Man climbs onto Broadway stage to charge his cell phone

We've all felt the panic caused by a deadcellphone battery. One New York man took that impulse astep further lastweek when he crawled onto a Broadway stage to plug in his phone.

The incident took place just before the start of a July 2 production of Hand to God, according to Playbill.It was all captured in the following video.

His desperate bid for power was for naught -- the outlet he used was actually part of the play's set.

Even if the outlet had been real, the stage-jumper would not have secured much juice. TheatregoerChris York noted in aFacebookpost thatthe crew removed his phone soon after it was plugged in.

"I took great joy in loudly heckling the idiot when he returned to take his phone back," York wroteafter the show. "Has theatre etiquette - heck, Common Sense -really fallen that far??"

"The whole time it was very bizarre," York told the Guardian.

York's hardly the only one to notethat the man's behaviour didn't exactlymatch the required etiquette.

Two actors in Hand toGod later noted the event on Twitter.

Actors from the playalso reenacted the stunt.

The Tony-nominated Hand toGodis a comedy about amonstrous puppet that challenges the faith and harmony of a small Texas community.Beowulf Boritt, the show'sset designer,purposely tried to make the props and space feel real.

"We did a lot of research as to what church basements look like. You look around a real room and there are electrical outlets, fire extinguishers, things like that," he said to Vanity Fair.

"It's certainly the first time anyone has gone onto one of my sets and tried to use it as a real space."

There may be one benefit to the much-mocked affair. AsKen Neil Hailey noted in anotherGuardian article, "people outside of the Broadway bubble are actually talking about a play."

The production has already started using the incident in anad.