According to The New York Times, during a Wednesday matinee performance of Broadway's "The King and I," an autistic child in the audience made some noise during a "particularly intense whipping scene". Apparently some of the audience didn't like this and were quite vocal about it, calling for the child to be removed from the theater.

One of the members of the ensemble and an understudy in the show, Kelvin Moon Loh, posted to his Facebook page urging the theater going public to have compassion for the child and mother.

He wrote:

I am angry and sad.Just got off stage from today's matinee and yes, something happened. Someone brought their autistic child to the theater.That being said — this post won't go the way you think it will.You think I will admonish that mother for bringing a child who yelped during a quiet moment in the show. You think I will herald an audience that yelled at this mother for bringing their child to the theater. You think that I will have sympathy for my own company whose performances were disturbed from a foreign sound coming from in front of them.No.Instead, I ask you — when did we as theater people, performers and audience members become so concerned with our own experience that we lose compassion for others?His voice pierced the theater. The audience started to rally against the mother and her child to be removed. I heard murmurs of "why would you bring a child like that to the theater?" This is wrong. Plainly wrong.Because what you didn't see was a mother desperately trying to do just that. But her son was not compliant. What they didn't see was a mother desperately pleading with her child as he gripped the railing refusing — yelping more out of defiance. I could not look away. I wanted to scream and stop the show and say, "EVERYONE RELAX. SHE IS TRYING. CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT SHE IS TRYING???!!!!" I will gladly do the entire performance over again.

You can read the entire post — which has already been shared almost 20,000 times — here:

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Laura Beck Laura Beck is a Los Angeles-based TV writer and frequent contributor to Cosmopolitan.com — her work has appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Jezebel, and the Village Voice.

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