'Beauty and the Beast on Ice' performer gets 2 minutes for roughing

During a recent evening showing of Beauty and The Beast on Ice, actor and seasoned skater Nate DuPuis was sent back to his dressing room for two full minutes on a disciplinary roughing call.

A graduate of Montreal's prestigious National Theatre School of Canada, DuPuis was pulled from the ice after cold-cocking one of his fellow dancing spoons during the company rendition of Be Our Guest.

"The guy was asking for it," reported one 73-year-old ticket holder. "They had been sort of circling each other the entire first act — you just knew it was going to happen at some point."

A known "enforcer" in the Canadian theatre circuit, DuPuis made headlines in a similar incident last summer after knocking out a Matthew Cuthbert understudy at the Huron County Playhouse over a missed cue in an Anne of Green Gables matinee.

Among journalists, DuPuis' on-ice career has drawn regular comparisons to that of the great Wayne Gretzky. It was on a frozen pond in his backyard in Laval that DuPuis' doting father first taught him how to figure skate at the early age of two, and then at the age of 36, how to punch actors so hard they briefly forget their own first name.

Despite this latest scandal, DuPuis' stats for the season are quite impressive. Per Beauty and the Beast on Ice performance, he averages:

0 goals

0 assists

0 saves

0 power play goals

1 triple axel(s)

6 instances of mouthing words to his fellow actors to look as though he's actually talking

9 impromptu waves to families with small children

"Far too many" moments of pretending to nibble on prop fruit

0.0085 assault charges

For the sake of avoiding future performance interruptions, the producers have fired Beauty and the Beast on Ice's referee, who flies out to Niagara's Shaw Festival next week to call Death of a Salesman. Insider speculation predicts a disappointing show however, as Biff Loman was recently traded to the Penguins.

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