during performances.

“We make a pre-performance announcement asking patrons to turn off their … cellphones in order to keep the light and sound from distracting other patrons,” said Patricia O’Kelly, a Kennedy Center spokeswoman.

Spokespeople for public relations firms Jeffrey Richards Associates, Hartman Group and O&M said the Broadway productions they represent have not used tweet seats. But Jennifer Tepper, the director of promotions for Godspell on Broadway, says the production intends to use them.

“While we haven’t done tweet seats, they are certainly in our plan for the future at Godspell,” she said.

The National Symphony Orchestra was one of the earliest orchestras to deliver real-time program notes via Twitter during its performance of Beethoven’s Sixth conducted by Emil de Cou at Virginia’s Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in July 2009.

The Indianapolis Symphony has also experimented with tweeting sections, adding social media to traditional modes, such as pre-concert lectures and program notes. The Indianapolis Symphony has tweet seats for its one-hour “Happy Hour at the Symphony” concerts geared to young professionals, said Jessica Di Santo, the orchestra’s director of communications.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) began using tweet seats in September. Chris Pinelo, CSO vice president for communication, said it was successful based on heavy hashtag traffic.

“It was great to see how people were reacting to the orchestra, reacting to the conduct and, frankly, reacting to the insights happening backstage,” he said. “We’ve had some repeat visits from people who came to the tweet seats. I think they really enjoyed the process, too, and having that interaction with audience members.”

“Tweeting the CSO’s performance was like attending a members-only social event in the midst of a traditionally formal setting,” said tweeter Jennifer Nissenbaum, 35, of Dayton. “I could communicate openly about my reactions to the music, musicians and conductor — without speaking a word. Plus, I had the opportunity to engage others, and get their reactions to the performance.”

Pinelo said the CSO hopes tweet seats will attract a different audience. “For a lot of new audience members, this is a way to further advance their concertgoing experience,” he said.

Lane Hart said he happened upon tickets to the CSO, only to find out they were for tweet seats .

“I got them from a friend of mine. We sat down and someone approached us. … I was definitely a little taken aback. But once I saw the people sitting beside us doing it, I thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’ ” he said.

Irene Friedman, 60, of Oxford, a subscriber to the CSO for 30 years, had some concerns after sitting near the tweet seats at the Nov. 4 concert.

“Their texting thumbs were moving faster than the violinist’s fingers,” she said. “They would occasionally nudge each other and read what the other person had up on his or her screen. They didn’t even look up to applaud at the end of each selection. The fact that they were watching their handheld devices, they missed out on what was happening on the stage.”

Contributing: Janelle Gelfand, The Cincinnati Enquirer