breaking the fourth wall? —

Desperate man with dying phone jumps on Broadway stage to revive it [Updated with video]

The man was heckled as ushers unplugged his phone from a fake wall.

Ah, we knew this day would come, when video of this incident would surface on YouTube. (Updated July 8, 2015).

A man attending a performance of the Broadway play Hand to God decided that he needed a little more juice on his iPhone—just before the play started. So, because any outlet is fair game when your battery icon is flashing red, he climbed up onto the stage and plugged his phone into a prop wall with a prop outlet and walked away. Of course, the outlet—like the wall—was fake.

According to the New York Post, the crew had to stop the pre-show music and make an announcement to the audience that that sort of thing isn't allowed. One audience member copped to “loudly heckling the idiot” when the ushers removed the phone and asked him to take it back.

It's unclear whether the act was done on a dare or whether it was in earnest. Attendees speaking to the website Broadway Adjacent say that when the ushers gave the man his phone, the man asked, “Well, where can I charge it?”—a statement brazen and absurd enough to suggest that the man was performing his own one-man play.

If it was a dare, the cast and crew weren't in on it. The play was delayed five minutes and cast members Sarah Stiles and Mark Kudisch tweeted their astonishment. "A guy jumped on the stage and plugged his phone into the fake outlet on our set just before we started. @HandtoGodBway #fullmoon or #idiot?" Stiles wrote just before the play started.

"Dear general audience, an electrical socket that's a part of the set of the play is NOT for you to charge your iPhone.....just an FYI....." Kudisch added the next day.

Hand to God has capitalized on the incident with a new promo (pictured above). On the production's Facebook page, another audience member claims to have witnessed the incident from up close: “I was sitting next to this guy, and trust me, this guy appeared just as you would imagine!” That's pretty vague, and we can imagine a lot of stuff, but mostly we hope the guy keenly felt every minute he was not able to check his e-mail in the middle of the play.

Channel Ars Technica