THEATRE fans are familiar with the frustration of hearing a ringtone going off from across the floor – but one Scottish festival is rolling out a new initiative to stop this.
"We lost count of the number of times that phones went off in our Queen’s Hall series last year," Nicola Benedetti, the award-winning Scottish violinist and director of Edinburgh's International Festival told The National.
This was the origin behind the festival's idea for the "lights down, phones off" initiative, where the audience is called to "tune out the outside world".
"There's a lot of complexities to deal with in an environment that's quite unusual in today's world," she said while explaining some of the difficulties that inspired it.
In this space, where your full concentration should be solely placed on the act, which can have the audience "transfixed, absorbed, just in the zone", it's easy for an "ugly sound like a ring" to interrupts that, "it just massively detracts from the experience."
Theatre, music and the rest of the performance art space is one that at times can be "really quiet," and features spaces that have "thousands of people in" them, and presents "long form performances, all of which have performers on stage that have honed their craft to the nth degree."
The acts feature performers "who have perfected it, rehearsed it to death, meticulously poured their heart and soul into the creation of something that is difficult, really difficult, and requires a lot of concentration."
"So in honour of that preparation and that sort of height of artistic excellence, I think we owe them as a festival the best possible environment."
But it's not just out of respect for the performers, but for the crowd's own engagement.
"Psychologically, if your phone is off and you know you can't get to it or shouldn't get to it, I think you enter into a space really differently.
"We're trying to say take this opportunity to not be available to anybody, take this opportunity to not be contactable."
The festival is by no means the first artistic space to say no to phones, but Benedetti said she hopes an official campaign can alert people to it early, who can then go into the performance without the stress of forgetting to turn the phone on silent.
"We know that nobody wants to be that person whose phone goes off in the middle of a performance, nobody wants to be that person, so how can we support people in ensuring that," she said.
"I think there's going to be a lot of gentle reminders, treating people like adults ... looking to help people rather than scold."
This years festival is an important one to pay attention to, Benedetti told me, with the title, All Rise, and theme being a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.
"There were many things that dovetailed for this year," she said.
"One was bringing San Francisco Ballet over for the first time in over 20 years.
"The second was bringing Lincoln Center in the final international tour with Wynton Marsalis before he steps down next year.
"And then the third was the date of the anniversary itself," with the festival starting just over one month on from the 250th celebrations on July 4.
While the festival has always attracted American artists, this year will see a record-breaking number of US performance companies attending.
It is an "unbelievable melting pot of creativity in the US, and many art forms and styles of music, choreography, theatre have all have been born there.
"This will be the largest number of American artists that the festivals ever presented, but I think it's important to look at what the program actually is saying.
"It is not a shiny, glossy celebration.
"It is a true exploration of the diversity, good and bad, of what the American tale has delved out to the world.
"It's a fascinating story and it's a phenomenal subject for artistic expression.
"Some of it is incredibly dark and a lot of it is very dazzling."
This exploration will also look at Scotland's role in the foundation of the country.
"In terms of Scotland's role in the American story, I can think of, I can point to two very specific presentations of that this year.
"One is in the Legacy of Slavery Museum that will for the entire festival at the Playfair Library, and the other is the Global Ideas stage where questions of the Scottish Enlightenment, [where figures like] Adam Smith, will be discussed and presented in context of how that transformed the founding fathers agreements of the US."
This year's festival marks its 79th year, having been founded in 1947.
"It's an absolute beacon of cultural, not just excellence, but international diversity and, and that has been defended and upheld and and celebrated for that long because of its it's worth and what it brings to people, what it brings to the city and and and also how it tells Scotland's story to the world."
Edinburgh International Festival will run from August 7 to August 30.
