A former Met stage carpenter is suing the Metropolitan Opera for sexual harassment, claiming that her male colleagues constantly abused her with unwanted come-ons and crude, dangerous pranks.
Teri Orsburn, 53, worked for almost three years at the Met, where she was the company’s only female stagehand.
Orsburn says in a Manhattan federal lawsuit that from the outset, her immediate supervisor refused to call her anything else but “girl,” setting a tone for others to follow.
She said colleagues put glue on her tools, locked her out of the company lounge, and intentionally put her in physical danger.
“They started heckling me immediately, day in, day out, and we worked very long days,” said Orsburn, an Arizona native and self-described cowgirl. “They acted like badly-behaved 8-year-old boys.”
Lawyers for the Metropolitan Opera did not immediately return a call for comment.
Orsburn said the curtain came down on her career after a stagehand shoved her to the ground and fell on her in a stage area where there were no witnesses.
She said the incident left her with physical injuries that made her unable to continue performing the job she had dreamed about since childhood.