Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in "Can you get that"

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are currently staring in A Steady Rain, on Broadway. And this lucky, albeit disrespectful, theatre goer caught an ad lib mother load the other night. Jackman visibly loses focus when a cell phone begins to buzz loudly, and requests that the theatre patron please answer the phone. Unfortunately our rude theatre-goer does not respond to Jackman's request and the phone continues to buzz. Eventually the vibrating becomes so distracting that even Daniel Craig gets in on the act and we have a truly live theatre moment. Check it out.



I think videos like this bring up an interesting question for theatre followers. Are these videos, which themselves are very disrespectful of the actors and production team, worth posting? On the one hand to see an audience member berated for their inappropriate behaviour is highly entertaining, and actually informative. Because truthfully cell phones and proper phone etiquette have been around long enough for incidents like this to not occur. But, on the other, the act of watching pirated theatre videos only perpetuates unseemly audience behaviour. And so, while we at EAP will probably continue to post them, because they are news worthy and hilarious - I would say as someone who would NEVER record a professional production in this manner, that doing so offends the production and takes away from the intimate quality theatre affords. Every experience in the theatre is unique, including the one above. Is it fair to record that moment? Theatre in its nature is for the individuals present and them alone. By bootlegging live theatre you not only water down the experience, because let's face theatre on film is yucky usually, you rob the audience, actors and crew of what's theres' in a profoundly deceitful way. That's just my opinion. What's yours?