This wasn't in the script.
An audience member held up a "Trump 2020" banner at a Broadway performance of "A Bronx Tale" on Saturday ― perhaps to hit back at the musical's co-director, Robert De Niro, for his repeated "f*** you" at President Donald Trump during the recent Tony Awards.
The "Keep America Great" sign — apparently meant non-ironically — went up during curtain calls, prompting a strong online response from "A Bronx Tale" hair and makeup supervisor Brian Strumwasser, who reported that the patron was "removed".
"Whoever the low life scum bag who thinks it's ok to post their political views at a Broadway show and disrespect everyone there who paid to watch a show that is ALL ABOUT INCLUSION was thankfully removed from the theater Saturday night [sic]," Strumwasser wrote on Instagram. He invited Trump to the show "to learn what racism is and how we deal with it".
Strumwasser included a photo tweeted by theatregoer Joe Del Vicario, who wrote: "The times we live in."
De Niro, an outspoken critic of the U.S. president, said during this month's Tonys: "It's no longer 'down with Trump'. It's 'f*** Trump'."
Trump responded on his way home from the North Korea summit in Singapore: "Robert De Niro, a very Low IQ individual, has received too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies. I watched him last night and truly believe he may be 'punch-drunk.' [sic]"
New York theatre has served as an off-script political platform before. In November 2016, "Hamilton" cast member Brandon Victor Dixon called out audience member Mike Pence, then the U.S. vice president-elect, after the curtain call. Dixon read a statement saying cast members were "alarmed and anxious" that the new administration would not protect Americans' rights.
Last year, protesters watching a "Julius Caesar" production in Central Park interrupted the assassination scene, apparently because the Roman leader — accused of subverting the republic to make himself an emperor — was portrayed as Trump.
