Patti LuPone decided to teach a lesson to someone in the audience of her play Shows for Days who was texting non-stop.
She took the phone from the woman during her Wednesday night performance at Lincoln Center and questioned whether or not she wanted to continue on with a stage career in these changing technological times.
"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,” she told PlayBill.com.
“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,” she continued.
LuPone, who has won Tony and Olivier awards for her stage work, went on to say she’s “so defeated” about this that “I 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."
Some theater-goers who were at the live performance tweeted about the incident – hopefully not while it was happening – saying LuPone actually walked off the stage with the phone. The phone was later returned to its rightful owner.
The Gothamist reports Lincoln Center has a strict policy that phones need to be shut off during shows.
image via Walter McBride/INFphoto.com