Imp Msg: Trn Tht Drnd Thng Off

Checking your watch was once the state-of-the-art response to a boring theatrical moment. Now, it's the BlackBerry

It8217;s supposed to be completely dark in the auditorium, but instead all these little light shows are going on. FLICK! The face of the guy across the aisle is bathed in a blue electronic glow. FLICK! Another man two seats down regularly seems to blink on and off 8212; he8217;s a neon sign in jeans and sports coat. FLICK! FLICK!

I am only intermittently aware that the actors, on the stage, are walking around and moving their mouths at the moment because of the competition they are getting from my neighbour. Every time he consults his little device with its brilliant light-emitting diode, my eye is distracted, my concentration broken. I am the moth to his digital flame.

Once upon a time, checking your watch was the state-of-the-art response to a theatrical moment that bored you. But now, the Treos and BlackBerrys and the multi-tasking superphones that do everything except rotate your tyres are more than a momentary sideshow for the ticket buyer. And the confounding thing is these flickering lights have the power to drag out a lot of us sitting around them, too.

I no longer am sure whether audience behaviour is demonstrably less civil than in other epochs.

The erosion, too, of what people understand to be the rules of a night at the theatre, might be accelerating. It was reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer for instance, that just before the start of a performance of Menopause: The Musical, a pizza deliveryman arrived at the theatre 8220;with a large plain pie for a group of women in Row K.8221; The paper said the artistic director intervened, explaining to the women that they were 8220;not at the circus.8221;

No one8217;s ever dug into a slice of pepperoni-with-mushrooms at a show I8217;ve been to. But a Broadway usher once told me she found an entire meatloaf under a seat after one performance, and chicken bones after another. One of the oddest accoutrements I8217;ve ever come across was a little dog, carried by its owner in a large handbag.

At least the dog had the compassion to turn off its electronic devices. Which is frequently not the case for the human clientele. A few weeks ago, I watched as a man seated five or six rows from the stage consulted a glowing little screen every two or three minutes. It became a production unto itself. What, I wondered, occupied this gentleman, and so many like him, before such things existed? Was it possible that they ever simply sat still? At another production, three young women settled into their seats and a few minutes into the first act, pulled out their BlackBerrys and cellphones.

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Weary of the drama, they began to send text messages 8212; to each other, I believe. They left at intermission. This was behaviour to be engraved in the commandments of theatre etiquette for the 21st century: if the urge to text outpaces your tolerance for subtext, then please: take it outside.

Peter Marks LAT-WP