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THE USE OF electronic devices in theatres has been called out by Irish actor Adrian Dunbar, saying it “breaks the magic” of the show.
Dunbar joins fellow Irish star Andrew Scott who this month told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he stopped a ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy, during a showing of Hamlet in London, after someone in the crowd was using their a laptop.
Both actors spoke of how distracting mobile phone – and laptop – usage can be for actors on the stage and have reminded audiences to switch off their devices when at the theatre.
Scott told the programme: “When I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop.
“Not his phone, his laptop, while I was in the middle of to be or not to f**king be.”
Scott said he stopped his soliloquy and waited for the man to finish using his computer, despite the stage team telling him to carry on, until another person in the audience told the man to put the laptop away.
Dunbar let the show go on, however he did highlight, to The Times newspaper in the United Kingdom, about how “distracting” it is to see “one or two people whose faces are lit up” while on stage.
Dunbar described the use of phones and devices in the theatre as a “strange modern phenomenon” and said that sometimes people who use their phones haven’t been to the theatre before and “just don’t get it”.
“They don’t know about the fourth wall. They might think they’re watching TV and that they can step away from what’s happening,” he told the paper.
“Whereas actually the theatre is very much an engaged and a collective experience.”
Dunbar said: “We have a saying in Ireland, which is that it’s not the singer, it’s the audience that sings. In other words, the collective concentration of the audience is sometimes what makes things on stage great.
If a couple of people decide to bow out of that concentration, it breaks the magic.”
He said that people need to be reminded to switch their phones off and that the issue is on the “radar” of a number of actors in the upcoming production of Kiss Me, Kate – where he will play character Fred Graham – are aware of it.
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I’d say most of them would fail to pick it out on a map
Are you joking – they don’t give a fup about NI
There are 60 million people living in mainland Britain. Why would the north with 1.5 million be front and centre or anywhere near the top of their priorities?
@John Mulligan: why should SF change for DUPs benefit? DUP backed a hard BREXIT in the hope of breaking the close link with the Republic from the GFA. If anybody has to change its the DUP to reflect the changing political climate in the North
To most people in Britain, Northern Ireland is just a giant pain in the butt. A running sore that needs cortorising and gone from their life’s ASAP.
The Tories don’t give a flying feck about NI.
Funniest thing I’ve read all week. NI isn’t even in the back of the mind of those that are looking to become ty next Tori leader. When will those in NI realise they are a thorn in the side of the mainland.
@Jason Walsh: Mainland? What about the aisle of Wight?
@John Mulligan: Dear John, that comes across as a very entrenched and one sided view. When Michelle O’Neill laid a wreath at the war memorial in Belfast last week to honour the Unionist war dead, she was really poking them in the eye, you say.
and yesterday when she attending a Muslim festival in Belfast and spoke about celebrating all the rainbow colours that make up society in the north as that society is no longer one of Orange and Green, she was really poking unionists in the eye you say?
Wise up there John before you are left behind with the DUP!
@John Mulligan: you’re spot on, with the two established parties of conflict as the main parties, it is harder than ever to agree on thinks. People voted for change for voting for the Aliance party. People are sick of green v orange
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