Heads up, Broadway fans! Patti LuPone is making a huge decision about her illustrious career in theatre, probably stemming from a recent debacle that happened on Broadway last week.
In an explosive tweet, the Tony royalty has dropped some big news for her followers.
"Quite a week on Broadway, seeing my name being bandied about. Gave up my Equity card; no longer part of that circus. Figure it out," she posted on Twitter.
As of press time, the tweet has only amassed over 4,000 likes and hundreds of replies, with people alluding to her exit to the recent "Hadestown" accessibility issue.
According to Playbill, the tweet seemed to reference the chatter around the Broadway community with regard to accessibility.
The publication also reported that during a "Hadestown" performance last week, an audience member using a captioning device to aid her hearing loss was reprimanded by Tony-winning actress Lillias White twice during a performance.
"For Lillias, because I don't think this is inherently her malice, I think it's a misunderstanding, but we still need to talk about it. There is a systemic issue in the theatre community and the theatre industry specifically with Broadway about accessibility and inclusion, and some of that has been changed by the creation of technology like captioning devices so that people can be able to experience a show that may not have been able to before," Samantha Coleman, the reprimanded audience member said in a statement.
For context, withdrawing one's "Equity card" or "Equity membership" means withdrawing from the Broadway Union too. Playbill notes that
Equity is required to perform on Broadway and at many professional theatres across the United States.
The publication also underscored that with LuPone dropping her Equity membership in the union, she is signifying the end of her professional stage career in the country.
But fret not; this doesn't mean that LuPone won't be seen on the stage again. Even without the Equity membership, she could still perform in concerts and cabaret shows, and non-union productions.
In the past, LuPone was infamously known for reprimanding audience members from the stage - records even say that she did it in two different productions - one in the 2008 revival of "Gypsy" because of flash photography, and another when she physically took out a cellphone from an audience member of the "Shows For Days" productions.
As of this writing, Actors' Equity and LuPone has not yet responded to any statements.
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