Northlight Theatre :: BJ's Blog :: Spring/Summer 2006

OK, I am getting grief from my co-workers and some friends about the fact that I have not “blogged” since last week. Lisa Fulton from INTIMAN who visited last week e-mailed to complain about not seeing her name in the column since she visited us. There is her name and I am duly chastised. Sorry about that. I just felt that I had nothing to say of late.

But then I met with my daughter Keely at the intermission of Retreat From Moscow the other night. She came with some friends and commented that the lady in the seat next to her chided her when her cell phone’s vibrating ring went off. I told her I would be pissed too and she shouldn’t have had it on. It was only an hour after all. The irony, of course, is that she had text messaged me to meet her and her friends Ben and Billy in the lobby and I texted her back telling her OK. It was my message that vibrated her phone. I was a bit shamefaced, but she still should have turned off her phone when she heard my announcement before the show.

This brings me to my pet peeve about cell phones in the theatre. Who do we think we are that we need our phones on during a play, movie, concert, church, classes et al?

I leave mine in the car when I go into the theatre, particularly because my ring tones are fairly particular and generally get a laugh when people hear them, so should they go off in the theatre I would be thoroughly humiliated. Generally I keep it on vibrate, and I do at times forget to dig it out of my briefcase to kill it during rehearsal, which makes me quite angry at myself. But we are formalized about the cell phone announcement at the theatre before performances and people should dig into their Gucci bags and shut them off.

During a preview of Retreat From Moscow, Rondi Reed, who plays Alice , was frozen by a persistent cell phone going off, holding before launching into one of the many poems in the play. Then as the perpetrator fled from his seat, not turning off the rather florid ring tone, she turned out to the house and said “are we quite done?” The audience broke into spontaneous applause and she firmly picked up where she left off and quoted the poem.

Be prepared for more of this response from actors. This is our work place, and respect should be paid for the work we are doing. Not to mention the fact that other audience members have paid a lot of money to sit in the dark under the spell of a good story only to have the outside world intrude to ask “where are the butter knives” or “when are you coming home?”

You would think that when one thoughtless patron lets their cell phone go off it would be a reminder to others to check that their phone is off as well, and yet frequently one or two more go off during the course of the evening.

Here is a tale from Broadway last week, and this entry comes from a blog on Broadway.com: