To Kill a Mockingbird: Broadway performance ends in panic after noises outside mistaken for gunfire

Audience members 'ducked for cover' as cast members ran off the stage

The cast of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' at New York's Shubert Theatre (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)

A Broadway performance ended in panic after noises outside were mistaken for gunfire.

Spectators of To Kill a Mockingbird in New York’s Shubert Theatre began running down the aisles and ducking for cover as cast members vacated the stage during the production’s final scene, Deadline reports.

According to sources, passers-by were panicked by audience members flocking from the 1,460-seat theatre.

NYPD confirmed officers received “multiple 911 calls” about an “active shooter” and later said the uproar was caused by a motorbike backfiring multiple times on the road outside the Times Square location.

Gideon Glick, who stars alongside Jeff Daniels in the play, tweeted: “The audience started screaming and the cast fled the stage.”

American citizens are on high alert following the mass shootings that took place within a day of each other in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.

Twenty-two people were killed, and 26 people were injured during a mass shooting at a busy Walmart in El Paso on 3 August.

Just one day later, a gunman open fired on people at the entrance of a bar in Dayton. 27 people were injured and 9 people were killed.