Videos

Brief Announcements – however funny or frightening – don’t seem to be doing the trick so far, do they?

The idea of having short, humorous, educational and irreverent films and performances before all shows is a key plank of the Cumberphone Campaign – so if you’re in a show or part of a company we are delighted to announce the launch of the 2015 inaugural Cumberphone Campaign Annual Awards – “The Cumbies” – get self-nominating today!

We’d like to get the ball rolling now by enlisting all of you wonderful theatricals reading this to perform a line, portion, scene or song from your show (or a rival show perhaps) – with words suitably adjusted for the phone-addicted audience – post it online – on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook using #cumberphone – then nominate your fellow professionals to do the same.

Avenue Q have set the bar pretty high with this brilliant video, released on 1st October 2015.

For further inspiration, check out these brilliant pre-screening shorts from the Alamo Drafthouse cinema chain in the U.S. – Hollywood’s finest doing doing their bit for the cause. We think the Michael Madsen Reservoir Dogs one is a peach!

But don’t let AvenueQ’s epic brilliance put you off – we’re just after some small ones for now to get the ball rolling. They can be rough and ready, in costume or not, they can be mere 10 second Vines or Snapchat rants, or they can be a 3 minute Kenneth Branagh Disney extravaganza. They can just be you on your own, a few of you in the dressing room, or the entire cast on stage during warm-up – whatever takes your fancy. We just want to help get people talking.

We’ll be compiling a playlist on our CumberTube channel – we’re on Vimeo too.

The #Cumberphone Campaign Awards – “The Cumbies” – see more here.

And you can see good grace under fire from Hugh Jackman & Patti LuPone here:

Tackling the issue of Mobile Phones at Theatres, one show-tune at a time…

#cumberphone