cell phones

[Helene]

To beat an unfortunately not dead horse, from yesterday's Links there's an article from the Orlando Sentinel:

Rudeness steals the show

My favorite quotes are:

At Mad Cow Theatre, artistic director Alan Bruun asks patrons to put their cell phones "on stun,"

Actress-producer Lori McCaskill proposes arming audience members with squirt guns.

[papeetepatrick]

If cell phones had to be checked in, couldn't doctors, etc., be asked for ID and told to keep on vibrate, etc. The number of people still allowed to have cellphones would be minimal. Doctors obviously need to be able to have theirs.

As much as I dislike cellphones interrupting a performance, I don't hate it then any more than I do half the waiting room at an airport all on them, all full of hype, or on the sidewalk screaming into them. I just hate them period and won't get one till I have to. This may be inevitable, since pay phones are getting scarcer. People think you're crazy if you want to look at a phone book.

[sandik]

I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon (well, maybe I do) but several times over the last couple of years I've sat behind people who were using the text message function on their cell phone or other PDA during the performance. Granted it doesn't make any sound, but the backlit screen is actually quite powerful in a darkened room, and as they move it about while they type and read it's like a tiny flashlight bouncing all over the place. It's incredibly distracting, but I haven't yet been able to thwap anyone on the side of the head about it.

[bart]

Have cell phones been introduced into ballet choreography?

When you think of it, if Romeo and Juliet had carried cell phones, or been addicted to texting, a great many of their problems would have been avoided.

Most likely they would have bored each other to distraction with vapid conversation, long before it became necessary to commit suicide.

In fact, the plots of most full-evening ballets would have been changed drastically by the presence of cell phones.

[Helene]

If cell phones had to be checked in, couldn't doctors, etc., be asked for ID and told to keep on vibrate, etc. The number of people still allowed to have cellphones would be minimal. Doctors obviously need to be able to have theirs.

The long-standing theater protocol for physicians is that they leave their pagers with the house staff, along with their seat number. If their pagers go off, they are summoned by the house staff.

[Hans]

I confess that I dearly love text messages. However, the idea of sending them during a performance appalls me.

[dirac]

I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon (well, maybe I do) but several times over the last couple of years I've sat behind people who were using the text message function on their cell phone or other PDA during the performance. Granted it doesn't make any sound, but the backlit screen is actually quite powerful in a darkened room, and as they move it about while they type and read it's like a tiny flashlight bouncing all over the place. It's incredibly distracting, but I haven't yet been able to thwap anyone on the side of the head about it.

I've been bothered by the same phenomenon.

[koshka]

The long-standing theater protocol for physicians is that they leave their pagers with the house staff,

So true.

Of course, that protocol developed when only a few people carried beepers and the like, and there was a time when these gadgets didn't have a vibrate function. (My father is a doctor, and I saw the whole evolution...)

Honestly, if one really needs to be reached, the vibrate function _can_ be used discreetly. One student in one of my ballet classes wears a pager, and it's barely noticeable.

Of course, all of the above presumes that one only has the devices on because one truly, truly need to be reachable. Very few people fall into that category. Texting, etc. are no less rude than bouncing a pen light or playing a video game. Harrumph--it's a waste of a perfectly nice seat.