By Jay Kernis and Sopan Deb
Rock Center
There are almost 100 million smart phones in the United States. We can’t seem to live without them or turn them off, even for a few moments.
Inevitably, this means that places like theaters, concert halls and churches are being routinely interrupted by a ring tone seemingly at the most climactic moment or by people texting in adjacent seats.
In an upcoming Rock Center, NBC's Willie Geist examines the impact of cell phones on actors, musicians and audiences. He meets performers who object to being distracted by the interruptions, a priest who had a heck of a time finding the source of a ring that interrupted his service and a world renowned pianist who heard one ringtone so many times that he decided to write a waltz based on it.
In this online exclusive, see how one Broadway show, Godspell, is finding a way to make cell phones part of the theater experience.
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Completely do NOT agree that the younger generation will take us out of this hell. At a concert several years ago. Phone went off behind me. Woman in her 20s. So she answers it and talks and talks and talks until people in the audience from ALL OVER the theater start yelling 'shut up.' At the intermission I turned around, gave a dirty look and patted the girl on the knee with my program. Yes, the cops were called. I was ticketed and had to go to court for physical abuse charges. I also teach at the college level and have to compete with students texting all through class, answering their phones and walking out of class. We're just headed into more distraction hell.
According to the program, the reason GenZ is supposed to fix the problem is that they know how to turn off their cellphones. NOT TRUE. Apple is the problem. Who designs their phone so that, even when you turn off the ring, an alarm cuts through and rings? Apple does. They are the folks who should be apologizing to the New York Philharmonic for a most unfortunate accident, not the 20-year subscriber sitting in the front row, who will no longer enjoy a live concert in the same way ever again. And then Apple should go and redesign the phone's software to fix this flaw, or at least let the user decide in preferences whether "off" means "off" or "almost off".
As a lover of both theater and Twitter, I don't think this combination really syncs up. Imagine if they started to let people eat in their seats. It wouldn't fly. This isn't about breaking in a new generation -- it's about creating as much publicity for the show as possible. During the performance, and afterward thanks to articles and pieces like this one about the initiative. Obviously the press guys and producers won't say that outward. So it's good for "Godspell" but still bad for Broadway.