Skip to main content

Don’t use your phone at the theater or you may get a laser in your face

A London theater is so fed up with audience members checking their handsets during performances that it’s considering shining lasers at them until they stop.

While auditoriums everywhere are grappling with the same issue, the Jermyn Street Theatre in the center of the UK capital says pre-show announcements about smartphone use are failing to get through, leading it to consider more extreme measures such as lasers.

Recommended Videos

The method is already used in China at the Shanghai Grand Theatre and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing to shame phone users into switching off their handset.

Although the use of digital devices inside theaters can sometimes be a distraction for on-stage actors – just ask Benedict Cumberbatch about that – their bright screens mean they can also be a serious annoyance for other audience members, too.

Anthony Biggs, the Jermyn Street Theatre’s artistic director, told The Times, “Having somebody sit next to you with their phone on, even vaguely in your eyesight, makes you irrationally angry,” adding, “Maybe it’s not legally wrong, but it makes you want to kill them anyway.”

No, Biggs isn’t backing the idea of using lasers to burn out the eyeballs of offending audience members, in fact, the risk of an accident is one of the factors that could lead the theater to abandon the idea. It also realizes that the lasers themselves could be a distraction, and may not even be enough to stop someone looking at their phone.

Writing on Facebook, Biggs said he wants to explore a range of methods “to encourage our audiences to view a theater performance as a period of joyous release from the tyranny of the smartphone, a time when no one can contact us, and where we can immerse ourselves fully in make-believe. Even if only for a few hours.”

It’s an admirable plan, though many people will be thinking, “Good luck with that.”

Smartphones in theaters are also a problem for the folks trying to entertain us. In a famous incident a few years back, Kevin Spacey was interrupted by a handset’s ringtone during a performance in a one-man show.

Straight-faced and remaining in character, quick-thinking Spacey snapped at the phone’s owner, “If you don’t answer that, I will,” a response that resulted in a rapturous round of applause from everyone in the audience. Well, almost everyone.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
The iPhone 15 may finally get reverse wireless charging — but I don’t want it
Apple AirPods Pro 2 inside their charging case, sitting on back of an iPhone 14.

It’s been rumored that Apple has been working on implementing reverse wireless charging for a while. In fact, Apple has added some necessary components for making reverse wireless charging possible ever since the iPhone 12 (think of the MagSafe Battery Pack). Reports had actually suggested Apple was going to add it to the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro devices, but it failed to meet the deadline.

According to recent developments, reverse wireless charging, also known as bilateral wireless charging, is something that engineers at Apple continue to work on. It’s also been suggested that Apple’s version may be more advanced than what Android competitors offer. Maybe it’s just been delayed, and it may make its debut with the iPhone 15. Or perhaps it can go the way of AirPower and just be scrapped completely.

Read more
Don’t update your Galaxy Watch 4, or you may accidentally kill it
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic and Watch 4 side-by-side.

Updating your electronic devices to keep them running at an optimal level is important, but if you have the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, you might want to hold off on the latest firmware update. We're specifically referring to the update bearing the number R89xXXU1GVI3, which users have reported is killing their smartwatches.

According to a report from SamMobile, users have taken to online forums and complained that both models of the Galaxy Watch 4 will not reboot at all after shutting down upon installing the R89xXXU1GVI3 update. In other words, the update wouldn't allow the watches to restart, effectively rendering them useless.

Read more
You don’t need a gaming phone to seriously love mobile games
asus rog phone 5 review game genie

As an avid gaming enthusiast, mobile gaming has always appealed to me. However, despite my best efforts to get into gaming on my phone, I butted heads with it just about every step of the way because I found touchscreen controls to be truly awful. I figured that, unfortunately, enjoying games on a phone was reserved for people with the cash to buy luxury gaming phones with fancy shoulder buttons.

I couldn't have been more wrong, and the solution was right in front of my face.
Early disappointment
Mobile gaming has been exciting for years, but I never quite felt like I was part of it for the longest time. This is partly because I didn’t end up with a smartphone until I was roughly 16 years old in 2014, and by this time I felt like I missed a lot of the app-based fun that I was constantly reading about online. By the time I did get a smartphone, a hand-me-down iPhone 4, I still didn’t really have a device capable of playing the cutting-edge titles being released as mobile gaming got more serious.

Read more