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Up to now, cellphones have been the biggest disrupters. Actors, bless ‘em, will sometimes fight back.

 

Confronting an offending phone user at “A Steady Rain,” Hugh Jackman asked, “You wanna get that?” while co-star Daniel Craig said, “We can wait.” During “Richard III” in Australia, Kevin Spacey shouted “Tell them we’re not home!” Less polite was Stanley Tucci in “Frankie and Johnny,” who ripped into a profanity-laced riposte.

 

Recently, a N. Y. Philharmonic Mahler concert was interrupted by a marimba-blasting cellphone. Conductor Alan Gilbert stopped cold, turned and confronted the offender with, “Are you finished?” The audience, rightly so, was ready to lynch the guy.

 

Once, when a cellphone rang at Hartford Stage, its recipient, instead of beating a hasty retreat out of earshot, actually answered the bloody thing. So did another dolt when the great Julie Harris was emoting in “The Gin Game” at Stamford's Rich Forum. When a phone went off at a performance of “Hamlet” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, you could feel the audience primed for the drop of the other shoe, making Horatio’s “the rest is silence” a most welcome rejoinder.

 

Are selfishness, rudeness and thoughtlessness on the rise? At the start of a performance of “Elf” at Broadway’s Hirschfeld, for instance, the actor playing Santa Claus gave a jolly warning about unwrapping candy. Then, lo and behold, after intermission, parents and broods march in with noise-making goodies. A complaint to the house manager went unheeded.

 

When two lovebirds necked and yakked during a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in “True West” at Circle in the Square some years back, they were reminded, politely, that this was LIVE theater not a pre-recorded movie. If they could hear the actors, the actors could hear them. Besides, their lovey-dovey antics blocked others’ views. They looked puzzled by the admonition. Another couple at another theater was advised to "Get a room." They, too, wondered why the fuss.

 

As for cellphones and tweets, why do we have to be in our own worlds all the time, in constant contact with friends and families? Is our home burning down? Has our two-year-old lost a tooth? Why can’t we enter into a communal world with others to see, enjoy, learn, remember? The Constitution was written to “form a more perfect union,” not lots of individual enclaves that don’t give a hoot for anyone else.

 

So let's remind our readers the do's and don'ts of civil behavior.

 

Don't  talk, chew gum, tweet, eat, neck, wear noisy jewelry or unzip bags. Do turn off phones beforehand, arrive on time, leave after the final curtain call and be considerate.

 

If the above is too much to ask, remind them to please, please, please stay home!

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