Source Programme of Events Spring 2019 The Source Arts Centre Programme Spring 2019_Layou | Page 30

Spring 2019
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The
Furey Speaks!
A
s many of you know, I am naturally
pedantic by nature and while this
might be suitable for a position in the local
revenue commissioner’s office, it doesn’t sit
well with the free-spirited nature I also
profess to inhabit.
Let me expand.
Years of theatre-going have brought me to a recent
sorry pass. My most revelatory moment spent in the
theatre was not witnessing Olivier perform The
Merchant in the South Bank or seeing Pacino
chewing through the American Buffalo set. Indeed
not. Last week, attending a play, I heard a mobile
phone going off in an audience, and witnessed the
culprit answering the phone and having a
conversation with another person. While the
conversation was brief (“No, your dinner’s in the
oven” etc.), it was in a particularly delicate moment
for a play set in the 1950’s, when a revelation was
about to be made. And my friends, it was utterly
ruined by this act of sabotage.
We have all heard stories of plays and events being
interrupted or halted by the ubiquitous phone; the
jingle, the effervescent screen lighting up, the
searching of the bag, the mumbled apologies. But to
further hold a conversation with another in the
midst of an audience attending a play…
People sat dumbstruck and then laughed. The actors
looked around in confusion and then to a man and
woman carried on. What else could they do? It
seems it isn’t enough that we have announcements
before performances and signs around our venues.
Sometimes patrons are specifically asked by actors
before a show. But still we see screens light up,
messages checked, facebook updated even as The
Dane might be speaking.
My pedantic qualities rise to the surface at the
notion. It is relatively simple.
If instructed and generally at a seated theatre event –
music, drama, film etc. you must turn off your
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The Source Arts Centre
phone in advance of the event starting. The world
will wait for the two hours you are missing from its
orbit. If you are expecting an emergency call and
need to leave the phone on, then you shouldn’t be
attending the theatre. You are required elsewhere.
The theatre, cinema or concert is one of the last
places of refuge we have from the harassment of
what young people I believe, call ‘always-on’ culture.
Here we take recreation and balm from the soothing
declarations of our finest word and songsmiths.
Must they too be enslaved by the phone and turned
into rooms of clamour and chatter?
No, I say, turn off your phone. Respect the others
who have purchased tickets and who don’t wish to
hear your ‘Money For Nothing’ ringtone, who don’t
want to be distracted by the screensaver of your
labradoodle and who certainly don’t want to hear
your voice.
You are in the theatre, darling. Press the ‘OFF’
button.
Yours - Michael Furey