A rather brilliant older actor who I've known for about 30 years now, was recently doing a show with the company I'd worked with for about 18 years.  ALWAYS their pre-show announcements include the cell phone plea as well as it being printed in the program.  Well what happens?  Someone's cell phone goes off right in the middle of a rather dramatic speech by him.  He gets totally ticked off, turns to the audience, takes one DRAMATIC step forward and tells the ignoramus to turn off the damn cell phone.  AUDIENCE ERUPTS into applause, patron is embarassed (actually does NOT return after intermission), actor turns back, begins monologue again, finishes, gets applause AGAIN after monologue, show is great.  A BIT unconventional I know. But this actor is GREAT - and at 75 years old has very little tolerance for that kind of stupidity. And he's still well known for that little sidetrek from the convention and is lauded for it still.  HAVE to agree. I mean it's time people got the point whatever it takes to drive it in their feeble heads.

I teched for Borge years ago and remember an announcement about photography being ignored by a member of the press.  Mr. Borge stopped playing, got up and removed a glossy from his breast pocket, handed it to the photographer, and returned to his piano.  Moments later, THE SAME PHOTOGRAPHER took another photo.  Again, Mr. Borge stopped playing, got up and removed a glossy from his breast pocket, handed it to the photographer, and returned to his playing.  YET AGAIN, THE SAME PHOTOGRAPHER took YET ANOTHER photo, and again, Mr. Borge repeated his previous performance. 

I recently SM'd a show for a church production and they did use taped preshow announcements that just looped while the audience filtered in. Though, just to be sure they were paying attention they added one that said "In case of a water landing your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device" did I mention they were metal folding chairs? We did get quite a few laughs.

Originally posted by Aimee This past weekend we had tell the SAME person 4 times (even after the looped announcemts)he needed to move or he was going to get run over (by a camel) or a dancer. Only when he saw the hordes of dancers and this huge camel coming at him did he FIANLLY move out of the way! UGH!

I love this story! I think I'm going to add this to all my pre-show announcements whether it applies or not:

"Ladies and gentlemen, please keep the aisles clear or you may be run over by a camel."

I believe the bewildered reactions from the audience would alone be worth the price of admission.

SCENE IN PUB AFTER:
"So, how'd you like the show?"
"It was going great until the camel ran over me."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah, they mentioned something in the pre-show announcements, but I wasn't really paying attention, I guess."
"You were run over by an actual camel?"
"I dunno, it happened so fast. It might have been a dromedary."

I really hate doing them and usually try to reserve it for shows where we are going to be using the aisles...  The last show I directed at my home theater was Scrooge. We had our bar owner or "publican" come out in costume and in character with a cute story that included all the necessary information. Many of the audience "sins" seemed to "annoy the actors" which was worked liberally enough throughout the piece that the audience started chanting in with at the end of each of the listed "don’ts" cute, and different enough to be enjoyable.