I have plenty of stories to tell, but I’ll begin with a story I heard from a girl I met at an audition.
She was in an amateur production of West Side Story.
For the three of you who have never seen this show, here is a brief plot summary: Tony (falsely) hears that Chino shot and killed Maria. Being less than thrilled, Tony goes out on the street yelling for Chino to kill him too. Chino pops out of the shadows and shoots Tony. Maria arrives, picks up the gun, and says “How many of you can I kill, and still have one bullet left for me?”
In this production, Chino got his cue to go onstage and shoot Tony. But there was no gun on the prop table. Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed a knife instead, went onstage, and stabbed Tony. Maria picked up the knife, and said “How many of you can I stab, and still have, er… uh, one more, uh… stabby… thing…”
I played Thomas Royde in the Christie play Towards Zero.
The guy who played the police inspector (a real time college prof) got drunk the night of the first performance and couldn’t remember his frickin ’ lines!.
So not only did I have to say my lines, I had to think up lines to make him say his!
Mommy-Sexer!
But it made me fall in love with Audrey, on-stage and in real life, so it was worth it.
I wasn’t in this play (thanks God!), but during the dress rehearsal of my HS production of “Guys and Dolls,” Nicely-Nicely Johnson needed to use the bathroom between scenes. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn off his lapel mike, and was having some, er, intestinal issues that day. The results were quite loudly broadcast throughout the 2,000-seat auditorium to the full cast, crew, and orchestra pit.
My own worst moment came during a summer camp production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” for which I had three different bit parts. For one part, due to the gender imbalance at camp, I had to cross-dress as a Shriner. I had very long hair at the time, which was held under my fez with the aid of about a zillion bobby pins. On opening night, as the Shriners did their dance around Rosie, I leaned back…off came the fez, and down came my large masses of unruly hair. I was probably the first hippie Shriner in the history of “Bye Bye Birdie” productions.
Then there was the time when I was MD in Pirates of Penzance.
Normally what would happen is that a follow spot would shine on a couple of heavy wooden doors. I would open the doors from the other side, step into the spotlight, cross to the middle of the stage, take a bow, then cross over to the orchestra and begin the act.
One night a security guard apparently decided that that was a huge breech of security. He locked the doors. So there was a spot on the doors, and me trying to get in from the other side. I had to go back into the green room, crawl through the set, and go through the stage. There I came up behind the concermaster, who had gotten up to let me in.
But I almost had a similar incident. I was MD for Yeoman of the Guard. At the opening of Act II, I suddenly realized that my dinner was not sitting well. To put it bluntly, it was a case of explosive diarhea. But there was so much music during that act that there was no way I could leave. The restroom was 2 flights down. I’d finally planned my escape to be during the final dialog, which was an entire page long.
But then I was faced with a dilemma – soil myself, or come back from the restroom to face a cast, orchestra, and audience expectantly awaiting my return. I took my chances and finished the act with my legs crossed.
My college was doing a production of Churchill’s Mad Forest. The second act is a series of character monologues intermingled with each other. The way it was staged had each actor on stage the whole time, and we kept the ones not speaking in darkness while a spotlight lit up the one whose turn it was to deliver their lines.
An explanation for anyone not familiar with how light cues work - the light cues are arranged in order, and during the show the stage manager calls out the cues and the lights change automatically to the next cue just by pressing a button.
Well, at some point in the scene the stage manager must have called a cue wrong or the light runner hit the button twice, because the lights were completely messed up. The actors had no idea when the spotlight would hit them next. They were forced to improvise, saying their lines when they could and out of order, or in some cases, making things up completely when their parts were done but the spotlight hit them again. Imagine standing on a dark stage, knowing at any moment the light could be on you and you had to do something that made it look like nothing was wrong.
Looking back on it, it was pretty funny. Some actors did quite well, others froze, making up bizarre things or even stealing other people’s lines. It was chaos.
I was a follow-spot operator for a particularly ill-fated production of “The Nutcracker” in college. Some of the many mishaps (all happened withing a 2 week period, 7 days technical/dress rehearsal and 7 days runs). Mind you It was my third year on the technical team (everyone was very competant) and none of these things were issues in previous runs of the ballet.
-Actual fire in the theater building during dress rehearsal, requiring full evacuation.
-Sugar Plum Fairy gets food poisoning and is vomiting every 15 minutes so Ice Queen is promoted to Sugar Plum Fairy as well except…
… Ice Queen has terrible horrible stage fright (actualy had to quit the Joffrey ballet because of it) and completely forgets choreography then…
… Cavalier gets horrible leg cramps during the Grand Pas De Deux and can’t go out so…
…Ice Queen forced to improvise for about 6 minutes of “duet.” Funniest thing I ever saw, if I didn’t feel so bad for her.
-Electrical problem destroyed our followspot, so we borrowed one from Busch Gardens Willaimsburg. Unfortunately it was older and not well grounded. Every time I would point downstage and to the left, my elbow would touch my clearcomm it would short through my right arm. By the end of the night I couldn’t unclench my right hand.
-Picking up the followspot, my friend Matt backed into a lightpole sitting in the middle of a completely empty parking lot and smashed his rear windshield. (Followspot was okay, though)
-The %$#@! snow effect would not work, so sometimes it would snow in the drawing room scene.
-A smoke machine malfunctioned and spat oil on the stage… Clara slipped on it and fell right on her ass in the beginning of Act II. We had to bring the main drape down and start over (only time I’ve ever seen that happen)
There’s probably more, but I’ve blocked it out of my head. Basically, it was a never-ending nightmare.
High School drama club. We did “1984” for our fall show. The two main characters had a real-life stage romance that died about three weeks from show. :rolleyes: (I was the landlady.)
My dad fell asleep in the audience. He snores. REALLY loud.
My husband was in “Oklahoma” in high school. He was Jed? Jud? Watever. Opening night during the fight scene, the other guy (don’t know his name) decided to lean in to a stage punch, and ended up getting a bloody nose and being about half-concious. The Judge had to try him in absentia, and the cast had to try to wiggle his lines in where they could.
He was also in “The Crucible.” which they did in the round. The main character never bothered to learn his lines, so everyone else in the cast memorized the whole friggin’ play so they knew where he was. He would jump from Act I Scene 2 to Act IV Scene 1 and back. They had to cover for his ass the whole time.
When we did “Carousel” in 10th grade, the girls’ costumes consisted of bloomers, a crinolin (sp?) skirt, and a regular cloth skirt. We all wore character shoes for all the dancing, and through the dress rehearsals by the second performance, we had all managed to catch the shoes on the crinolin and rip it coming off stage. Some people tripped less gracefully into the wings than others. That fabric was so stupid.
We did “South Pacific” in 9th grade, and the lead performers wore body mics that people in the sound booth would turn off remotely for us so that the actors wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting to turn them off. Unfortunately they forgot to turn it off when the male lead went offstage b/c the audience heard “assho-”.
A high school production of Catch me if you Can (completely unrelated to the DiCaprio film, so far as I know). All you need to know about the plot is that it’s a murder mystery; I won’t spoil more. There’s one particular scene (act 1, scene 2, as I recall, though I may be mistaken) which is particularly crucial: It’s the first scene where the audience finds out that things are not as they appear. There’s a particular line that decisively ends that scene.
On the opening night, that line was delivered about 30 seconds into the scene.
Fortunately, the BHS Drama Club at the time contained some of the best improv artists I’ve ever met.
Perhaps even better, though, was the second performance of that same play. Point of advice: If you have someone getting shot on stage, and you’re making your own blood squibs, you only need a very small amount of blood. A thimblefull is plenty. Really. And if, by chance, you should happen to use a whole sandwich bag full of blood, be prepared to deal with the consequences. Everything on the stage was covered with red splatters. Everything, that is, except my shirt (I was the bloke who got shot). Last thing I saw as I went down was that the ceiling lights were dripping. I can’t imagine why we didn’t do it that way again; the audience loved it :D.
My only theatre experiences were in high school, where we typically did parodies. I never had an onstage role; I was mostly a tech–I handled music, sound effects, FX (such as were possible on our miniscule budget), and offstage lines. Occasionally, I had two other guys (also named John, BTW) helping me. On one noteworthy occasion, John2 provided an allegedly blank cassette to record our sound effects and music on (all we had was a cranky old cassette deck, and we had to fiddle with it constantly to keep the pace we recorded matched to the cues in the performance). The first performance of the play (a Rambo spoof, BTW) was held during school hours; all students were excused from class to watch it. Everything went off as well as could be hoped, given a cast with no discernible talent, and the audience was at least sympathetic. We techs went out on stage with everyone else for a quick bow…and while we were out there we discovered that the tape wasn’t quite blank after all. We had left it running, and it soon reached a section of the tape containing an extraordinarily vulgar–indeed, nigh pornographic–rap song. Los Tres Juans naturally lunged for the deck to shut it off…then our half-deaf principal told us to turn the music back on. We looked at each other, shrugged, and did as we were told. The audience was delighted, except for those teachers who could make out the lyrics.
A later performance of the same play featured a somewhat embarassing line mishap. One of the things we often mocked was the censorship the administration stuck us with–they insisted on bowdlerized versions of the scripts. Naturally, we made a point of almost uttering the proscribed words. A character might, as a minor example, say, “We’re in deeeeeeep sh…stuff.” Unfortunately, the guy playing that role got stuck on the “sh” part. He just couldn’t make the transition to “stuff”. Instead, he stood there, hissing like he had a leak in his face, for a good thirty seconds before giving up and saying, “Ah, shit!” This little gaffe occurred in front of an audience consisting primarily of parents and faculty members. Fortunately, everyone was laughing too hard to discipline him.
Night before opening, huge storm knocks down and destroys the set. Had to be rebuilt in one day.
Opening night, power went out exactly when time travel to Brigadoon. Director cleverly got a big campus mower with headlights and drove it in the back of the tent and turned them on towards the stage. Oddly, the lights came back on exactly when the leads returned to NY. That freaky coincidence actually became part of our theater lore.
I was in the audience of a HS production of Cyrano that was truly horrible. You could drive trucks through lines that were not memorized well, in one scene it was supposed to be autumn with leaves falling and a whole bushel basket full of leaves fell from the sky in one clump. Also, Cyrano’s moustache started to fall from Act 1 and slowly it drooped until it looked like a disgusting drip from his nose. He suddenly reached up, ripped it off and threw it backstage. The play lasted about 3 1/2 hours and only about 6 people were left in the audience when it ended.
High School play: I’m the old maiden Aunt, something happens “late at night” and I’m supposed to faint in a chair. Fine during rehearsals, but opening night we had “real” furniture and my chair became a strait chair. Nobody can faint into a strait chair, you’d fall off. So, the director has me faint to the floor, but he doesn’t tell anyone else. He wants realism. Not a good move.
So, time comes for me to faint. I’m in a robe, with my hair in curlers, and I do my best wilting-flower-hand-to-forehead faint. This scares my “nephew” standing next to me and he tries to catch me as I fall. But all he catches is my robe.
So there I am, lying on the cold concrete stage of my high school, in my skivvies, audience howling, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. High point of my senior year, I tell ya.
Something similar, although less horrible, happened to me when I was doing Execution of Justice.
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it deals with the trial of Dan White for the double murder of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. Most of the play is the actual trial, but on a different part of the stage and at the same time “uncalled witnesses” appear to give their side of the story.
So, there I was, giving my lesbian activist speech while the forensic scientist was being questioned by the defense. The spot would go to the scientist and lawyer, they’d do their lines, then to me and I’d do mine. But the defense lawyer apparently forgot most of the questions for that scene, and went to sit back down at her table far, far earlier than she should have. But the lighting guy was still following the original plan. Spot hits forensic scientist. Silence. Spot hits me. I give my line. Spot hits forensic scientist. Silence again. Spot hits me. I give my line. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. Although I wracked my brain I couldn’t think of anything I could say to get the trial portion of the scene back on track, since my character was in a different time and place.
I eventually got a little mixed up, since I wasn’t getting my cues (although the forensic scientist’s lines had nothing to do with mine, I had memorized my part based on the assumption that his lines would be there), and ended up finishing my speech sooner than I should have. The last time the spot hit me for that scene I had nothing left to say! I let out an exasperated sigh, which was appropriate given my role, but let me tell you I was not having to act at all.
To this day I don’t know how the lawyer could have failed to realize that she had skipped over most of the scene, or why the actress playing the judge didn’t do anything to try to help the rest of us out. A simple “Is that all, counselor?” would have done it.
I’m not into drama so I don’t have much experience with it, possibly because of this one experience in 8th grade. I wasn’t on stage, I was the music guy, but I completely messed it up and played the music at the wrong time and all that. At the end of the play when they read out the cast members and then creditted me with the music I wanted to die.
A friend of mine was in a production of “Beckett”. He played a peasant lad who attacks Beckett with a knife. In the script, Beckett wrestles the knife away, getting slightly cut, and later when Henry asks him what happened to him, he says, “My horse bit me.”
Unfortunately when they were wrestling around, my friend’s head came up and broke Beckett’s nose. The poor actor playing Beckett had to continue the scene with blood flowing down his face, and when the actor playing Henry asked him (genuinely), “What happened to you?”, he improvised, “My horse kicked me.” That’s a trouper.
