Frustrated Broadway actor grabs phone from texting audience member

If you have ever been angered by thoughtless audience members texting, talking, or taking pictures during a movie or performance of a play or other cultural event, you will probably applaud Patti LuPone.

The veteran Broadway singer and actor grabbed a cellphone from the hand of a female audience member during a Wednesday evening (July 8) performance of the comedy Shows for Days at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center.

Earlier in the day, during a matinee show, the Tony Award-winning performer endured what she described to a reporter as "a cacophony of noise" when cellphones went off four times.

That night, a woman seated at one end of the second row texted numerous times, showing her companion her texts. At the start of the second act, during an exit and without breaking character, LuPone walked up to the woman, shook her hand, and grabbed her phone, which she then handed off to the stage manager.

She said: "Some people gasped when I took the phone. Some people applauded."

Regular attendees of Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre productions and other events are used to being warned, in no uncertain terms, to turn off all phones and tablets. Even if someone is being silent when using a phone, the screen glare can disrupt the concentration of dozens of audience members sitting behind.

LuPone, who interrupted a 2009 performance of Gypsy to upbraid an audience member taking pictures, unloaded on such breaches of etiquette: "I don’t know why they buy the ticket or come to the theatre if they can’t let go of the phone. It’s controlling them. They can’t turn it off and can’t stop looking at it. They are truly inconsiderate, self-absorbed people who have no public manners whatsoever. I don’t know what to do anymore. I was hired as an actor, not a policeman of the audience."