“Stop taking pictures right now,” LuPone screamed from the stage. “You heard the announcement. Who do you think you are?” The audience cheered her rebuke with raucous applause and, in audio that is still immortalized on YouTube, LuPone added that she would not continue until the person was ejected from the theater.
In 2015, noise from people’s cellphones prompted LuPone to leave the stage, enter the crowd of ticket buyers and snatch a device from someone’s hand. While performing in the play Shows for Days, four cellphones went off, creating what LuPone called a “cacophony of noise.” After a woman was caught texting during the show, LuPone took the device, which was returned to her later, per the New York Times. “She didn’t know what was going on,” LuPone told the Times. “I should be a sleight of hand artist.”
In the same interview, LuPone said that the epidemic of texting and noise during theatrical productions had, at the time, made her question whether she still wanted to work in the theater.
“It’s getting worse,” she said. “I’m hired to tell a story, and it takes a lot of effort and work to do that convincingly. It’s a handful of people who destroy that experience for everyone. It’s heartbreaking. Theater is not a social event.”
While LuPone hasn’t officially retired from theater, she did give up her Actors’ Equity Card in 2022 and has been pursuing more film and television, including a buzzy supporting role in Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid and in Marvel’s Agatha All Along.
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