Patti LuPone Is An American Hero
When you pay $1,239 (which is the average price of a NYC theater ticket nowadays) to see a show, the last thing you want to deal with is rude audience members who don’t know how to act right and ruin your theater-going experience. Some messes still don’t get it and shit has gotten so crazy that an attention whore wreck recently got on stage during a performance of the Broadway play Hand to God and tried to plug his phone into a fake outlet. Well, if Broadway star and Corky’s mom Patti LuPone was in that show and was on stage at the time, he would’ve gone home without his phone…. because it would have still been attached to the hand she ripped off. Patti has long been a crusader in the anti-rude theatergoers movement and last night, she slipped another victory under her belt when she checked a texter during a show.
Broadway World says that during yesterday’s matinee performance of Shows For Days at Lincoln Center, several cell phones rang and someone’s hearing aid freaked out which caused a loud buzzing noise. Patti didn’t do or say anything during the matinee, but by the time the evening show rolled around, she was already on edge and over the rudeness. When a rude trick pulled out a phone and started texting halfway through the second act, Patti decided to lay a silent attack on a bitch. While delivering her scene exit line, Patti snatched the phone out of the rude texter’s hand and sashayed off the stage. I would hate to be sitting next to a rude texter, but I’d pay top dollar to see Patti LuPone own them with just one swipe. All the bodegas in NYC would be out of roses, because I’d buy them all to throw at Patti for pulling that brilliant move.
The texter got their phone back after the show. Patti also issued a statement where she said that she is so done with rude messes that she’s thinking of retiring from the stage:
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.
If Patti decides that she needs to take a break from the stage, she shouldn’t stop fighting the good fight. She should volunteer as a theater usher. Put Patti in a theater usher uniform, give her a chancleta and watch out. Theatergoers will break their phones on the sidewalk before a performance to really make sure it doesn’t go off in Patti’s presence. But then again, maybe some theatergoers do rude shit on purpose during a Patti LuPone performance, because they are masochists and love it when she chews them a new one. I don’t really blame them. I mean, this classic audio clip of Patti going off on a picture taker during a performance of Gypsy in 2009 always takes me up, up and away.