Two Just Stop Oil protesters interrupted a play starring Sigourney Weaver — bringing the show to a halt with a confetti cannon.
Weaver, 75, was mid-show at the Theatre Royal in London’s West End on Monday during a performance of “The Tempest” when two members of the environmental activist group climbed on stage, carrying a sign that read, “Over 1.5 degrees is a global shipwreck,” video shared by the group shows.
The Alien star was sitting in a chair onstage when the pair inched their way toward center stage and into the spotlight and fired off a confetti cannon.
“We’ll have to stop the show, ladies and gentlemen, sorry,” a voice offstage calls out.
The audience then let out a fury of boos as a stagehand came out and told Weaver to exit the stage before walking over to the disruptive protesters.
“Get off!” someone can be heard yelling from the crowd.
The stagehand appears to convince the pair to remove themselves, and audience members briefly cheer as they are escorted off stage.
The protesters — Hayley Walsh, a mother of three, and Richard Weir, a mechanical engineer — disrupted the show because they were “demanding the UK government phase out fossil fuel burning by 2030,” a statement released by Just Stop Oil revealed.
“The pair could be seen holding a sign which read ‘Over 1.5 Degrees is a Global Shipwreck’, referring to the recent announcement that 2024 was the first full year over the 1.5-degree safe limit for global temperature rise. World Leaders stated they would aim to keep the world below 1.5 degrees of warming at the Paris Agreement in 2015,” the activist group shared.
Walsh, 42, said she decided to participate in the protest because “1.5 degrees is a global shipwreck we can’t ignore.”
“I am scared for my children, I can’t sleepwalk them into a future of food shortages, life-threatening storms and wars for resources. Years of writing to MPs, going on marches and teaching my students to be more sustainable, hasn’t seen the urgent change needed,” Walsh said.
“1.5 degrees is a global shipwreck we can’t ignore. Wildfires in California, deadly floods in Valencia and hundreds of thousands without power in the UK this weekend. This isn’t a distant, future problem. We need a global treaty to stop fossil fuel burning and a global emergency response.”
Weir, 60, said he “started my career in the shipyards of Tyneside and I watched management inaction lead to the collapse of UK manufacturing.”
“We’re already seeing the damage this crisis is doing to crops, homes, and entire neighborhoods,” he shared.
“Unless we come together and demand a move away from fossil fuels by 2030, we will go the same way as manufacturing in the UK.”
“The Tempest” opened on Dec. 19 and will run until Feb.1.
The Metropolitan police responded to the theatre, but no arrests were made, according to The Guardian.
In the new staging of the Shakespeare classic, Sigourney portrays the storm-creating magician Prospero, a role typically played by a man.
