The decision to not seek a new corporate sponsor for a storied Toronto stage, which will be named instead after the late impresario Ed Mirvish, was announced with an uncommon comment from his son.

"They were good partners and I would work with them again in a minute," said David Mirvish upon news that the Canon signage would be coming down. "But I never felt that sponsorship should drive a theatre. It should be the icing on the cake."

The position is an increasingly radical one, particularly in a town where expenditures for public libraries and other attractions are under unprecedented scrutiny, and the idea of selling names of subway stations has entered the realm of reality. Do dramatic arts benefit from being seen as more sacred?

For the renamed Ed Mirvish Theatre, the shows booked for the 2,200-seat palace depend on the optimum level of commercial marketing clout, primarily achieved through mounting productions of musical movies like the current Mary Poppins. So, a Japanese camera company is just one additional branding layer.

Just as the Canon name was being stripped from the building, though, came the announcement of an initiative that reveals how passé this kind of naming rights deal will be. Cineplex Entertainment has implemented the TimePlay social mobile platform to give moviegoers a decent timewaster before the flick.

A game that invites people to throw lightballs at the screen using their smartphones, in order to reveal a darkened image, is meant to display the virtues of Canon's Power Shot HS System. Prizes will be proffered in exchange for the best effort.

Product commercials before the big show on the big screen proved the most lucrative cinematic innovation since the popcorn popper. Getting a captive crowd to participate in a product pitch, during which no shortage of metadata can be exploited, could even reduce the distraction-based approach of more traditional advertising — like getting people to identify a theatre with a corporation.

The bigger question might be whether cultural attractions can endure without a sponsor name flashing outside.