Viewers text opinions as shows go on

Ladies and gentlemen, before our show begins, we ask that you unwrap all your candies and lozenges and anything else that may disturb the actors or those sitting around you. Silence your beepers and pagers. And turn your cell phones on.

. . . On?

That's right.

Turn your cell phones on.

And now, the newest - if counterintuitive - concept in audience interaction, right inside the theater: Fire up those cell phones and text your reaction to the show you're watching.

Called "Turn Your Cell Phone On!," the instant-review initiative, which appears to be the first of its kind, is rolling out at the likeliest of places for ideas that not only cut the edge, but slice the fabric - the expansive Live Arts/Philly Fringe festival, now beginning its second and final week of performances.

The old saw is now a new and virtual dynamic: Everyone's a critic. Audiences at some dance and theater performances can choose among five categories that relay their feelings about a performance - "amazing," "very good," "I liked it," "had its moments," and "not so great."

"It's not so different from when a newspaper does a star rating for movies," says Laris Kreslins, whose locally based Lime Projects is overseeing the tabulations for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The alliance is funding the project with a $50,000 grant from the $5 million PNC Arts Alive Program, whose goals include engaging audiences in the arts. The cell-phone project will continue into this arts season in theaters yet to be determined.

Kreslins stations staff at seven Live Arts shows whose producers have agreed to be part of the project. As those shows let out, audience members have been congregating around flat screens that display polling results; many people text responses at that time. As of yesterday afternoon, 451 people had texted - 20 percent of the audiences for those shows so far.

The important thing is that the texting spurs people to talk to one another about the shows, says John McInerney, marketing vice president of the Cultural Alliance. "Ideally, it would be great if people could leave more detailed reviews at individual events. But to start this program, we wanted to make sure it was as easy as possible for people to participate - and at the event."

A handout with directions encourages audiences to "turn your cell phone on during intermission or after the performance," then text your take on it.

Audience members send a numerical code representing one of the choices. In a fraction of a second, the result computes on the screen at each show. The technology allows one vote per show, per cell phone.

The results also are available to anyone with an Internet link, on the Cultural Alliance site, phillyfunguide.com, and on the festival's site, livearts-fringe.org. Audiences are invited to write more detailed reviews on those sites, and some people have.

Not everyone's happy about it. Cell phones are the scourge of live performance and movies, too; producers have spent a decade trying to tell audiences to turn their cell phones off because real-world ringing drowns out theatrical magic.

Then a new trend evolved - text messaging during performances. "The latest annoyance in the theater" is how Tom Quinn, head of the professional Montgomery Theatre of Souderton, described it two years ago to an audience that tittered in disbelief.

This is not a matter of sound, but illumination - people tapping into lit phone screens and ruining the atmosphere in shows that already have real lighting designers.

Manners aside, some artists are balking at the general concept. The Wilma Theater would not let the project use its lobby monitor or wireless connection for two Live Arts shows there. "Immediate numerical scores - without room for dialogue - this is not in keeping with how we want audiences to engage in work," says James Haskins, the theater's managing director. "It seems more in the direction of reality TV than a cultural experience."

In fact, choreographer Melanie Stewart's show, Kill Me Now, which has ended performances and participated in the project, was a parody of a dance-competition reality show with performers who would kill to win the audience vote.

"I'm thrilled I'm rated 'amazing' by most of those who saw my show," she says, "but whenever you begin to grade something - giving it marks between 1 and 5, and not discussion - you're starting to quantify it as some kind of commercial product."

Choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace's Store, about consumerism in an age when the world has run out of consumables, didn't fare as well in the polls, but was still heavy in the top ratings.

"I think it was a really stupid idea," she says of the project. "It just felt shallow. These weird ratings of my show, none of which had to do with discussion, these quick blasts about good or bad, really seemed so simplistic. . . . It seemed to me the antithesis of what I'm about."

Fringe Festival producing director Nick Stuccio says it's "not ideal - not a chat with the actors on a comfy couch with tea and coffee.. . .

"The point is to get people talking about the work, thinking about it. It's not going to reduce the engagement. When you ask people for an opinion, they become a stakeholder. They are involved."

Find out what's new this fall in art, books, dance, dining, film, games, music, theater, and TV in a special Arts & Entertainment section.

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