Fed up with the constant trilling from the stalls, Russia’s oldest theatre has come up with a novel solution to the ubiquitous problem of cellphones going off — jam the signal.
The Alexandrinsky theatre in St Petersburg last month became the first theatre company in the world to instal jamming equipment, after previous attempts to get patrons to switch off their phones failed.
The theatre said it was forced to introduce the measure after a ringing cellphone wrecked a recent performance of Leo Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse. The central character, Fedor Protasov, decides to kill himself after his wife accidentally marries someone else.
“It was towards the end. Just as the hero was about to shoot himself someone’s mobile phone started to ring,” Yekaterina Slepishkova, a spokesperson for the theatre — founded in 1756 — said on Monday. “It was awful. We ask people to turn their phones off before every performance. But they simply don’t listen.
“We turn the system on just before the performance. We switch it off during the interval and on again for the second half. So far it’s been a resounding success.”
During Soviet times, theatre and concert performances were received in reverent silence. Tickets were also cheap. But in recent years, Russia’s traditional intelligentsia has found itself priced out of many cultural attractions, both in Moscow and St Petersburg, where tickets can cost $96.
Instead it is newly affluent Russians who these days occupy the best seats in the house. Regular theatregoers complain that these moneyed newcomers are not cultured. They talk on their cellphones, and often clap in the wrong place, they add bitterly.
“Although the technology is rather expensive our theatre accepted the costs in order to protect the artists from unpleasant surprises,” director Alexander Chepurov explained.
One exasperated actor was even forced to declare: “Turn it off. I’m doing my soliloquy,” he recalled
The jamming system cost $1 900. It is effective within a range of 50m — scrambling all cellphone calls in the auditorium, but allowing the stage manager to communicate with actors in the green room by walkie-talkie.
So far, there have been no complaints, staff said. A second St Petersburg theatre, the Maly Drama theatre, has also introduced jamming after its attempts to get theatregoers to switch off their phones similarly failed.
“We expect our idea to be imitated elsewhere,” Sergei Dmitryiv, the Alexandrinsky theatre’s technical director, said. “I’ve had colleagues in Moscow asking how we did it. It’s easy. You can buy the equipment on the internet.” – Guardian Unlimited Â