Term of the Night: second-acting

second-acting--the time-honored tradition of poor actors, students and others of going into a Broadway show without a ticket at intermission to see the second act. The actor John Leguizamo talked about second-acting with his deaf uncle in his youth as a theater rat from Queens. The Village Voice published a "how-to" piece on second-acting in the 1970's. The New York Times ran a feature on the practice on September 25, 2016. Sadly, because of high theater prices and security concerns in the Age of Terror, ushers are better at checking tickets, so the practice has mostly died out. The people who do second-acting are called second-actors.