Drama queen Patti LuPone isn't actually quitting Broadway, even if it has been "dumbed down"
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If anyone has earned the term “diva,” it’s Patti LuPone. Looking at the only real metric that matters—Wikipedia pages, of course—the School For Good And Evil actor has earned not only her own “List of awards and nominations received by Patti LuPone” article (the most recent being a Tony for 2022's Company revival), but also an entire section on her own page detailing the many incidents surrounding her “views on theater conduct” that have cropped up over the years.
Well, it looks like the Wikipedia gods are going to have to add a new section because the diva is back, baby—and she wants us all to know that the rumors of her retirement have been greatly exaggerated.
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This all started earlier this week when the actor tweeted that she had given up her Equity card, which many took to mean that she had decided to quit the stage entirely. “No longer part of that circus. Figure it out,” the Tweet declared.
While LuPone never called out the incident by name, this was likely in response to a story from earlier this week, in which Hadestown actor Lillias White reprimanded an audience member from stage after mistaking her closed captioning device for a camera. LuPone’s name was “bandied about” in conjunction because the Hadestown incident reminded people of LuPone’s most recent “views on theater conduct” entry, in which she yelled at a Company audience member for not masking properly.
But don’t worry, drama fans—LuPone isn’t gone for good. “I just gave up my equity card, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t perform on-stage,” the actor said in an interview with Variety, before clarifying that provisions in her contract still allow her to make guest appearances during her resignation; she just won’t be taking on any leading roles.
LuPone also lamented Broadway’s current dive towards commercialization and the inaccessibility that goes hand-in-hand with that change:
Broadway has also changed considerably. I think we’ve spent—not we, but whoever’s in charge of, whatever—has actively dumbed down the audience. And so the attention span of the majority of the audience, I think, is much less than it was in the past, and I don’t think plays are going to have long lives on Broadway—I feel as though it’s turning into Disneyland, a circus and Las Vegas... There’s still very intelligent audiences that support the theater, but the ticket price is outrageous... There’s so many obstacles that prevent theater from being the tool it should be in society, which is an education.
What is working on Broadway right now, according to the legendary performer? A hypothetical future musical adaptation of her own movie, The School For Good And Evil, which would be “fantastic,” and... Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, which is apparently going to “run forever.” We’re inclined to point out that there’s already a full Disneyland-adjacent theme park dedicated to the Harry Potter series which kind of undermines her point, but we’ll save that retort for the talk-back whenever she decides to grace the stage once again.
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