Why Smart Phones are Ruining Live Entertainment

It’s enough to make Joseph Ting scream.  He argues that the ebb and glow of flickering screens is spoiling theatre.

The essence of the cultural experience is a direct, personal and revelatory encounter with an event or artwork. The joy of seeing a play or visiting an art installation is in the physical live experience. Our attention must be directed to the subject matter in front of us.

Audience members that stare at their iPhones and continually take pictures or videos to post on YouTube are annoying and are probably seeing, hearing and even living vicariously without engaging in "real-life" experiences.

Smart web connected gadgets have radically changed the way that we live our lives, how we view the outside world and the way we interact with it. However, the more time that we spend in the cyber world, the less capable we are of appreciating the real world.

A provoking, complex, multi-faceted product of the creative imagination becomes just another series of moving images captured on a miniature recorder whose currency is founded on being shared as widely as possible on social networks.

The recording is frequently a fragmented portrayal of the production and a dumbed-down replica of the original cultural product. Unrepresentative and misleading, they devalue and misrepresent the original product.

For the audience member unfortunate enough to be seated close by, the frenetic distractions from smartphone and video recording device use trumps every other annoyance. It impairs thoughtful immersion in events unfolding on the stage.The use of smart phones to take videos and photos hinders, and in one highly publicised instance even halted, the actors’ performance. James McAvoy stopped midstride at a recent Macbeth at Trafalgar Studios in London to ask a member of the audience to stop filming it.

Disseminating poor quality or incomplete smartphone captured videos and photos of concerts and other events could debase their cultural currency and infringe copyright.

What ruins a show for those of us who are compelled to sit or stand still, is the distraction caused by selfish busy posturing and maneuverings to gain better vantage points for recordings. The ebb and glow of a flickering screen, restless tapping fingers updating web-commentary and the constant clicking of cameras and whirring of video recorders add insult to injury.

No one dares to live in the elusive moment anymore. Increasingly theatre audiences can’t resist the compulsion to memorialise a cultural event to webcast to their social tribe.

For some, the fleeting theatre experience gains traction only if scenes are recorded for posterity or cached to web archives. Credible claims of attendance at prestige events are bolstered by live commentary disseminated into the websphere.

There is no argument that web-connected devices have improved contemporary life—you can stay in touch with more people and keep up with current events in an instant. However, people filming and recording aren’t really paying full attention to the drama that is unfolding on stage or the screen.

Smartphones, tablets and recorders disconnect the observer from the culture or art on display. Worryingly, habit-forming social media technology could lead to neuronal rewiring that impedes the human mind from directly engaging in a visceral experience without the mediation of an electronic device.

An addictive mindset fosters rude self-absorbed behaviour. I recall Michelle Obama’s annoyance at her husband’s distracting childlike antics orchestrating a group selfie at Nelson Mandela's Memorial Service, which set a bad example to a world preoccupied with itself.

I accept that YouTube can assist art forms. Posts of performances can help lesser known performers reach out to a broader audience by tapping into their fans’ social media activity. Social networks can generate hype for a new show. Being able to locate clips of plays and concerts on YouTube can stimulate interest and encourage viewers to go out and seek the real thing.  In this sense YouTube is a positive educative catalyst towards a more direct experience. 

Ultimately however, uploading self-referenced photos and clips onto social media sites underscores the more profound problem of escalating self-regard among the smartphone generation.

The mind's eye shifts from the stage to the selfie us. In trying to capture a grainy YouTube video, the recorder’s attention is diverted from meaningful engagement with events unfolding live in front of them.

Originally published in the November / December 2014 edition of Stage Whipsers.