Theatre director of naked play calls for ban on mobile phones

Anthony Biggs said new procedures were required after actors feared they were being filmed by an audience member

Mobile phones can be a problem in the theatre (Getty)

A theatre director has criticised the use of mobile phones during shows after a play was halted because a member of the audience was suspected of filming naked actors on stage.

During a Jermyn Street Theatre performance of Athol Fugard’s Statements, which largely features the two leads actors unclothed, David Judge came out of character after he and actress Jasmine Hyde saw a man in the front row who they believed was using his mobile phone throughout.

According to the London Evening Standard, both were concerned at the length of time the man had been using the device and suspected he was filming the show.

The man told theatre staff he was texting his son who was unwell and upon checking his phone they found no evidence of any footage of the play.

However, Anthony Biggs, the theatre’s artistic director, warned new procedures may now be needed to address the issue of mobile phones in theatres.

Biggs said: “Both actors were very concerned by what was happening.

“Initially they just thought someone was texting, but the phone’s screen stayed on, and the man, who was just four feet away from them, seemed to be pointing it towards the actors.

“It’s a very intimate performance, it’s lit in such a way that it’s very subtle [the nudity].

“They are both attractive people and they were both very conscious of what being filmed could mean.

“Their naked images could have ended up who knows where on the internet.”

Mr Biggs said theatres may have to instruct audience members to leave the performance if their phones go off and then ban them, or ask them to hand over their devices prior to the show starting.

He suggested venues could even use technology to block mobile phone and internet signals.

Statements, written in 1972, directly attacks the apartheid laws of South Africa at that time, when The Immorality Act prohibited sexual relations between white and black people.

In the play a white, female librarian and a black, married man embark on a forbidden love affair in the dark backroom of a library - until they are found out. The actors’ nakedness illuminates their closeness and also serves as a literal “naked statement” against apartheid.