Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 04:52:30 EDT
Subject: Re: PUPT: New pet peeve


Two war stories about the cell phone that happened three months apart:
    (1) My co-performer was wearing his cell phone (which he encourages 
everyone to call him on at any time) during a Punch and Judy show at 10:00 at 
night. It rings right in the middle, so he has Punch go offstage to answer 
the phone while Judy stands out on the stage looking like a fool. The 
conversation takes place in Punch's voice, loudly enough for the whole 
audience to hear. The gist is that he is doing a show right now, and will 
call back later. The audience ate it alive, and he bragged about it for some 
time. However, he has turned off his cell phone before shows since then.
    (2) We were performing in a super-well run place called the Children's 
Castle in a suburb of New Orleans, in which the conscientious owners have an 
established opening speech to EVERY show, part of which goes like this: "We 
invite you to turn off their cell phones, so that everyone can enjoy the 
show." You will have to agree that they couldn't have put it better, right? 
Well, as a running motif in all our kids' puppet shows, the puppeteers didn't 
show up, so there will not be any puppet show, yada-yada-yada, and when 
someone's phone in the audience went off, our two current puppets turned to 
the person, and asked "Who is it? Is it the puppeteers?" I mentioned to my 
co-worker that under slightly different circumstances, we might just as well 
have said, "Who is it? Is it Santa Claus? Because I want -- "  
    Of course I realize that not everyone does improv shows, so this could 
not work all the time. 

Alice





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