Patti LuPone snatches phone from "rude" texter mid-performance
We got your message loud and clear, Patti LuPone.
The award-winning actress was none too pleased with a text-happy audience member attending her play, "Shows for Days," at New York's Lincoln Center Theater on Wednesday. Reports say she stopped mid-song, waltzed into the audience and snatched the phone right out of the persistent texter's hands.
Fellow patrons chronicled the incident on Twitter:
LuPone later released a statement (via Playbill), explaining her reasoning behind the phone-snatching: "We work hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few, rude, self-absorbed and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones. They cannot put them down. When a phone goes off or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark it ruins the experience for everyone else -- the majority of the audience at that performance and the actors on stage. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore. Now I'm putting battle gear on over my costume to marshall the audience as well as perform."
This isn't the first time Lupone, 66, halted a show mid-performance. While onstage in the 2008 revival of "Gypsy," she reprimanded an audience member who had been snapping photos during the production.
And this isn't the only phone-in-a-theater incident making headlines this week. On July 2, a theatergoer at Broadway's "Hand to God" climbed onstage just before the show began to try to recharge his phone in what looked like an outlet (it was a fake). Needless to say, he was booted from the stage -- and quickly.
