Changing theater etiquette

I listened to an NPR show that talked about etiquette in live theater. Apparently cell phone use is a problem during live theatrical events and I’m not talking about rock concerts, I’m talking about musical performances, Broadway, Classical music concerts.

People who attend are apparently filming parts of the production with their phone. One musician stopped at the end of a first movement to tell a theater patron to put down his phone. Another theatrical production had attendees sitting actually on the stage as part of the staging and one of them filmed parts of the production. It was obvious to those watching that he was filming.

The guy who has the hot new Broadway show called
Slave Play, Jeremy Harris, says that it’s important to get people into seats and Broadway is a dying medium so whatever gets people in is fine. And who is to say that filming bits and pieces as an “I was there with them” type of thing is wrong. This is how people are experiencing the theatrical production. A theater critic reminded us that back in Shakespeare’s day the audience would be milling around talking laughing during the performance.

Our etiquette rules for live performances were developed in Europe over the past 200 years so they are western-centric. They are also for old people.

To offer the opposite side, Patty LuPone has said that it is disrespectful of the audience to do this to actors.

what do you think?

I will add, not related to this topic exactly although it is about standards in media entertainment, I was listening to a locally produced news story and the NPR reporter use the word “axed” to mean “asked.” She sounded young and I figured it was probably a college intern doing the story but when I looked her up I found that she was fully professional with a graduate degree, and they had hired her in from another state. O my.


So now I don’t know if “axed “is an acceptable standard on my local NPR station or if the reporter had a slip of the tongue.


But I wrote in to complain about it because I found a jarring and unprofessional.

I love live theatre and it’s disrespectful. So living in Kenosha we went once a year before cell phones.

I've been to many, many theatrical performances.. I was a theatre major who also studied at RADA in London. I have actually lost sleep worrying about what will happen to Shakespeare. I worry about theatre being an "old person's medium" as you described it, IL--and specifically as a rich old person's medium. And it feels like as we move away from person-to-person live interactions overall, live theatre seems like a relic of a bygone age, so I really think that Jeremy Harris is right to accept however the audience is going to relate to it.

Theatre is so amazing. You have an empty space and weave the creation of a writer, a director, an actor, a set designer, and a lighting designer, and you have magic. Whatever it takes to keep the magic alive is pretty much OK by me.

Let me start by saying I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. I have no idea what the "right" answer is. But this reminds me of the book I"m currently reading "Timekeepers" by Simon Garfield. I randomly found it at the library and decided to read it when I saw that one of the chapters involved a woman who thinks that we should have a 13 month calendar and 10 hour days, an idea I had previously come up with on my own.

A lot of the book involves the perception of time. There's a chapter about classical music and the effect that recordings had on it. A number of composers who were alive as recording of music became a thing, including Aaron Copland, thought that recordings ruined music because the interpretation by musicians of the future would be damaged/limited by early recordings. For example Beethoven's 9th symphony has been interpreted by various conductors with wildly varying ideas on how fast or slow the music should be played. To me this sort of seems like the same thing as the OP's question. Do recordings "ruin" the ability to interpret music in the future? Likewise, do new theatrical audience behaviors "ruin" theatre or merely represent a change in the way that people engage with a live performance. I have no idea.

And it probably doesn't matter. After all, everything changes over time. A couple hundred years ago people in the US and UK both talked exactly the same. After all, people in the US were just people who had moved here from the UK a few years earlier. Now there are some significant differences. Whose pronunciations and phrasing are correct? It depends on whether you live in the US or the UK...

Another example that pops to mind, the way people interact with museums. Anyone who has been to the Louvre in the past ten years has undoubtedly noted that today almost everyone who views the Mona Lisa feels the need to take a selfie with the Mona Lisa. As someone who saw the Mona Lisa before smartphones I thought it tacky and didn't do it. Am I just an old curmudgeon for feeling that way? Perhaps.

JP mentions selfies with the Mona Lisa. All I know is I am sick and tired of getting out of the way for people to snap photographs with a museum exhibit or a garden exhibit, or waiting for them to put down their stupid camera and get out of my way when they’re blocking the pathway. Why people have to record 1 billion things with her camera is beyond me.
Enjoy the present, appreciate the moment people.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

JP mentions selfies with the Mona Lisa. All I know is I am sick and tired of getting out of the way for people to snap photographs with a museum exhibit or a garden exhibit, or waiting for them to put down their stupid camera and get out of my way when they’re blocking the pathway. Why people have to record 1 billion things with her camera is beyond me.
Enjoy the present, appreciate the moment people.

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Personally I don't make an effort to accommodate people taking selfies. I take those opportunities to photobomb the people. Just like the queen. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtTkD73CQAAIxnZ.jpg:large Admittedly people probably won't be as excited that JP photobombed them but oh well...

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Enjoy the present, appreciate the moment people.

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I wish I knew the right response to this too. When my dad was a little boy (in the mid-1930's) his mother, who was already dying of tuberculosis, hired a photographer to come take a picture of dad and his two siblings because she wanted something she could look at to remember them as she lay dying in the Missouri state hospital. (dad's the little guy on the left.) They had all been napping so they were grumpy when the photo was taken. Even bad photos can become good memories...

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This is my observation of the effect of cellphones during a production. The light of the screen is so strong that it impairs my view of the show that I paid $$$ to see. The cellphone is not recording the show or the music, the holder is texting outside the show venue and discussing his/her findings with seatmate/s. further detracting from my enjoyment of the show.

To see cellphones simply as recording devices is very naive and ill-informed about its use and impact.

When I see videos posted on facebook of parts of concerts I always wonder how this is allowed? Back in the 70's and 80's, when going into a concert, a person was actually "frisked" sometimes and cameras or tape recorders were confiscated! This was to prevent bootleg recordings I guess. Does this not apply any longer?

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Originally Posted by Sad Eyed Lady

When I see videos posted on facebook of parts of concerts I always wonder how this is allowed? Back in the 70's and 80's, when going into a concert, a person was actually "frisked" sometimes and cameras or tape recorders were confiscated! This was to prevent bootleg recordings I guess. Does this not apply any longer?

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Ah if you’re suggesting that people be required to drop their cell phones in a basket before they enter the theater, that would be the death of theater. It would be over. No one would attend. The audiences would be zero.

The intellectual property aspect was mentioned in this NPR broadcast. Recording an entire performance is not legal. Probably recording bits and segments is OK.

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Originally Posted by Sad Eyed Lady

When I see videos posted on facebook of parts of concerts I always wonder how this is allowed? Back in the 70's and 80's, when going into a concert, a person was actually "frisked" sometimes and cameras or tape recorders were confiscated! This was to prevent bootleg recordings I guess. Does this not apply any longer?

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You'd have to take everyone's phone.

We were at a concert about a year ago and the artist said at the beginning that if there were cellphones used he would stop. He wasn't half way through the first song when he stopped due to a guy about 20 rows back filming. Believe me.... the irritation of the crowd around the offender was enough. He stopped and nobody else tried after that.
Don't get me started on people texting in a movie theater.

Googling to see what I could find, this came up. Apparently the rapt attention style of attending concerts was not always the standard. The description sounds more like how people go see a rock band in a club today.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...why-so-serious

While most were in their places by the end of the first act, the continuous movement and low din of conversation never really stopped. Lackeys and young bachelors milled about in the crowded and often boisterous parterre, the floor-level pit to which only men were admitted. Princes of the blood and dukes visited among themselves in the highly visible first-row boxes. Worldly abbés chatted happily with ladies in jewels on the second level, occasionally earning indecent shouts from the parterre when their conversation turned too cordial. And lovers sought the dim heights of the third balcony—the paradise—away from the probing lorgnettes.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Ah if you’re suggesting that people be required to drop their cell phones in a basket before they enter the theater, that would be the death of theater. It would be over. No one would attend. The audiences would be zero.

The intellectual property aspect was mentioned in this NPR broadcast. Recording an entire performance is not legal. Probably recording bits and segments is OK.

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I think ushers should take on the role of police--if they see someone recording the performance, they could all gang up on the offending party with their flashlights and shame them into shutting it down.

My son is an actor and musician, and I have serious problems with people profiting off of the creative talents of all artists.

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Originally Posted by catherine

I think ushers should take on the role of police--if they see someone recording the performance, they could all gang up on the offending party with their flashlights and shame them into shutting it down.

My son is an actor and musician, and I have serious problems with people profiting off of the creative talents of all artists.

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It is hard for me to believe that anyone is actually profiting from these boot leg phone recordings. Of course I’m not in New York where the new stuff happens I’m only in the flyover country where tired old Productions show up.

I will bet that the majority of the transgressors are taping performances for their own use or to impress their friends that they were there etc.