‘Hadestown’ Audience Member With Hearing Loss Urges Social Media Users To “Stop Harassing” Lillias White: Actress Is Not “The Enemy”

deadline.com:

The Hadestown audience member with hearing loss who was reprimanded from the stage by Lillias White when the Broadway actress mistook a captioning device for a recording device is urging social media users to “please stop harassing” the Broadway star. “Ms.

White is not a malicious person, nor is she the enemy,” said Samantha Coleman in a tweet this afternoon, noting that White’s social media pages, particularly Instagram, “have been flooded with ageist & racist comments.” On Wednesday night, Coleman was in the front row of the Walter Kerr Theatre using a venue-provided captioning device during a performance of Hadestown when White, one of the stars of the musical, reprimanded her from the stage “not once but twice, at least.” The actress mistakenly thought Coleman was illegally recording the performance.

The incident has drawn considerable media attention since Coleman went public with a tearful Instagram post on Wednesday night.

Hadestown producers and Jujamcyn Theaters, the company that owns the Kerr, apologized yesterday and said they were reviewing their policies and internal protocols “to ensure this doesn’t happen again.” White has not commented on the incident.