The stage theater

As a performer on the live stage, one thing that irritates me is people coming in late. Yeah, traffic can be a factor, anything can happen, fine, fine, fine . . . But coming in after a show has started distracts everyone—folks acting and folks watching. ’Cause now, all we see is you . . . late . . . making noise (I really do hope it’s not you who ends up getting those ugly stares). So avoid being late, if you can.

Ringing cell phones are also a pain. Folks let them ring and ring because they are hoping and praying nobody will figure out it is theirs.

Sorry, but everybody knows it’s you. They know it’s you. The people sitting around you are looking dead at you, saying silently, “This jackass’s phone has gone off. And look, he’s not doing anything.” If you’re at a play, or you’re at a performance, those people on the stage can hear your phone. So just fumbleflub around and turn it off. Just do that. Best thing is just to turn it off as soon as you sit down.

The only person who should have any kind of device that goes off in a theater is a doctor. They’re the only people that have to have their cell phones with them.

Here’s another pain in the ass new technology has brought us . . . People in the theater audience have started to shoot video on their phones. You have to know it’s a lousy thing to do. It’s piracy. It’s one of the things that irritates the hell out of me. ’Cause, basically, you are stealing somebody’s performance.

Why do you think that’s OK?

When I’m on a stage by myself, I say, “You cannot have your cell phone on. And if I see it, I’m going to put you out of here.” People get offended! They tell me they paid their money. I say, “Hey, you paid your money to come to the theater, that’s true, but I don’t remember a DVD giveaway included, so turn it off or get out, because you haven’t paid me for that.”

It’s rude, I know, but so is stealing my work.

And I feel bad for people in the audience who just wanted to see a show and now what do they have to do? They have to crane their necks to look around the guy holding up his cell phone to video it.

Am I the first one to wonder when a nice night in the theater stopped being just a night in the theater?

This cell phone recording is why so many comics and solo performers have changed the way they do things now. For instance, there’s a whole lot of stuff now that I just won’t say. I won’t say it because I don’t want my performance on YouTube out of context. And I can’t even find you. It’s anonymous. And that’s cowardly. You can edit it, you can cut it, you can do whatever you want to it and take my work someplace maybe I wasn’t going with it. But no one else knows that because they weren’t there.

Anyone give you the right to do that? Just because you have the technical capacity doesn’t mean you have the right to. Any more than it gives you the right to cut a hole in somebody’s wall and videotape them changing their clothes. What is the moral obligation of technical access? Is there one?

Does your cell phone make you so important you are emboldened to do whatever you want with it . . . wherever and whenever you want to? Texting? Talking? Videoing?

I say, if you’re that important, stay home. If you need to catch every beep and buzz that your phone does, stay home. Rent one of my DVDs and make us both happy.