Paul Engers, left, and Tom Wilson outside York Theatre Royal
COULD silence become golden in theatres once more in this auditorium age of crisp- packet crunching, omnipresent phones and boisterous behaviour?
York theatremaker, filmmaker, director and artist Tom Wilson and Londoner Paul Engers have been working on an initiative with third partner Dr Austen Jones to pilot a product that could “transform the behavioural standards of patrons”.
“We hope our system will revolutionise front-of-house protocol and address the deleterious impact of mobile phone technology on theatre etiquette,” says Tom. “We’re at an advanced stage with the technology, seeking to initiate a trial run at an auditorium in the next few months at venues interested in piloting our system.”
“We’ve known each other for 28 years,” says Paul, by way of introduction. “We met at Dartington College of Arts, in Totnes, where I’d done a degree in theatre and visual arts, and Tom came down to do a degree in theatre and performance writing,” recalls Paul.
“I’m now based in West London, out near Brentford, but I’ve worked in Leeds, among other places, setting up activity camps for pre-school and primary schoolchildren in West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire too.”
Tom has lived and worked in York for 18 years, writing and directing the anarchic farce The Local Authority at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre in August 2021 and presenting his punk expressionist exhibitions at St Bede’s, in Blossom Street, in September 2022 and City Screen Picturehouse in July 2023, as well as making the film Copraphagia with Paul.
Through all these years, they have shared a passion for theatre. “We both appreciate theatre in our own ways but we share a belief that there has to be an understanding of a collective or shared protocol for attending live performances,” says Paul.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve both found it’s becoming impossible to enjoy going to the cinema, and we’ve also noticed poor protocol in theatres, with fights and people relieving themselves in the auditorium; the constant rustling of sweet wrappers; people talking into their phones during performances, and the distraction of lights from phones.”
Decrying the lack of intervention, Tom adds: “People have stopped going to the theatre because of this. And when you consider the demographic of who works as ushers, or front-of-house, they tend to be the younger demographic…and now venue managers want to protect young staff.”
When Tom and Paul saw Mark Rylance in Sean O’Casey’s Juno And The Paycock and Steve Coogan in Dr Strangelove in the West End, “we were disappointed how lacklustre front-of-house staff were to stop the use of phones, though they put up these cards saying ‘No vaping, no smoking, no mobile phones’,” says Tom.
“On my journey back , I was thinking ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could put a camera on as a monitor to capture when people vape or film the show when they’re not supposed to, and you know their seat number. My George Orwell thinking was: could they be filmed and fined?’”
Paul rejoins: “This idea has now gone through a few iterations, looking initially at the idea of having a device at the back of each level of the auditorium that can record and identify any individuals who are infringing the established protocol of each theatre or a group of theatres.”
Paul and Tom ran their idea by Dr Austen Jones at me-too.net, specialists in performance improvement, based at Tingley, near Wakefield. “He liked the idea and wanted a slice of it,” says Tom.
“He’s provided the technical expertise,” says Paul. “That’s been the main benefit of his input to go with our initial creative idea to use infrared cameras, either to record all the time or to react to movements.
“But over many conversations, we looked at the best equipment and Austen has shown there are better ways than infrared. The key is that he’s developed this software that’s contained in an app, rather than motion-activated cameras.
“This makes it easier in terms of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), so venues can sign up to the system, and there will be no recorded data unless someone’s phone lights up with a message.”
Paul continues: “The Silence Is Golden system will be bespoke. The app has been tested by Austen and his me-too.net team in different iterations, and we now need a decent-sized venue to pilot it.
“No-one would be filmed. For each venue, we would need to map out the grid of the auditorium, and then the app would be able, by area, to identify the seat from the level of illumination.”
The system would be linked to the theatre box office. “If theatre groups embrace the idea, they will be able to monitor it from either the management office or from front of house, with management being in radio contact with front of house,” says Tom. “The flexibility in the system is that theatres can choose how they use it.”
Rather than “filming and fining, what we want is a deterrent”, says Tom, but is this a case of creeping authoritarianism? “We want to initiate a debate: how do people feel about this idea,” says Tom.
“Creeping authoritarianism? No,” says Paul. “The beauty of it is that people will not be filmed, Instead it’s the perfect interface of modern digital technology with AI and a good, well balanced protocol for theatre audiences moving forward.
“We want to encourage greater attendance through eradicating poor protocol. We’ve always been about attracting greater audiences.”
Tom adds: “We don’t want it to be an elitist thing that shuts people out. We’re not asking people to sit quietly; we want them to engage with a show but there has been behaviour that has had a negative impact. That’s why we want to put out a call to theatres to test the Silence Is Golden app.”
“The key thing is that Austen has been running the testing of the app for a more than a few weeks now and the simulations work,” says Paul. “Now we need to pilot it, do a test run and take it to the next level.”
Interested theatres are asked to contact Tom via gingerorourke@hotmail.com.