Rose, a white rat who escaped poison and roadside peril for a life in the theater, died in a fall at home on Monday night, just four days after she started acting in a Broadway hit.

She was apparently playing on some shelves when a metal door on one of the shelves came off its hinges and landed on her, said Rose’s owner and trainer, Lydia DesRoche.

“It was just a horrible freak accident,” Ms. DesRoche said on Tuesday. Rose was about 8 months old.

Rose was profiled in The New York Times last week as she prepared for her debut in the play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”

Last summer, Rose was one of hundreds of albino rats dumped on a median along the West Side Highway near 57th Street. No one has figured out who dumped them or why; albino rats are often raised as pets, reptile food or lab subjects.