If you’ve ever been to a theatre performance before, you’ve probably heard the announcement, “Please turn off and silence any electronic devices. All flash photography and videography is prohibited.”

But do you respect that request?

“If you don’t focus, you’re going to miss [a lot],” said Mic Evans, senior theatre major. “You’re going to miss the point of the show; you’re going to miss moments. […] Every night something’s a little different, and if you’re looking at your phone, if you’re looking at your iPad […] if you look down for a moment, you’re going to miss what just happened on stage.”

TheaterUNI’s production of “RENT” as well as the Interpreter’s Theatre production of “The Inferno” both had incidents with their audiences.

For Evans, a “RENT” cast member, the incident occurred during the first scene of the musical. Evans said that during the opening moment, he walks to his place and hits the same mark every night, looks down at this mark and looks back up to start the song.

“I always thought, I’ll never blank like that, it’ll never happen to me. I’m good; I know what I’m doing. But I literally looked down, looked up, the flash went off and it’s like every word that I’ve been working on for the last two months left my head.”

Tre Goodhue, freshman secondary education in history major, was part of the cast for “The Inferno,” where he said a group of students chose to talk and be on their phones during the performance.

“Every single one of us noticed,” said Goodhue. “All the cast members noticed that they were doing it the entire night […] It kind of just made us really mad, which kind of affected the performance because that’s what you’re thinking about. You’re thinking about how these people are here but they’re not watching you.”

According to Evans, having a cell phone out during a performance can be more detrimental than it seems, because it can bring serious harm to those that are on stage.

“I’ve heard of stories of people getting incredibly disoriented, dancers twisting ankles, breaking bones,” Evans said. “I mean, the amount of focus and concentration it takes for people to say your lines while you’re dancing, while you’re singing […] That focus is completely eradicated when you introduce the idea of the cell phone, of that outside trigger.”

Besides the distractions which can result from a flash, there are other cases where the technology policy comes into play.

Two years ago, TheaterUNI put on “Spring Awakening”, a musical which is known for its explicit content and onstage nudity.

“I remember there was one or two nights [of “Spring Awakening”] that we had someone taking pictures at the end of the song where there was that nudity, and they were removed from the theater,” Evans said. “We actually went through their phone for privacy’s sake and we deleted their pictures. They’re asked to leave the performance; they’re not invited back.”

According to Evans, another distraction that is prevalent in the theater is students taking notes during the performances.

“We’re on stage, we can see the audience a lot of times, and when someone’s taking notes, that can be distracting,” Evans said. “Now, granted, that’s a little bit more understandable, because if you have to come for class and you want to remember a moment, yeah, jot it down, not a big deal. We’ve had shows where people [who are] just, the entire time, down in their notes, which is interesting.”

To prevent the distraction of the cell phone and other devices, Goodhue suggested leaving them home.

“I think the only way to prevent people from not using their cell phones during performance is to just not have them with them,” Goodhue said.

“If you know you need your phone, you got someone in your family that’s sick, you have a child at home with a babysitter, that kind of a thing, you tell the house manager,” Evans said.

Now that this has occurred, Evans is confident that the TheaterUNI management will know how to handle a similar situation.

“Now that it’s happened here, our management’s going to be a lot more aware of that and they will ask people to leave,” said Evans. “They don’t care if you have to come for a class, they don’t care if you’ve driven miles to come see it. They don’t care if your kid’s in the show. They will ask you to leave, because that breaks one of our only rules we have here which is, you know, just turn your phone off.”

Evans explained why he believes theater is an important part of society.

“It’s a snapshot of real life in a fictional setting, if that makes any sense,” Evans said. “It’s important as an art form. In a lot of ways it encapsulates [multiple] art forms as one. So you’ve got writing, you’ve got music at times, you’ve got dance. It’s kind of one of those art forms that brings it all together. So, it’s a cumulative art form. It tends to be one of the most relatable because it is — art imitates life.”