What the F*ck is Up with Phones in the Theatre?!

This piece was originally written in late 2023.

In the fall of 2023 I had the good fortune of getting tickets to see Here We Are, the final work of the late great Steven Sondheim. It was set to be one of the first shows put up at the brand new Griffin Theatre at The Shed in New York city. It wasn't a cheap ticket, but how many chances do you get to see a genius's last play staged in a cutting edge brand new theatre? For my partner and I it was no question: we simply had to see it.

The trouble began during intermission.

An older woman seated directly to my left took her phone out of her purse and was met with some mildly distressing news: her son had been in a car accident. A moderate fender bender, necessitating a call for a tow truck, not an ambulance. I learned these details overhearing the handful of phone calls back and forth that occurred in those quick fifteen minutes. I learned other details too – it was her car, she wanted it towed to such-and-such garage, her son was in his twenties.

The lights dimmed. She furiously typed out just one last text and put her phone back into her purse, just as the music started back up and actors retook the stage.

Just one last text. Or so I thought.

The next hour was excruciating. She checked constantly for a new message and nearly every time she looked, she found one. Each time, she fired off a response and the phone went back in her purse, only to come right back out again a minute or so later. In and out, in and out, in and out. At one point, she was even using her phone screen as a flashlight to rummage through her bag for slip of paper with insurance information, which she then struggled for several minutes to read and transcribe into a text to her son.

Thanks to a combination of social anxiety and good ol' fashioned millennial deference, I am not generally a confrontational person, least of all with strangers. Still, I – and the others around – tried subtly, politely, to bring our fellow patron back into line. But stern gazes and pointed coughs were not enough. Even one of Here We Are's stars, Steven Pasquale, got in on the action, taking advantage of blocking that brought him to the edge of the stage directly in front of us to stare daggers at this woman. Frankly, I'm still not sure how she and her phone did not simply disintegrate on the spot under the strength of Pasquale's rageful gaze.

But she soldiered on, quarterbacking the life or death matter of her adult son's fender bender from her cushioned house-right seat at The Griffin.

What got to me the most was not the frequency, constancy, or sheer brazenness of her behavior. It was how clearly she knew that you just aren't supposed to do that shit. The last words of her last intermission phone call were "I'm at the theatre, intermission is almost over, I have to turn my phone off."

And she knew too that her actions had negatively affected her fellow theatre goers, me in particular. As the show concluded, before joining the rest of the audience in applause, she grabbed my arm.

"I'm so so sorry. My son was in a car accident."

Damage done, I decided against giving any of the various replies that she fairly deserved, gave her a tight lipped nod, and joined the applause.

A generous view might focus on the uniqueness of that particular anecdote and conclude that the problem might not be so widespread...

I can't have that, so let's have another story.

The last trip my partner and I took to the city started out with a rare stroke of fortune: our Amtrak train from Buffalo was on time. With another evening in town guaranteed, we snapped up two last minute balcony tickets to see Sarah Paulson in Appropriate. It felt like a really special show. There are so many people and so many moving parts involved that to do great – truly great– theatre is a Herculean task. It borders on the impossible, even when the fickle deck of financing gets stacked in your favor. It was clear from the beginning that everyone involved with Appropriate was up to the challenge. They caught that lightning in a bottle that you can only get when a whole ensemble of actors, a director, a writer, a lighting designer, and all the other humans that make theatre happen are all doing their very best work at the very same time.  

It's rare I see theatre and don't have a single "note," but Appropriate was, to me, nearly flawless.

The only problem was the fucking phones.  

Through the entire first act, the theatre was dotted with the unmistakable, unmissable dull glow of Steve Jobs's Pandora's box. To my right, to my left. In the rows below me. Popping up briefly out of the darkness, like fireflies, if fireflies evoked feelings of seething annoyance and packed stingers full of cheap dopamine.

Appropriate's Tony-winning lighting design did not exactly bathe the stage in bright light, so perhaps the impact of each surreptitious peak at a screen was heightened beyond the usual. But even without that factor, every glow of a phone screen inevitably draws the eye to it and distracts. Maybe its just the unplanned breaking of the fourth wall between illuminated actors and audience members in the darkness. Maybe its a Pavlovian response generated by our own curse-tool-toys; we see the familiar glow in our periphery and, before we can consciously choose to, we turn to it, subconsciously expecting the dopamine hit of another notification. 

Honestly, I don't think it matters. The end result is the same: a frustrating, disrupted experience for everyone within eye-shot who stomached increasingly exorbitant ticket prices because the theatre is magic, god damn it, and they need to experience it.

Thankfully, on that particular night there were no car crashes that required audience members' attention from their seats. Still, there were a few repeat phone offenders.

One man in particular drew my eye, and my ire. He snuck a quick peek four or five times in the first act, enough that I could notice, realize it was the same person, and wonder if there was something going on. So I looked over to try and see.  

As far as I could tell, dear reader, he was checking the fucking time.    

Look. I don't expect everyone to share my opinions on a piece of theatre; maybe he hated Appropriate from the jump and was trying to gauge how much longer he had until intermission would rescue him from the prison of his balcony seat. After all, there is no rule that says you must stay for the duration of a performance that you are not enjoying.

There is, however, a rule about using your phone during a performance. It is on signs outside the theatre, it is in the play bill, and it is announced before every single show, in most every single theatre, from Broadway, to Off-Broadway and beyond. It is an exceedingly simple rule, one codified (if not enforced) in New York City law. It comes in a few different variations and levels of, but the core of it is this: turn your fucking phones off.  

Why is it so hard, for so many, to follow this simple rule?  

As I see it, there are four buckets of reasons one might pull their phone out in the middle of the theatre. Four persona of rule breakers, if you will. Let's address each.

The first we'll call "Mrs. Legitimate". Mrs. Legitimate is taking out her phone for what she believes is a perfectly legitimate–perhaps exceptional–purpose. Her son was in a car crash. She is Very Important And This Email Can't Wait. She is helping a friend or family member through an acute crisis. She probably knows that it is rude, and she might even be unspeakably embarrassed by her transgression. But when stacked up against her Legitimate Exceptional Purpose, there is simply no question in the choice she must make. She's sure you'd understand. 

Mrs. Legitimate's case is obviously a crock of shit. At its core it is a justification of self centered hubris. In breaking our one simple rule, Mrs. Legitimate says that whatever her Legitimate Exceptional Purpose is, it supersedes the right (yes, the right) of her audience-mates to enjoy without unwelcome distraction the show they paid good money to see. There are a near unlimited number of justifications that this person could give, but her own behavior gives the game away. Were a situation to emerge that was truly so important and urgent, a situation they and they alone needed to address right that moment...They would leave. They would not remain in their seats trying to furtively text away. But they don't leave. They stay, the rest of us be damned.  

I can hear the pleas of Legitimate's already. They might bluster and intimidate, or try to smile and charm. Why should my Legitimate Exceptional reason to need to use my phone preclude me from enjoying the theatre? The answer should be clear by now: because it mucks it up for the rest of us.  

If you are a Mrs. Legitimate, here is my message to you. I do not doubt your very special legitimate exceptional purpose, nor do I doubt it's urgency. Nor do I doubt your love and devotion to the theatre! But we need you to show that love a different way. Turn your phone off. And if, for whatever reason chronic or acute you simply cannot do so then it pains me to say that the theatre isn't for you. Go and put out whatever fires there may be. The theatre will be here waiting for you when you can step away for a few hours without your world turning to cinder.  

The second persona we'll call "Mr. Bored." Mr. Bored is, for whatever reason, simply not having a good time at the theatre. Maybe he didn't really want to come, but friends and family wanted to and had an extra ticket. Maybe he just had a bad day, isn't really up for this, but couldn't offload the ticket and doesn't want the expense to be wasted. Maybe he thought he'd enjoy the show, but it turns out it isn't really for him. Maybe the show is objectively, agonizingly, unbearably bad!  

Mr. Bored has a couple of options to escape his unenviable predicament, but none of them involve a touchscreen. Conveniently, they are the same remedies available to Mrs. Legitimate.

Leave. Simply stand up, make proper apologies to folks in your row as you pass them, and leave! Even better, just wait for intermission, and then depart. You can make it, I promise. There is no rule at the theatre against, as the tennis star Andre Agassi once inelegantly put it, leaving "at halftime."  

Option two of course is to not come at all! I know, I know, the theatre is struggling and we should endeavor to expand our audience, not shrink it. But not at the expense of the product. Mr. Bored is clearly getting nothing from this experience and his route for dealing with it is literally lighting up the room in the worst possible way, ruining things for the rest of us.  

So please, Mr. Bored. Leave. Or stay home. If you can't do either, thats fine too. Just turn your fucking phone off. The time will pass whether you check it or not.  

Our third persona is "Mr. Can't Help It." He has no urgent matter to deal with, he isn't bored. He loves the theatre! He happily forks over his hard earned money for the chance to see it! But when he is sitting in the theatre, he just can't help it. He has to sneak a peek or two. Maybe he feels the silent vibration of an incoming message or intrusive notification and feels compelled to check it. How could he focus and enjoy the show knowing that there is an unchecked notification just sitting there, neglected? Maybe its not even that, but he just feels a compulsive urge to look. He Just Can't Help It.  

Of these three people, I have the most empathy for Mr. Can't Help It. In most cases of this, his relationship to the supercomputer in his pocket can fairly be described as an addiction. Many of us, myself included, can relate to that predicament. It's not his fault. Thousands and thousands of the smartest people our modern society has produced have poured their life's work into engineering this addiction in the pursuit of fabulous wealth. I am calling him "Mr. Can't Help It" because that is the unfortunate truth; he never stood a chance against the legions of engineers working to hijack his attention. Frankly, none of us do.  

But we cannot simply accept this as the state of things. Not in our lives and not in the theatre. I'll leave the former for smarter folks to tackle. But at the theatre, there is a simple solution. We already have a rule.   

So please, Mr. Can't Help It. Turn your fucking phone off. If you can't do that, I'm very sorry. I wish you the best of luck in addressing that problem. But in the meantime, please save your money, and the rest of our sanity, and stay away from the theatre. When you have gotten to a place where you can adhere to this rule, we will welcome you back joyfully with open arms.  

Our fourth persona we will call Ms. "Don't Know Better." We will give them grace, and treat them kindly because after all, they do not know better! They do not need to be shamed; they need to be educated.  

It's easy to imagine Ms. Don't Know better coming to the theatre for the first time. It's Wicked or Lion King, or some other blockbuster that manages to break containment and do the important work of minting new theatre people. And to this I say: fuck yeah! I'm so glad you are here, and I hope that you are on the cusp of the same wonderful life-long love affair that so many of us have with the greatest art there is.  

But please, Ms. Don't Know Better: mind the rules. You might think that as long as you turn the ringer off, put on do not disturb, and lower your brightness to the very bottom that there will be no issue.  

But our phone rule is not the same as an airplane's phone rule, one there out of an abundance of caution, rarely heeded and rarely enforced. Failing to heed the rule on an airplane will not invite calamity. Failing to heed the rule at the theatre will do meaningful harm to the experience your fellow theatre goers are having. It also has a tremendous negative impact on the performers. Broadway legend Patti LuPone plainly laid out the scope of the issue in 2015, after an incident where she angrily snatched a phone out of an audience member’s hand. 

"We work so hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few rude, self-absorbed, and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones," she said. "When a phone goes off or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark it ruins the experience for everyone else.. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore."  

Among all our entertainments, theatre is unique. There has always been something bordering on magical about live actors building and inhabiting the world of a play, in front of a live audience. Putting aside whether it is "better" than the movies, or a concert, or a sporting event, it is undeniable that it is different. A phone coming out at most concerts will not alter the experience of the concert. A phone coming out at a baseball game will not impact the final score. A phone coming out in a movie theatre will definitely annoy the rest of the audience, but it won't impact the performance itself. At the theatre, it is different. LuPone had it right: phone's destroy.  

I do not mean to chide you, Ms. Don't Know better. After all... you don't know better! But someone needs to teach you that using your phone during a performance is the peak of rudeness and disrespect in the theatre. It is stressed on the signs, programs, and announcements for a very real reason.  

The good thing is, now you know better! So I know that I don't have to tell you: turn your fucking phone off.  

But how can we solve this issue, systemically? How do we save our stages from the scourge of screens? My delusions of grandeur aren't so great as to believe that we could make this essay required reading before purchasing tickets, nor do I think doing so would actually be enough to halt the phone-peekers. But I do think this a solvable problem that is deserving of our attention. The solution starts with the theatres themselves.

I have not yet even touched on the even more extreme interruption that is phone's making noise during a show. While still blessedly less common than lit up screens, the unmistakable sound of a cell phone ringing through the house is even more difficult to ignore for an even greater number of people. In all but the largest theatres, a phone ringing anywhere, even at its lowest volume, is heard by nearly everyone. 

Which is why our first step, in cases where our rule is presented as "silence your cellphones," should be to revise to a more emphatic "turn your cell phones OFF!" If all phones were turned off, all issues related to them vanish. Imploring the audience to just silence their devices is not enough. It is a half-measure that leaves too much room for error.

We could do more to enforce this norm, too. We're a creative lot and I'm sure we can come up with a way to do this interestingly, one that adds to the theatrical experience. Or we could just keep it simple. Immediately before the show is set to begin, send out an actor, or an usher, or a stage manager, whoever! It doesn't matter who it is. Have them look us all cheerfully in the eyes, explain why this is so important, and then–this is the key–demonstrate. Have them take out their phone and implore the audience to do so. Wait until some critical mass of the house is holding their phones aloft and then–All together now!–turn them off. It could be fun, even. Most of us would welcome the excuse to take a reprieve from our devices.  

Or another idea: forbid the use of cell phones at all, at any point in time, in the house. Enforce this rule firmly and swiftly, having ushers implore patrons to step into the lobby if they must use their phones. If eagle-eyed ushers at the Belasco can speedily stop patrons from perching programs precariously on the balcony rails, surely they could take the same firm stance on the use of phones.

There is another related scourge we could eliminate immediately, with very little protest: the smart watch. Theatres should ban them outright. Instruct ticket takers and ushers to deny entry to anyone with a smart watch on their wrist and you eliminate the risk of a screen lighting up because someone moved their arm. No one needs to be wearing a smart watch while they take in a play.

I realize that all this is genuinely asking a lot from the theatres. It is a shift that will inevitably make some patrons vocally unhappy. After all, I am suggesting we get serious about forcing people to separate themselves from their rectangular metal addictions for two hours. And I understand that doing anything that even smells slightly impacting ticket sales is terrifying. But we can't just take it. We cannot accept this as just the way things are now. It is ruining your product, it is getting worse, and it will only continue to do so. Have courage! Take a stand!

The problem has gotten so unbearable that even bolder, more extreme solutions should be entertained. Back around 2015 a technology was gaining some traction at concerts and comedy shows that had patrons secure their phones in locked pouches before they were allowed entrance to the main venue. Everyone kept their phones on their person, but could not retrieve them without unlocking the pouch, which was only possible outside of whatever was designated the "phone free zone." The company behind it is still around, but the system did not get anywhere near the widespread adoption that was predicted ten years ago. The theatre should give it a try. I would gladly pay even more for tickets in return for a guarantee that the performance I'm seeing won't be marred by cell phones.

Even more important to solving this problem than the theatres is each and every one of us. If you have been reading this essay thinking, "God, yes! Someone has said it! The phones have gotten nuts!" then consider this your call to arms. There are many things that each of us can do that, collectively, I have an earnest hope might start to shift the tide.  

First and foremost is for each of us to follow the one simple rule ourselves. Don't just turn your phone on silent, put on do-not-disturb, and shove it back into your pocket but turn it off. It doesn't hurt to make a bit of a show of this to affect those around you. Close to curtain you can remark, at a volume slightly louder than you might normally, "Oh, I've got to turn my phone off!" And then do so.  

Second, we can do our best to encourage those we know to do the same. Talk about it. Rant and rave about how great it feels to sever that ever present connection to everything, if only to enjoy a piece of theatre for a few short hours. Make it your mission that no-one you attend the theatre with will break our one simple rule. Not on your watch!  

The real trouble, of course, is with strangers.

This is where we must summon our courage. When you are at the theatre and you find yourself next to a Legitimate, a Bored, a Can't Help It, or a Don't Know Better, you need to say something. For many of us, this is nerve-wracking. But the only way we are going to escape the awfulness of the current status quo is by addressing it head on. 

I will acknowledge straight away that what I am about to suggest will, unavoidably, add an additional disruption. It is important that we be tactical and tactful about this. I am not saying we should shout at offenders 10 seats from us, but rather that we should directly confront those in our immediate vicinity who break our one simple rule. If they are close enough for you to tap them on the shoulder and whisper a quiet word, then you should act. My hope is that such action will only be needed temporarily, that if enough of us screw our courage to the sticking place and take a stand against this problem, then we can reset our norms and drastically reduce, if not entirely eliminate the issue of phones in the theatre. Once we collectively relearn what we used to know, these actions will no longer be necessary.

Here is the current script I am running with whenever someone near me in the theatre is using their phone:   

First Offense: I'll let it slide. Everyone gets one freebie before the gentle shaming begins.  

Second Offense: I will, as quietly as possible, get their attention and say, "would you mind please putting your phone away? It's very distracting, thank you!" And return my attention to the show.  

Third Offense: I will–again, as quietly as possible–get their attention and say, "This is incredibly rude, please put your phone away."

Fourth Offense: Escalate further as the situation dictates. I find it rarely, if ever, gets here. But it might be an even sterner admonition, taking advantage of some bit of gratuitous mid-show applause to give them a choice four letter word. It might be directed at whoever they are with ("Are you not embarrassed by this?"). It might be alerting an usher to the situation and imploring them to act. Whatever seems best for the situation. If things get to this point, I recommend an immediate verbal drubbing as soon as the curtain falls. Ruin their night. Make them feel shame. They deserve it.

I do think that most people just need a bit of education, a bit of a reminder in this area. But some need to be shamed and we must not be afraid to shame them. The original theatre scholar Aristotle would agree; shame is effective and it is sometimes warranted. It is warranted here. Do not be afraid to shame those who are doing such harm to our collective experience of the theatre.

At that performance of Appropriate, at intermission, I turned to my partner and with the tone of someone speaking in confidence, but the volume of someone who wanted those within a few seats of me to hear, I said:

"I'm going to write an essay."  
"Oh?"  
"Yeah, I already have a great title... 

"It's 'What the Fuck is Up With Phones In the Theatre?!'"  

I do not think it was entirely a coincidence that I did not see any irksome glows throughout the second act. 

So. Turn your fucking phones off. Ask others to do so too. And shame–publicly–anyone who continues to refuse to follow this one simple rule. Together, we can take back the theatre and enjoy it again without distraction.