Turn that bleeping phone off — a rant from Crochety for the Performing Arts

By Carl Hoover

Lest you think that the problem of people texting, answering calls or checking for messages on their smart phones during concerts and plays was limited to Waco, Texas or places where People Not Like Us tend to congregate, here's a story from New York that's getting quite the buzz on the classical blogosphere today.

Seems that the New York Philharmonic is in the final minutes of playing Mahler's moving Ninth Symphony when someone's cell phone ringtone (or alarm — listeners seemed divided in exactly what it was) went off, then continued to ring and ring and ring — to the point where conductor Alan Gilbert stopped the orchestra, rebuked the offender and then told his players to repeat the final 18 measures.

Our arts columnist David A. Smith addresses the issue of cell phone interruptions in his piece in tomorrow's paper, although the offender he encountered was during the silent movie "The Artist."

I'm trying to leave a part of my mind open to ways smart phones and tablets can be used to involve audiences in a performance (e.g., reading background information or real-time notes during a performance via Twitter and designated hashtags), but haven't resolved how to minimize the interruption to those who don't want to be interrupted, either by sound or, increasingly, light. Removable hoods for cell phones to block light seepage from all but those behind the phone user? Corner rear balcony seating? (Ideas, anyone from the uber-connected? I'm open.)

Of course, almost all the phone use I witness during a performance has nothing to do with the music, movie or acting on stage. We still need those pre-performance announcements about turning one's cell phone to vibrate or off, as tiresome as they may be.

What I find more difficult to turn off than my phone is my inner nag, which jumps to action whenever the auditorium is dark, there's a performer onstage and - blink! - a phone screen lights up. CAN THIS NOT WAIT? my nag asks. DO YOU NOT RESPECT THE PERFORMER ON THE STAGE? Then my inner conciliator chides, "It's not deliberate rudeness — she's merely oblivious to the people around her, which, in most of her daily environments, probably live to watch their phones, too."

And so the inner debate goes until the climatic point of the Mahler 9th performed live is irrevocably scratched in memory.

I'm sure legal liabilities prevent venues from installing signal jammers — what happens if a doctor misses an emergency call and a patient dies, or what if the signal scrambles audience pacemakers? — although that's an intriguing fantasy.

Maybe concert halls and theaters can borrow a page from Dante and post at their auditorium entrances the warning "Abandon all phones ye who enter here."

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