TORONTO — Theatre veteran Patti LuPone lashed out this week at “rude, self-absorbed and inconsiderate audience members” who use their mobile devices during performances.
The 66-year-old made the remarks in a statement issued a day after she took a phone away from a woman who was texting during the second act of Wednesday night’s performance of Shows for Days.
“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,” LuPone explained.
“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 marshal the audience as well as perform.”
In an interview with The New York Times, LuPone recalled the incident that sparked her outrage.
“I watched her and thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ At the very end of that scene, we all exit. What I normally do is shake the hands of the people in the front row. I just walked over to her, shook her hand and took her phone.
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“I walked offstage and handed it to the stage manager, who gave it to the house manager.”
The phone was returned to the woman after the show.
On July 2, a man in the audience of Broadway’s Hand to God climbed on stage before the show began and tried to charge his phone by plugging it in to what was a fake outlet.
Madonna was publicly called out by writer Lin-Manuel Miranda in April for texting during a performance of the Off-Broadway musical Hamilton.
In an interview with dot429, actor Jonathan Groff was asked if he was disappointed that Miranda barred Madonna from going backstage after the show.
“No. Because that b**** was on her phone,” he replied.
Groff said the entire cast was distracted by the Material Girl’s texting.
“You couldn’t miss it from the stage. It was a black void of the audience in front of us and her face there perfectly lit by the light of her iPhone through three-quarters of the show,” he recalled.
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