This is John Godber.
Not heard of him? You might have done. Well depending on your age.
John Godber is more famous for plays like Bouncers, Shakers, Teechers and several other quite well known plays, chances are if you did Drama at secondary school, you've probably heard of one of those. He's possibly the third most performed playwrite in the world outside of Shakespeare and Alan Bennet.
John Godber is around 6ft tall, comes from an ex-mining town and spent most of his school days playing rugby and doing drama, he's still got quite the figure and presance, he also has quite a booming voice too which is very intimidating... think something along the lines of Scar from the Lion King ad Goliath from the cartoon Gargoyles and you get the idea.
Whilst he has a movie under his belt, he's more into the theatre work, theatres have a similar policy when it comes to mobile phones and they've had a similar evolution to deal with them. Much like cinnemas, during the mid 2000's many people didn't quite know what to do about people talking/texting during a play/movie... up until it became obvious that the rest of the audience hated it, and now they're usually asked to leave.
Anyway... once upon a time John Godber was sat in the audience of the old Hull Truck Theatre watching his play, the house was full and there was a jolly good bit coming up... suddenly, a woman gets her phone out and starts texting... she then has a natter with her friend... a few moments later she gets another text... at this point John Godber stands up, points at the woman and yells "EITHER SHUT UP! OR GET THE FUCK OUT!" The actors on stage... lol obviously had to stop, they were looking out in awe at what was going on, the audience had all turned around and were in a stunned silence, to which the woman sheepishly says 'Who are you!' John Godber then yells "I'M THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THIS THEATRE AND I'M THE FUCKING DIRECTOR AND WRITER OF THIS AND IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN IN HERE YOU'LL TURN THAT OFF AND SHUT THE FUCK UP DURING
MY PLAY!" He then calmly address the rest of the audience and says 'apologies for that, it won't happen again, he turns to the actors and says 'take it from pauls entrance' theres a round of applause and the play carries on... but not before a barrage of funbling and phones get pulled out of bags and suddenly turned off.
Now I wasn't there when this aledgedly happened, but I've heard the story a number of times and from working with John Godber on stuff I have to say it is something that he probably would have done and that I have seen/heard him say similar things.
So yes, I agree with Mr Godber there, phones really have no play in an audience environment at all. It's not just distracting to the audience, but it's also amazingly distracting to those on stage (ok this can't happen at a movie), but when on stage, the audience is more or less in total darkness... so if you suddenly spot a glowing light in the crowd, you do for a split second thing 'what the heck is that?'
