Theaters Struggle With Patrons’ Phone Use During Shows

By ERIK PIEPENBURG
JULY 10, 2015

Patti LuPone’s quick snatching of an audience member’s cellphone on Wednesday made her a vigilante heroine to those frustrated by breaches of theater etiquette. But the incident, at an evening performance of “Shows for Days” at Lincoln Center, also highlighted a seemingly intractable problem: What to do about people who think a darkened theater is a great place to check Facebook?

“I’m at my wit’s end,” said Ms. LuPone, who in 2009 stopped in the middle of a song in a Broadway production of “Gypsy” to berate a photograph taker.

Theaters’ standard practice is to use recorded preshow announcements, often laced with humor, to encourage the silencing of mobile devices. And once a show starts, an usher may try to quell a rule-breaking patron. In rare cases, actors like Kevin Spacey, Hugh Jackman and Laurence Fishburne, have broken the fourth wall to address silence-shattering rings during a show.

A personal touch in advance may help even more. Before the start of the intimate drama “The River,” an understudy stepped on stage and implored the audience to turn off their phones. Having an actor make the request worked, according to Susan Frankel, the general manager of Circle in the Square Theater.

“It added to the personalness, that it came from the cast, really, truly,” she said.

Based on her 30 years in the business, Ms. Frankel said cellphone abusers fall into a few camps.

“One contingent is people who don’t go to the theater much,” she said. “But also people with babysitters home with kids that they are worried about, or people who are so excited to be close to people they revere.”

It’s been a fevered year so far for cellphone misbehavior in New York theaters. In April, the composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda took to Twitter to criticize a celebrity (widely reported to be Madonna) for texting during “Hamilton” at the Public Theater. Last week, Nick Silvestri, a 19-year-old Long Island college student, jumped onto the set of the Booth Theater before a performance of “Hand to God” and tried to charge his dying phone in a prop electrical outlet.

His reason? “Girls were calling all day — what would you do?” Mr. Silvestri told Playbill.com. He apologized at a news conference in front of the theater on Friday, though in an interview he said he didn’t think texting in a theater was “that big of a deal.”

High-tech solutions remain off the table. Except for authorized federal law enforcement, cellphone jamming is illegal in the United States. And for good reason, according to Brian Josef, assistant vice president for regulatory affairs for the Washington-based trade group CTIA: The Wireless Association.

“We can all think about emergencies in theaters or schools where being able to reach 911 is critical,” he said. “The worry is that jammers are a very blunt instrument.”

Resources “would be better spent in educating the public about user etiquette,” Mr. Josef said.

Yondr, a year-old company based in San Francisco, may have a low-tech workaround: a form-fitting, tamper-proof neoprene case that patrons are handed as they enter a theater. Phones are turned off or put on vibrate, slipped into the case and locked; the patron holds the package during the show.

If the audience member needs to take a call, he or she can exit the theater and have the device removed. After the show the case is returned to a hamper near the exits, like 3-D glasses at a movie theater. The comedian Hannibal Buress tried the system at a show in California in May.

“The idea is to allow people to be swept up into a shared mood in a live performance” without disruption, said Graham Dugoni, Yondr’s founder.

Some theaters wonder whether embracing the enemy is the shrewder way to go. Several performing arts organizations, including some in the classical music world, have designated “tweet seats” where use of social media during selected performances is encouraged.

At the beginning of their new Broadway show, now in previews, the magicians Penn & Teller invite the audience to turn on their cellphones as part of a magic trick.

“After the trick is over, they often turn them off,” Penn Jillette, the talkative half of the duo, explained on Friday. “That particular scold — ‘Don’t use your cellphone’ — is like telling children to be quiet with a substitute teacher. It’s not going to work. You can’t really do it with fake authority.”

Ms. LuPone, by contrast, believes in a no-tolerance rule: Offenders should be ejected from the theater, without refunds.

But she took a more welcoming approach in a speech to audience members before Thursday night’s performance firmly reminding them to turn off their phones. “I’m on your side — I do it for you,” she said.

According to a spokesman for the show, one phone still rang during the performance.

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Last edited by Goose (7/11/2015 6:42 am)