Protesters have brought snooker’s world championships to a halt in a dramatic invasion, with a man climbing onto a table and opening a bag of orange paint powder.

The Just Stop Oil supporters disrupted one match and tried to halt another – with a woman attempting to glue herself to the table – at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre on Monday night (local time).

“At around 7.20pm, two Just Stop Oil supporters have disrupted the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, interrupting play. The pair proceeded to cover the tables in orange powder paint before being removed by security and arrested,” the climate activist group said in a statement.

There were gasps from the crowd as the man interrupted the match between Robert Milkins and Joe Perry. Just metres away, the woman tried to glue herself to the table where Mark Allen and Fan Zhengyi were playing but was stopped by referee Olivier Marteel.

“We’ve never seen the like of this before. There’s orange powder all over the table. Play will have to be suspended,” Eurosport commentator David Hendon said.

“It’s an unprecedented incident. We’ve been coming to the Crucible since 1977, we’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Both matches were immediately suspended, with the players leaving the arena.

South Yorkshire Police said later they had arrested a 30-year-old man and a 52-year-old woman.

Championship staff then began to clean up, with master of ceremonies Rob Walker seen vaccuming the table to try to remove the orange power and get the matches back underway.

By 8pm Allen and Fan had returned to play, getting a standing ovation from the Crucible crowd.

“This great event stops for no one,” Walker said, while Allen joked “I don’t know what the fuss was all about” after potting the first ball on resumption.

Allen won his resumed match.

“I think I was the last person in the whole arena to work out what was going on because I was focused on the shot I was about to play,” he said afterward.

“I heard a bang, that I thought it was on the other table and then I turned round and there was a woman on my table.

“It could have been a lot worse – you saw what happened on the other table and how much disruption it caused.

Milkins and Perry will resume their match later on Tuesday.

Just Stop Oil is a coalition of groups working to change British policies on fossil fuels. Its activists say their goal is to “ensure that the government commits to ending all new licences and consents for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels in the UK”.

The group says it will use non-violent civil resistance tactics, such as strikes, boycotts and mass protests, to target the UK’s oil and gas infrastructure to force UK policy-makers to meet their demands.

It is also known for highly visible stunts, including when two of its members throwing tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery. Just Stop Oil activists have also attempted to disrupt Premier League football matches by tying themselves to goalposts.