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Patti LuPone Swipes Cell Phone From “Rude, Self-Absorbed” Audience Texter at Shows for Days Performance, Now Questions Stage Career

Patti LuPone
Broadway veteran Patti LuPone snatched a cell phone from a "rude, self-absorbed" audience texter during a performance of Shows for Days on July 8, and is now questioning her stage career

There's an intermission for a reason.

Have tickets for the play Shows for Days? Better make sure your cell phone is on silent. The show's star, Patti LuPone, didn't think twice about snatching a phone from an audience texter's hands during an evening performance in NYC on Wednesday, July 8.

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"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," LuPone, 66, told Playbill.com in a statement on Thursday. "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."

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She continued: "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."

According to the New York Daily News, the Tony-winning actress stayed in character when she grabbed the device. Playing an artistic director, she usually interacts with a front row audience member during the specific scene anyway. But this time she chose to go up to the disruptive woman.

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"It was the fastest sleight of hand ever," LuPone recalled to NYDN. "I shook her hand with one hand and took her phone with the other. Took it. I didn’t grab. I thought, 'Holy s–t, that was easy.'"

Back in 2009, the Girls guest star also made headlines when she yelled at a photographer for disrupting her while playing Momma Rose in Gypsy.

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