Antidote: Martha’s anteroom

In the courtroom where Martha Stewart is on trial, there are stretches of pin-dropping silence, interrupted by lawyers droning, witnesses responding and the queries and admonitions of the presiding judge. But in the overflow room, an anteroom set up to accommodate the crush of media and curious members of the public, things are less serene.

The door is constantly slamming as people flit in and out. There is the incessant humming of the closed-circuit TV projecting images from the trial on a wall. There is occasional guffawing and chuckling when something bizarre or funny emanates from the screen, as when the judge admonished the jury to disregard testimony about a witness’ drug use during a short stay in Jamaica. A relief, it seems, to many.

The courtroom may be the stuffy stage where the play unfolds, but the overflow room is the populist movie theater where folks can’t help but talk back to the characters.

“It’s so much better,” says Brooklynite Johanne Nicolette, 36, who has been a spectator in both rooms. “The interaction ... people are laughing and you feel affirmed. In the main room, it’s so stoic that when something is funny and no one laughs, you wonder if you’re getting it. But here, you feel like you’re on the same page.”

While Stewart herself cannot be seen on the oversized screen, except when she wanders into the camera’s purview during breaks, those in the overflow room do get a gander at prosecutors, defense lawyers, the judge, a court clerk, the stenographer, the witnesses and 2 1/2 jurors. The half juror appears to have man hands.

In the early stages of the trial, the overflow room -- converted several years ago from an arraignment court to a training room for court personnel -- had few denizens. There were the TV people grabbing bytes from the proceedings, then running out to the caravan of trucks parked outside to coordinate on-camera updates.

Tech-savvy journalists took advantage of the fact that while reporters in the courtroom had to wait for breaks in the action and then run to pay phones (everyone has to check their cellphones at the door), they can use their laptops during proceedings in the overflow room.

“We haven’t quite figured that all out yet,” says the building manager, who didn’t want his name published and who admits that those outfitted with wireless can instantly communicate what’s transpiring at the trial.

It would be unfair to say that the overflow room houses only B-list media. Though most major media organizations want their people in the main courtroom, occasionally a heavyweight columnist, say, one who didn’t want to rise at the crack of dawn to get a seat in the courtroom, will surface.

“At least here you can get up and stretch, or if you stand, you’ll stay awake,” says one New York writer.

While there is no line or sign-up sheet for the overflow room and there are individual chairs rather than the pews in the main room, where people sit shoulder to shoulder, Dominick Dunne probably still wouldn’t be caught dead here.

Now the room is also where lawyers and wanna-be lawyers congregate. “I’m giving a perjury presentation in my class on federal white-collar crime,” says Mollie O’Rourke, 26, a second-year law student at New York Law School. O’Rourke, who was there to pick up legal tips, added that she was a Stewart fan.

“I buy her wedding books when my girlfriends are getting married. I watch her TV show and look at her website.”

In the middle of the week, the relaxed nature in the overflow room tensed a bit. The prosecution’s star witness, Douglas Faneuil, 28, took the stand, and the crowd was standing room only. Security guards, until this point pretty laissez faire, stiffened and started barking orders when court resumed: “Ladies and gentlemen, put the literature away.”

Before Faneuil’s testimony, the guards couldn’t have cared less and would let people sneak in water, sodas and snacks, despite the handwritten sign that all but shouts “NO FOOD OR DRINK!”

The move toward some inkling of formality notwithstanding, court-watcher Nicolette, who has been accepted to law school in New Jersey but is still on the fence about attending, says she is definitely staying in the overflow room. “It’s just so much more fun,” she says.