Picture four people at a dinner table on stage. Now add loud speakers with very loud pop music directed at you, the audience. The actors at the dinner table have to shout at each other to be heard.
What is this play about?
This play is about everyday out-on-the-town life in 2004 San Francisco and probably every other large city in America.
My question is: Why do people, today, try to carry on conversation when the background noise forces them to yell?
My answer is a commerce answer. Most of us spend our daily lives in a work environment that promotes diversity and meritocracy by suppressing dramatic personal identity. You can't expect a group of people to work together if they incense each other.
Yelling over loud noise is a way to do three things at once. Gives everyone the chance to receive intense attention (listeners must make a deliberate effort to hear). Gives everyone a chance to ignore statements and opinions they don’t like (“I didn’t hear him say that.”) Most importantly it provides a good cover for trite and superficial conversation.
I repeat. The restaurant/bar environment with loud noise provides an ingenious technical extension of the socially neutral work environment.