Michael @ Sep 10th 2006 6:16PM

I am all for jamming the phones. If it's a true emergency, then we will fall back on the days of old and use a land line to contact the theater and have them come to our seats and escort us out instead of having a phone ring. Heck a theater can have a dedicated line setup for emergencies only, and just come to our seats. It wouldn't be hard to quickly change the phone message before taking your seat to say call this number in an emergency have them escort me out of seat XX. Then when you get out, you could use your phone to make the call, and then return to your seat at intermission.

For any performance this would be great, wouldn't disturb the rest of the audience, and wouldn't bother the actors. I say got for it, and hopefully people in the US would do the same. I hate going to a live performance to have someone in the audience receive a call, and either let it ring until voicemail happens, or actually answer it and have a conversation.

I also think emergency situations are unique, as I was called while in a theater (phone was on vibrate), and had to leave the theater to go to the hospital to find out my uncle had been killed (his son was with me at the movie as well). This type of circumstance is where I wouldn't want to see it happen, but with the ease of changing voicemail messages, you just tell them the number at the theater, and in that type of emergency, an employee could come in and get you, or turn off the blocker and call you themselves to let you know when you don't have assigned seats.

If they think this through, it could work, and still allow for emergency situations to come through. For business calls, you either shouldn't be at the theater (live or movies) when "on call", or if so, the people that need to get a hold of you should have the number that they need to reach. A little thought in this could block the 95% of calls at a theater and still allow the ones that come in to make it with a simple turning off of the blocker...