So today I read yet another article about a Broadway performance interrupted by an audience member on their cell phone. Earlier this year, Patti Lupone stepped off stage and grabbed a cell phone from an audience member's cell phone because they were distracting her with her texting. Within weeks there was someone at the play Hand to God who walked up on stage and plugged his phone into a fake outlet on the set just before the play was about to start. He didn't know and was escorted out by the ushers. Ignorance is bliss in this case, I guess.
This week, during a performance of the play Sylvia on Broadway, a cellphone rang right at the climax of the play. The scene involved Matthew Broderick and Annaleigh Ashford. She spoke with playbill.com about the incident. In the play, she plays a dog. The phone rang, twice. They kept on with the scene. After the second ring, the woman answered the phone and start talking. The audience members started shushing her. Annaleigh's initial thought was concern rather than rage. She thought there must be some emergency she needs to take the call.
The woman left her seat but then stood in the hallway and continued her conversation where she was clearly heard. So Annaleigh did what she does whenever they have a cellphone ring in the house. In character as a dog, she barked at the audience and then said, "I think somebody is having a conversation in another room." It got a laugh and they continued. After two pages of dialogue, they couldn't go on any longer because the audience became really distracted by this woman. A man in the front row shouted, "Throw her out!"
Finally someone helped her get off the phone. So Broderick and Annaleigh told the audience we're going to go back in the play and pick it up if its alright with you and they did. Annaleigh has taken it well. No outrage like Patti Lupone, (who I don't blame for her response). Annaleigh has expressed concern that she hopes that nothing serious came up for the woman on the phone and that everything is okay. Also, that she won't do that again.
Being an actor, this hits home for me. I've never personally experienced this when I've been on stage. What are some of the things I have experienced with an audience? Audience members putting their feet up on the stage like a foot rest. As Lily von Schtupp says in Blazing Saddles, "Tell me Tex ma'am, are you in show business?" "No." Then get your friggin feet off the stage!"
I did show in the round last year. The stage was not on a lift. Same level as the floor. So audience members in the first row have to keep their feet tucked in to avoid tripping actors. One day, a special needs young man was seated point the front row. He kept blurting out periodically. It was off-putting to some of the actors who were getting riled. I could tell quickly that this was a special needs person and was not something he could help. At one point, he got up to go to the bathroom, and walked across the stage..while the entire company was on stage. Cast, not happy. I was thrown, but as I said, I could see who I was dealing with.
Another performance, we had a woman in the front row and get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of one of my scenes. Saw her out of the corner of my eye and it threw me for a second. My timing was a bit off, but I recovered. Later in the scene, she returned down one of the staircases from the lobby. Being a theater in the round, actors make entrances and entrances through the house. At this particular moment, several of the girls join the ensemble were on the stairs observing the scene between myself and my daughter. Rather than wait for them to clear, she pushed her way through the girls to get to her seat. She could have sat in an empty seat in the back and waited for a better moment to go all the way down front. She could have stood in the back and waited. I don't know what was so important that she just had to get all the way down to that seat at hat moment. But she did. And she took us all out of the moment.
It seems to be growing concern, and as Annaleigh said we need to educate audiences. Cell phones are way of life now and are not going away. I can understand younger people not having the courtesy to turn them off. They were practically raised in a society where they are a part of their lives. But older folks, really? You are old enough to remember when they didn't exist and you had no choice but to sit and be quiet.
Parents went out and left their kids with sitters and they didn't have to be connected for those two hours. They were fine. But now because the technology is there, they have to be in constant contact.
Can't it wait until intermission? What's an hour or two? And if you're really concerned about your kids that much, maybe you shouldn't go out and leave them alone.
I guess now, its about educating the audiences.
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