Theatre folk: Share your trainwrecks

Cafe Society
21

I know someone who was Stage Manager of a theatre where every year they had a travelling troupe (is that the right term?) come in and do the Passion Play for Easter. This troupe had their own back stage people for the most part, so she was mostly just in charge of helping them around back stage.

One evening The Roman Soldier was running around back stage looking for his spear…you know the one he stabs Jesus with, the one that collapses. He eventually finds it…he thought…and goes running out on stage just in time for his Big Moment. Well, it was actually a legitimate spear with which he forcefully stabs Our Savior. Real blood flowed and Jesus wept. No actually, he didn’t weep, instead he shouts, “You F**KER! You STABBED ME!”

They had to bring down the curtain and give people free tickets for another show. But it isn’t quite over.

The following show. The understudy is playing Jesus. They have crucified him and have raised up the cross which is supported, in part, by wires attached to the fly system above the stage. This Jesus, sadly, had been a bit of a heartier eater than the earlier Jesus. They raised the cross up. The pully system, not used to dealing with the extra weight, collapses. Jesus and cross fall into the Orchestra pit.

Apparently they did not do a Passion Play thereafter.

22

In High School we did ‘The Wizard of Oz’. We had a great props/lights/sound guy, Terry Swann. He designed and built a throne for one of the wizard’s incarnations – at the push of a button, flame shot up from the seat. Really cool effect:

(Lights dim, curtain midstage draws back revealing large, ornate throne.)

Dorothy: ‘Where are you, oh great Wizard?’

(WHOOSH!!! Flames leap up about 8 feet, and sustain. So does the audience :))

Wizard of OZ: ‘HERE I AM!’

Dorothy: ‘Oh, look Toto, the Wizard is a pillar of flame.’

Children in audience: 'Oooooo! ’

First dress rehearsal, Toto heads for the exit when the flames pop up. After that, Dorothy had to sincerely hold onto Toto to keep him onstage.

One night, the flames fail to shoot up. All you heard was a little clicking from the igniter. Dorothy (Suzanna Wellins) handled it like a trooper:

Dorothy: ‘Where are you, oh great Wizard?’

(click. click. click.)

Wizard of OZ: ‘HERE I AM!’

Dorothy: ‘Oh, look Toto, the Wizard is INVISIBLE!’

Children in audience: ‘Oooooo!’

Kids are great! Turns out we could have done without the special effects – they just loved the story.

Oh, and for everyone who was waiting for the throne to catch on fire: never happened, sorry.

23

I could write a book.

Let’s see… My Fair Lady. There’s a scene just before the Ascot races in which Col. Pickering meets with Mrs. Higgins, Henry’s mother. Mrs. Higgins is quite curious about the girl that her son is bringing to the races; Col. Pickering is trying to explain, but being a confused sort of character, his story wanders off into irrelevant sidelines, and Mrs. Higgins must gently bring him back on track: “Yes, yes, Colonel - but what about the girl?”
The actress cast as Mrs. Higgins in our dinner theater production was elderly, and a bit forgetful. The actor playing Pickering was sharp as a tack, and one of the funniest and best improv guys I’ve ever seen.

So it’s supposed to be Pickering saying: “We met this girl outside Covent Gardens, and she was quite the picture. You see, they were doing Aida that night, and …no, no, come to think of it, it was Gutterdemerung… and she said to Henry… marvelous show, that Gutterdemerung, with the drums rolling out and …”

“Yes, yes, Colonel - but what about the girl?”

Well, how did it actually play out? The actress playing Mrs. Higgins apparently just became fascinated listening to Col. Pickering. She remained absolutely mute, listening to him describe Gutterdemerung. So he had no choice but to continue… we were cracking up, listening to him exposulate: “And then the women! Large women, blonde, with horns! Horns and spears! They were trundling about with the horns and spears, bellowing loudly!”

Finally it must have dawned on this poor woman that she had never once, in any rehearsal, heard ANY OF THIS DIALOGUE. And finally, to the immense relief of the actor playing Pickering, who had gone on to describe lighning bolts being hurlted from the rafters, she managed to get out: “Yes, yes, Colonel - but what about the girl?”

24

A lot of issues plagued our high school productions, including the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come getting hit by part of the set, the King of Siam nearly breaking a toe on a stage weight right before the polka scene, a scene change finishing while half the people who needed to enter were still half-naked in the middle of the a costume change … but two became fairly well-known.

Two days before opening night, we performed the first act of The King and I for the students of the local elementary school. There’s a scene where the king’s henchman (forgot his name) is about to whip a young slave girl by the name of Tuptim, but Our Heroine Anna stops him. Now, in rehearsal, the girl playing Anna hadn’t been quick enough to stop the henchman, so he was left hanging there, frozen in “I’m about to whip her no really” pose until she remembered. Before the performance, he told her “Look, I can’t just stop like that. If you don’t stop me in time, I’m really gonna hit her.”

Alas, neither of them told the girl playing Tuptim. Anna was late, henchman’s whip hit Tuptim in the back, and the poor actress emitted a startled “Sht!*” … right into the floor mike in front of her. In front of an auditorium full of kids.

Then, my senior year, we did Macbeth. Say what you will about the supposed ‘curse’, our production kicked ass. There’s this scene where Lady Mac (played by my humble self) gives a brief monologue, then Macbeth enters with a pair of bloody knives, having just murdered the King. Except … somebody had moved the knives off the prop table, and Macbeth had to frantically search for them.

I give the line that’s his entrance cue: “My husband!” … Nothing. I call a little louder, “My husband!” Then, realizing I’m stranded on stage until he shows up, I have the pleasure of improvising a few minutes of iambic pent. Luckily, after my iambic fretting, Macbeth ran on stage with the knives and the rest of the scene went as planned.

In dress rehearsal, incidentally, the first night we used fake blood on the knives we discovered during the subsequent costume change that the blood was very difficult to get off of our hands. While I managed to scrub the blood off, cursing and raving, Macbeth just grabbed a pair of black gloves and yanked them on. Several members of the cast appreciated the site of a real-life Lady Mac unable to wash the blood off her hands, and the OJ-esque touch of the black gloves, which were used in all the later performances.

25

Well, whilst in HS, my sr year, I was supposed to do a monologue at a sort of ‘I’m a better actor than you’ presentation for the parents, etc that has to do with growing up and shaving your legs for the first time. I wore a teeshirt and a pair of boxers and some fluffy slippers under one of my mom’s hideously ugly bathrobes. At one point during the monologue, I’m supposed to prop my leg up and pretend to shave my leg. The bathrobe slips off my leg and reveals not only my boxers, but my pink underwear beneath. I was so mortified.

There was also the college production of “Little Shop of Horrors” I was the props mistress for. One night, the guy who did the voice of Audrey II decides to alter his lines and wing it a bit. He’s supposed to say “TUFF TITTY!” and instead says “Tuff Bunnies.”

Also, during the tech week rehearsal for a run of “Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, the guy who’s playing Sweeney falls THROUGH the trap door in his ‘barber shop’ onto the slide rigged below for the ‘dead’ victems of the vicious homicidal haircutter. He would slit their throats and yank back on his barber’s chair and stomp 2X, to let the techs below know to open the door. Well during that particular rehersal (I was a spot op and saw the whole thing from the lightbooth above), he stomped too early and accidentally stepped into the trap door, falling and breaking 4 ribs. The guy was a trouper though. Spent the night in the hospital and came back the next week to do the show anyway.

I also was on props for a production of “Ten Little Indians” during college. One of the actors had a line that said “I think I"ll go sit in the sun and think.” or something like that, with the SFX of seagulls in the background. One night during the run of hte show, the actor though that the sound guy was playing rain instaed of seagulls and so he said “I think I"ll go sit in the rain and think.” Everybody backstage was cracking up, trying not to laugh too loudly.

During this SAME show, as the cast is taking final bows and exiting, there is a big picture hanging from the catwalk as an accent piece for the ‘room’. One of the castmembers turns to walk off stage and runs directly into the picture, causing a huge gash in her forehead. Owie.

IDBB

26

I was in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown this year. Now, that play went just fine, but there were stories of other plays from the actors I worked with.

The man playing Charlie Brown had recently played George in Of Mice and Men. At the end of the play, he had to shoot Lenny. During one performance, the gun wouldn’t fire. It. Just. Wouldn’t. Fire. So, finally, Charlie Brown/George yelled “BANG!” and Lenny slumped over dead so they could end the play.

Also, when I was in the cast of Man of La Mancha, all I had were a couple of bit parts - monk, innkeeper’s wife, that sort of thing. Then, the night of dress rehearsal, when we had our first audience, the woman playing the housekeeper - a roll with a significant part in one song - didn’t show. And didn’t show. And didn’t show. Finally, five minutes before the curtain went up, we got word that she’d been in a serious car wreck. We were no longer worried about her making it to the performance; we were worried about her making it through the night.

Our cast was so small that we had no understudies. Everyone just stood there looking stunned - including her son, who played a monk, a horse, and one of the mule skinners. Finally, I raised my hand and said “Uh, I know her lines, and about half of her song.” Since our parts didn’t conflict, I ended up taking over her part. It took me three performances to get the song down (damn, that was a tough song!). The great part was that, although she’d broken a cervical vertebra and been really banged up in the wreck, she made it to the last performance and was able to take a bow with the rest of the cast.

27

So many stories…

I think the most I’ve ever panicked, though, was in the booth for a production of Waiting for Godot. It’s Beckett, it doesn’t make much sense, and two actors (or in this case, actresses) carry most of the dialogue. During one performance, something went horribly wrong in Act II, and the actresses got a little lost. Somehow, they managed to double back to the beginning of the act. The stage manager and I looked at each other and I knew that she was thinking the same thing I was - it was going to wind up being some sort of horrible Beckett loop, where they simply repeated the same five pages of dialogue over and over again until the audience finally got wise. And, of course, the lights were set on a timer fade, so at some point, the entire stage was going to go black on these two actresses, still hopelessly trapped in the Beckett vortex, never to break free. We were contemplating extreme measures - “Tell JC to get ready to go onstage! I know that’s not his cue line. Just get him in the wings” - when the actresses, who must have realized their peril, managed to get back on course. Nothing broke, nothing caught on fire, none of it. Just the pure horror of words.

28

This happened way back in the 2nd grade, so my meory of the details (like the name of the play) is a little sketchy, but…

I had only two scenes in the play, both with the same actor. One came fairly early in the play, the other was the last scene of the play. About five minutes into the play, I go out for my first scene, and the actor looks at me and says her line. Except it’s the one that’s supposed to come at the end of the play. I don’t know what else to do, so I just say the line that’s supposed to go with that cue. We act out the rest of the scene, finish, and the curtain comes down. What was supposed to have been a twenty minute play doesn’t quite last ten minutes, and about half the cast never even got on the stage.

29

Just a quick funny one. West Side Story. Jets enter tossing a basketball around. One guy misses the toss… Whoomp. Right into the tuba in the orchestra pit.

30

When I was about fourteen I was a member of a local youth drama group and it came to production time and they basically let us divide into groups of five or six people, so some friends and I decided to that wed pretend to be the then popular girl group ‘Eternal’ and thered be a skit in the middle of it about how two ‘old’ people would come into the audience and upset everyone and everything.

So theres three of us on stage waiting for our song to play, now you have to understand we had learned a dance routine to a certain song, so the song comes on. Only its not our song, so the sound guy tries to find our song, and were standing on stage like idiots, and we do about 2 seconds of our routine before our ‘old’ people come in and upset us… it took people about five minutes of a 15 minute sketch to realise the joke.

Ive never gone on stage since!

We found out what happened to the tape too, the same sound guy had decided that he wanted to listen to some eternal music the night before. Git!

31

Well, I’ve done theatre since High School (many years – okay a couple of decades or so now) both community and professional and while I’ve had everything from choking on a tie, to dropped lines, to meeting the scottish curse head on, nothing compares to a 26 week run of Adaptation by Elaine May we did in High School. The play was part of two one acts (the other was "The Happy Journey from Trenton to Camden by Thornton Wilder) and the nightmare occured in a single performance.

The play is only 45 minutes long, but everything seemed to go wrong at one specific production about halfway through the run.

First of all the sound tape for the performance broke. This show takes a persons life and runs it like a game show so there was theme music, a pre-recorded speech by one of the actors and numerous other things on it that really enhanced the show.

It began as the contestant Phil Bensen took the stage, tripping over the top step and nearly knocking himself out. He was practically carried off-stage to the “Sound proof booth”.

During a mother, father, baby at the hospital scene, in preparation the actress had to get the prop-baby, which was unfortunately being sat on by another actor, struggle ensues, finally the baby is wrested from beneath the actor. Mother takes her position with baby upside down (feet where head should be), She flips the prop baby, and said prop baby begins wining at mother and father with one eye over and over and over.

Father: What are you going to name him?
Mother: I think I’ll name him after one of the greatest liberals of all time, George Wallace. (supposed to be McGovern)

Sequence in which Phil and another actor crisply turn to denote passage of time. After second turn the actor doesn’t remember to cue Phil. Plays like this:

(Both Actors spin, do first set of lines, spin again, and stare at one another)
Actor: (whispers) Go ahead.
Phil: (whispers) It’s you.
Actor: (whispers) No, it’s you.
Phil; (whispers) What happened, Phil?
Actor: (Points fingers as if gun at head and makes gun noise.) What happened Phil?

(Scene Continues)

Phil, in later scene: There are two top shits–sheets, SHEETS, I mean SHEETS missing from the Eastern Seaboard Hotels alone, Mr. Garfine.

The pre-recorded speech mentioned earlier didn’t go off, several seconds of whispering and indication trying to get the actor who recorded it to read it from the script he has in front of him. Finally gets the hint after actress side-steps over to him and whispers directly in his ear.

There was a mutual actor crash moving into place in an unplanned blackout.

It is important to note that this wasn’t over several performances, but took place in a single 45 minute performance. It is the single worst experience I’ve ever had on stage and I once managed to collide with a quarter inch piece of steel plate (head first) while exiting the stage. As I type this, I know more happened that day, I’ve just blocked it out.

And one summer while I was at band camp. . .

32

Oh, another quick fun one. Doing ‘Impromptu’ by Tad Mosel. Very weird play, done on a very weird stage. We had a director who was known to throw odd things at his actors durring rehersals, and sometimes performances. So when the weird looking man in the audience starts talking to our characters, we just assume it’s a plant from the director, and take it in stride. When said man gets UP ON STAGE to share the couch and ashtray with us, we take it in stride. It wasn’t until the show ended and the director came out on stage to personally chew the man out and threaten him bodilly harm that we realize that maybe, just maybe, it might not have been a set-up…

33

This is a great thread… :wink:

My best one, though I wasn’t directly involved: when I was an undergrad I did stage crew for a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer. Now, this isn’t a very well-known show outside of G&S circles – what happens at the end is that the title character (one J.W. Wells by name) has to go down into the pits of hell in order to remove a spell from the village. The theater we were in didn’t have a trapdoor – well, it did, but it was only used for loading set pieces, and it wouldn’t work unless the guardrails were up. So we had to achieve the damnation of Mr. Wells by means of a raked stage, into which we built a trapdoor. The trap was operated from underneath by a couple of stagehands, who would roll the door out of the way, after which the actor playing Wells would dive into it (it looked really, really cool on the video).

On opening night, everything had been going beautifully – and then it came time for Wells to make his descent into the infernal pit. Everyone onstage and off looked on in sheer horror as the trap opened approximately two inches…and stopped dead. After a pause that seemed to drag on infinitely, the actor playing the doorman finally escorted Wells out through the door. We were all quite mortified.

Later it turned out that one of the stagehands got his thumb caught in the mechanism that opened the trap. Luckily, no serious damage was done, and the thing worked beautifully after that. (We also came up with a contingency plan in case of trap failure. ;))

The worst thing that’s happened to me personally onstage was when I played a Munchkin in The Wiz when I was in sixth grade. You see, the Munchkins in this production achieved their characteristic stature by sitting on wheeled boxes and wearing hoop skirts. It’s rather hard to do choreography while maneuvering a wheeled box with a Hula Hoop about your ankles. At one performance my box tipped over – if it’s hard to do the choreography, it’s harder to get up while strapped to a box…

34

This is cracking me up.

Worst show I personally have been involved in was one high school production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The guy playing Quasimodo was apparently feeling rather unwell one night but we had no understudies, so he gamely got into costume and makeup and went on. I was stage managing up in the booth, and noticed that Quasi kept surruptitiously breaking his blocking and heading upstage to stand by a high platform. Eventually this peaks my interest and I ask my ASM to take a gander from her side stage position. I am disheartened to hear that he has now thrown up behind the platform four times. I pray that he will make it to intermission and we can get some Gravol or something in him.

After a few minutes he returns to his blocking. Everything is going well, and he is acting pretty well for somebody who just tossed his cookies repeatedly. He’s a trooper. I’m proud.

Then comes the fight scene - Quasi gets into an altercation with one of the town guys (my mind has mercifully removed the details). Anyways, the blocking had it that Quasi says something to the other guy, then the other guy pushes him, and Quasi lashes out at him, whereupon Esmerelda tries to hold him back, saying “Stop, stop, I can’t stand it!”

What actually happened was that Quasi said his line, the other guy pushed him, Quasi took a huge step backwards and there was a moment of eerie calm. It was just long enough for me to think ‘ah, shit’. Quasi threw up. Spectacularly. He didn’t even have the presense of mind to bend over at all, he just stood there and it shot forcively out of his mouth. It was everywhere. In the space that had opened up between the two actors there was a four foot diameter pool of chunky vomit. It was splattered everywhere. Hair, costumes, scenery. Nothing was safe.

There was a long pause. Audience stunned, they didn’t even react. I didn’t know whether to cut the lights or bring down the curtain or what. Then Esmerelda says in a perfect deadpan “Stop, stop, I can’t stand it.”

35

I mentioned this thread to my sister the other night, and she told me the worst community theater story she’s ever heard.

The play was an original work by a local playwright. At the beginning of an important scene, the lead is menaced at point-blank range by a man with a gun. The prop gun being used was one of the ones that makes a BANG! noise. During one performance, it went off. The lead actor “covered” by…dying! Yes, he did a little death scene and lay down on the floor, leaving the rest of the cast to finish the scene without him.

36

A friend of mine told me this story a few years ago: he was in a big professional production as a minor character. He didn’t have to be at the theater until 8pm to get into costume for a big scene in the middle of the play. One afternoon when he was hanging out with some friends, and one of them produced a really bizarre hash pipe. My friend was curious, and decided he could smoke a little bit and not be high by the evening, so he took a drag. Bad move. Whatever was in the pipe wasn’t your regular hash. He went into the most appalling bad trip, and he just couldn’t come down. He managed to make it to the theater, white as a sheet, and paranoid as anything. He got into costume and went onto stage, getting the fear to an enormous degree as hundreds of eyes were upon him. Midway through one scene he started seeing stars and was then overwhelmed with nausea. He just ran off the stage and hurled all over the wings, then ran back on to carry on the stage. The second time he ran offstage, the senior stage tech grabbed him and held a bottle of something up to his nose. He sniffed it and came down off his high instantly, his nausea left, and he was able to complete the production. He asked the woman what was in the bottle, but she just said “my secret”.

This same friend once was in a play I was in, where he was in a big scene at the beginning of the play, and only had one small - but crucial - scene at the end of it. So he used to go to the pub and knock back a few pints. One night he knocked back so many, and was having such a good time, that he forgot to come back. The play ground to a halt, as we on stage realised to our horror that somehow we had to improvise the advancement of the plot without his presence. One of the off-stage actors ran on and said “you know, if X were here, he’d probably say…” And we finished the play. I have no idea why he wasn’t sacked.

I guess some people are too irresponsible to be actors…

37

I have taped to my monitor a blurb from a long-ago copy of the Common Reader catalog, for a book titled Great Operatic Disasters by Hugo Vickers:

“Would stagehands really replace witha trampoline the hidden mattress to which the distraught Tosca hurls herself in suicidal grief? Well, if the prima donna has made their lives miserable enough during rehearsal, the answer is emphatically yes.”

38

Oh, and one thing (of many) that happened to me when I was acting. I was playing Tony Lumpkin in a high school production of She Stoops to Conquer. There’s a scene where one of the female characters feigns a love interest in Tony. The director had us bill and coo and fondle each other with her sitting on my lap. The actress playing this happened to be an absolute babe, and I was deeply infatuated with her. Despite my raging hormones, I maintained a good degree of professional detatchment from this situation during rehearsal. But for some reason, on the opening night, Mr Winky woke up. At the end of the scene she would get off my lap and I had to bounce up from the chair to deliver a line. Except now I couldn’t stand up, since my britches were extremely revealing. I realised that I would have to deliver my line sitting the chair instead, unless I could exert control over my nether regions. I made a sterling effort, thinking about custard and vinegar with old socks stirred into it, and eventually Mr Winky went back to sleep, just before the crucial moment. Unfortunately, the mental and physical effort had so exhausted me that when I eventually stood up, I fainted. Thankfully I fell back into the chair, but when I came round I had absolutely no idea why I was sitting in a chair in front of hundreds of people. It took me a few seconds to work out what was going on, where we were in the play, and to carry on with the show. I hope the object of my affections didn’t feel what was going on, though I suspect she did.

39

Good grief. I know I shouldn’t say it. I know I shouldn’t. It’s lame, and worse than cliche, and cheesy as hell. Must…not…make…lame…joke…at…jjimm’s expense.

I can’t resist.

Guess that girl was a real knockout, hey?

</me slinks away in shame>

40

Didn’t happen to me, but to a friend. She was performing in a melodrama, a TEN NIGHTS IN A BARROOM kind of thing, and was supposed to say:

“Oh! I thought you were a liquor dealer!”

But she said:

“Oh! I thought you were a licker dicker!”

The scene dissolved in hysterics and could not be saved.