Hi,

My wife and I caught Peter Boal and Company at the Joyce on Thursday. The program was strong. It was nice to see Peter and Wendy performing together for my first time live. Sadly, people still don't understand how distracting cell phones are at performances.

It seems we still have to teach etiquette in the theater.

They make noise when you turn them off in the theater too. Stop!

Peace!

They should be confiscated at the door, like nail scissors at airports

Proposed lobby sign: ATTENTION! Those receiving or making cell phone calls in the auditorium during the performance will be gently but firmly shot.

Mel's last post reminds me that when the Central Ballet of China was here a few years ago their stage manager (or whoever it was who made the pre-curtain announcements) had a particularly effective way about him. He didn't exactly SAY you'd be shot if you TOOK PHOTOGRAPHS, RATTLED PAPERS, TALKED OR COUGHED, but left the distinct impression that DRASTIC MEASURES would follow any infringement of house rules.

Not a bad idea. If some theaters require a coat check-in, why not a cell phone check?

Whatever happened to the bill introduced in the NYC Council a couple of years ago to ban cell phones from theaters and to authorize the ejectment of anyone flouting the law?

Remember those who opposed the law on the grounds that it was unenforceable? Turns out they may have been on to something.

I can't find it anywhere now, but I recently read a news item that 8 out of 10 cell phone OWNERS consider them a public nuisance...

The gasping of the audience in reaction to the cell phones was pretty distracting too. I felt for Wendy as she stood there still and in a soft light without a sound...
Suddenly, the sounds of bad ring tones.

If you have to answer to someone while your at the ballet, you're not that important anyway.

I also hate it when people don't turn their phones completely off - they turn the sound off but clutch onto them, and in the case they get a text message or so during the performance their phones open up and the lights are so so so distracting! ARGH!

I love my phone, but I'm also very very picky about when it is on/off etc. When I enter the theatre, it goes off. It doesn't come on again until I walk out the door. No turning it on at intervals, checking text messages in the auditorium, no no no!

Considering that I thus have no need for the phone inside the theatre, would totally not mind checking it as long as I could feel that it was safe!

Oh, this annoys me too, like people that take out penlights to read the programs, although this happens more at the opera than the ballet.

This is just rude behavior and I have to admit, I sometimes reply in kind.

Last Summer I was at a Mostly Mozart concert at Lincoln Center. I sat on a tier so each row is higher than the one before.

There were these people playing games on a blackberry, passing it back and forth and giggling.

Since I was slighly over them, it was very distracting.


I kicked the back of the lead perpetrator's seat until it stopped.

Richard

dido, I think we may have read the same article, although I can't recall now where I saw it. It did say that about cell phone owners, but it added that people tend to have this negative view of other people's cell phone use, not their own.
They never bother anybody with their phones.

What I find especially bothersome is the habit people have of speaking very loudly into their phones, apparently convinced that such itty bitty objects can't possibly carry their voices clearly unless they scream.

Let's not forget the thing about cell phones is that even nice people can forget to turn them off, unlike people who would do something like cough loudly in a theater during a performance. I've read about cell phone scrambling devices being used to block the signals in theaters but apparently this is illegal in North America.

Can't ushers simply remind people as they are being seated to please put their phone on vibrate only? Not such a big deal really.

I usually will give the benefit of the doubt to someone who cringes convincingly when their phone goes off, but only if they turn it off without answering it first.

And yes, the instant messaging during the performance is pretty distracting -- like ship to ship semaphore.

In Seattle, most theaters remind people to turn off their phones, pagers, alarm watches etc before the show -- either someone live comes out to speak, or it's the disembodied voice over the PA system.

The NY State Theater makes a very pleasant announcement right after the lights go down regarding turning off cell phones, pages & beepers & that they are verboten anywhere in the theater even during intervals.

I wish the Met would do that. Last year at a Rosenkavalier I was eagerly anticipating hearing what Renee Fleming would do with the "Jah, jah" in Act III. A fraction before the jahs, the cellphone of the man on the other side of the aisle rang.

If I had had a weapon ...

I was at a play last year and they made one of these announcements. But it was really creative. The announcer said, "remember now, we are in 1932, well before cell phones and beepers were invented . So please shut them off so that we have more of the feeling that we are back in the past."

Richard

As pleasant as the announcement is, many people still think it doesn't apply to them. Last time I was at the State Theater (last month), my friend and I were annoyed by the "VIP" who made a call standing up at her seat soon after the lights were turned on at intermission, carelessly disregarding the rules of the theater. Even though she was waxing enthusiastic about the performance -- "Oh my God! You should be here!" -- it was annoying. And she wasn't the only one we saw. Those blue screens were flashing throughout the theater during intermission (reminds me of the blue swimming pools one sees dotting the landscape on airplane landings). It sure does ruin the mood.....

at Cirque du SOleil's KA, they had a nice innovative way of handling it. In all (most?) cirque acts, there are audience plants. They had someone sitting in the audience and had them come up to the front (it all looked like the show was about to start), and then the guy's cellphone went off. The cirque guy grabbed teh cellphone and tossed it into the big pit! alot of people cheered!

btw, KA was amazing!

-goro-

Baseball bats would work for me.

I went to "Dido, Queen of Carthage" (the Marlowe play) last night, and at the very end, as Anna is speaking her last lines, and bleeding to death over the corpse of Iarbas, and the smoke from Dido's pyre is rollling across the stage, while Cupid acts as pupeteer, a cell phone with one of those godawful "musical" rings goes off --for a WHILE. And then the guy answers it, while shuffling past several people on the way to the door.

It didn't ruin the play, or my night, but it came pretty close. No precurtain announcement...

At this past Sunday's charity gala at the ROH the pre-show announcements were funny - and worked. Basically, "please turn off your mobile phones. Should anyone's phone disturb the performance, a sizeable contribution to charity will be expected."

Everyone was laughing as they were walking to their seats - and checking their phones and turning them off!

I will never understand why people feel the need to have their cell phones on while watching a ballet. Wouldn't you want to enjoy the performance without distractions? Also if you are playing games on your phone or blackberry during the performance, then you don't need to be there....give your tickets to someone who is really interested in attending.

I love these examples of the imaginative lengths that theatears have to go to just to remind people to behave courteously. It seems to becoming a new art form -- certainly worthy of a footnote in some future "Cultural History of the World in the Early 21st Century."

Perhaps they should be collected on a video, something along the lines of "America's Funniest ...", and distributed to to theaters everywhere.

Dayton ballet (I believe) has a service where you can check you cell phone and leave your seat number. If the phone rings it is answered and a message is taken. That way if you recieve an emergency call an usher will bring the message to your seat.

I think this is a wonderful way to cut down the noise, but prevent worried parents or workaholics from enjoying the ballet.

It's essential to make some announcement, not just a printed reminder in the program (as at the Joyce) - people, including well-meaning ones, simply forget the thing is turned on.

The one time that happened to me was mortifying. At P.S. 122. During a gala. To which I was invited by a friend. With Valda Setterfield on stage, being fabulous.

At which point my cellphone rang. Under a pile of coats. Diving under the chair, sweating, it took me four rings to find it.

I wanted to die.

I'm not sure if this is circular karma or not, but the person calling me was . . . Peter Boal.

To beat an unfortunately not dead horse, from yesterday's Links there's an article from the Orlando Sentinel:

Rudeness steals the show

My favorite quotes are:

If cell phones had to be checked in, couldn't doctors, etc., be asked for ID and told to keep on vibrate, etc. The number of people still allowed to have cellphones would be minimal. Doctors obviously need to be able to have theirs.

As much as I dislike cellphones interrupting a performance, I don't hate it then any more than I do half the waiting room at an airport all on them, all full of hype, or on the sidewalk screaming into them. I just hate them period and won't get one till I have to. This may be inevitable, since pay phones are getting scarcer. People think you're crazy if you want to look at a phone book.

I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon (well, maybe I do) but several times over the last couple of years I've sat behind people who were using the text message function on their cell phone or other PDA during the performance. Granted it doesn't make any sound, but the backlit screen is actually quite powerful in a darkened room, and as they move it about while they type and read it's like a tiny flashlight bouncing all over the place. It's incredibly distracting, but I haven't yet been able to thwap anyone on the side of the head about it.

Have cell phones been introduced into ballet choreography?

When you think of it, if Romeo and Juliet had carried cell phones, or been addicted to texting, a great many of their problems would have been avoided.

Most likely they would have bored each other to distraction with vapid conversation, long before it became necessary to commit suicide.

In fact, the plots of most full-evening ballets would have been changed drastically by the presence of cell phones.

The long-standing theater protocol for physicians is that they leave their pagers with the house staff, along with their seat number. If their pagers go off, they are summoned by the house staff.

I confess that I dearly love text messages. However, the idea of sending them during a performance appalls me.

I've been bothered by the same phenomenon.

So true.
Of course, that protocol developed when only a few people carried beepers and the like, and there was a time when these gadgets didn't have a vibrate function. (My father is a doctor, and I saw the whole evolution...)

Honestly, if one really needs to be reached, the vibrate function _can_ be used discreetly. One student in one of my ballet classes wears a pager, and it's barely noticeable.

Of course, all of the above presumes that one only has the devices on because one truly, truly need to be reachable. Very few people fall into that category. Texting, etc. are no less rude than bouncing a pen light or playing a video game. Harrumph--it's a waste of a perfectly nice seat.