Michael Paulson and Michael Cooper of the New York Times recently wrote an article discussing tech etiquette during performances, citing two interactions between performers and audience members. A video clip of Joshua Henry, an actor, snatching a phone out of an audience member’s hand mid-song has become viral around the musical theater community. Anne-Sophie Mutter, a violinist, stopped performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto to ask an audience member to stop taking a video of her. Paulson and Cooper write that both artists were commended for their actions, even if Henry later had mixed feelings about his actions. Most performers’ gripes with technology come from unauthorized recordings being illegal and musicians’ personal recording preferences. Mutter described the latter idea in an interview following the incident, saying that, “as an artist, [she takes] such care when doing a recording – that [she has her] own sound engineer, that the mics are hung in the right spots. The sound is a part of [her]” to the extent that she wants any recording to be truly representative of her skills. When I read this article, I was reminded of several times during my own performances, or as an audience member, when someone else’s phone would go off, and I would get annoyed and judge the individual. I felt justified in my frustration with people’s inability to turn away from technology for two or three hours. Mutter said that when she saw the woman recording her, she felt “totally out of the flow” of her performance, and I resonated greatly with that. As a performer, the last thing you want is to feel more pressure from the audience than there already is. Knowing that there will be a recording of you just ups the ante.
I found this article and these situations to be a great modern example of Wendell Berry’s fears in “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.” One of his main ideas is that the over-implementation of technology will have a negative impact on our relationships with other people. He cites his relationship with his wife as one of the main reasons as to why he wouldn’t buy a computer back in the 80s. Today, technology has obviously impacted how we interact with our peers and our family, but it has also affected how we conduct ourselves as an audience. Technology is so ingrained into our lives that it is difficult to be without it. It has become second nature for us to reach for our phones when we see something that we want to re-live. It can be easy to say that the solution is to ban all personal technology during performances, but some say that doing so is “snobbish, elitist, or even [a manifestation] of white privilege,” as the practice of being an audience is only available to those who have the means to go to such performances. Additionally, many performers rely on social media to spread the word about their events, so prohibiting social media engagement during the event wouldn’t be helpful on that side of ticket sales. The issue of technology in performance spaces is tricky, and raises questions about whether or not technology is changing aspects of our lives beyond its immediate use.
Because technology’s impact is so far reaching, it has done exactly what Berry predicted: changed the way we interact with others. In this case, it has changed how audiences have treated performers. Paulson and Cooper write that audiences during Shakespeare’s time were notably rowdy, but the standard today is to be respectful and attentive to what the performer has to offer. On September 25, 2019, Tyler, The Creator (in)famously sang a degrading version of Happy Birthday to a fan after she yelled that it was that special day for her during the piano intro to “EARFQUAKE.” His reaction is very different from Mutter’s and Henry’s, as he comedically embraces the fan’s interruption and uses it to engage with the audience even more. While the fan definitely deserves some judgement for her interruption, Tyler’s reaction demonstrates how performers are now going to have to learn to deal with distractions from the audience. This feat is much easier for musicians like Tyler, who perform in casual settings. For more structured performances in formal settings, hearing a phone go off would be difficult to address, but I’m sure that as personal devices become even more prominent in audiences, performers and venues will learn to play theater etiquette by ear.
Tyler, The Creator singing Happy Birthday to a Fan (explicit language)