Patti LuPone Comments on Recent Cell Phone Texting Incident: 'I Am So Defeated By This Issue'

As BWW reported earlier today, a rude audience member continued the recent rash of inappropriate theater behavior during last night's performance of Shows For Days at Lincoln Center.

Following the show's matinee performance, which one audience member described as, "Cell Phone Hell", star Patti LuPone reached the limit of her patience during the evening performance and snatched a cell phone out of the hands of an audience member who was texting.

Today, Ms. LuPone shares the following thoughts on last night's incident with BroadwayWorld:

Statement from Patti LuPone:

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.

Patti LuPone is a two-time Tony Award winner for Evita and the 2008 production of Gypsy. Her most recent stage appearances include Broadway productions of The Anarchist and Lincoln Center Theater's musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Anna 1 in Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins for the New York City Ballet; and Joanne in the New York Philharmonic's production of Company. She made her opera debut in Jake Heggie's To Hell and Back with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and sang the title role in Marc Blitzstein's Regina at the Kennedy Center. She will be seen in the upcoming season of Showtime's Penny Dreadful and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Patti LuPone: A Memoir.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski