NYT: Bellevue's Tateuchi Center Bucks -- or Starts -- Trend by Encouraging Smartphone Use During Shows

The Tateuchi Center, the proposed downtown Bellevue performing arts center, will buck a trend -- or perhaps start a new one, according to the New York Times.

According to the New York Times Media Decoder blog, Bellevue's Tateuchi Center will be wired for wireless technology, the better to allow patrons to post updates to Twitter and Facebook.

Executive director John Haynes told the Times:

“This is the wave of the future for the people we worry about attracting,” said John Haynes, the theater’s executive director. “Simply forbidding it and embarrassing people is not the way to go. So we are wiring the building in anticipation of finding ways to make it work over time.”

The Tateuchi Center is a proposed performing arts center, which will include a 2,000-seat Concert Hall and 250-seat Cabaret for reknowned musicians, plays and other performing arts. Supporters are currently raising $160 million for the Tateuchi Center. Recently, Microsoft Corp. and Kemper Development Company -- developers of Bellevue Square, announced a joint pledge of $2 million to the Tateuchi Center Campaign.

According to the center's website, it will be located at the corner of NE 10th Street and 106th Avenue NE and is slated to open in 2014.

What do you think? Will allowing smart phone and camera use in a theater open the arts to the next generation of theatergoers? Or should the performing arts still be distraction-free?