Unplanned moments onstage

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by this thread, I started thinking about some perfectly good shows I’ve been in that fell victim to the hazards inherant to live performances. Interesting line-slips, “wardrobe malfunctions”, particularly innopportune missed cues, etc.

For example, in high school I was playing the role of Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls. During my big solo, Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat, I had the following line to sing: “And the devil will drag you under / By the fancy tie 'round your wicked throat”. On opening night, inspired to new hights by the way the show was going, I grabbed the tie of the nearest gambler at that point in the song and yanked it into the air as if it were a noose. Unfortunately, it happened to be a clip-on tie.

I’m not sure *how * I finished the song, but as soon as the lights went out I dashed madly out the back door and just laughed uncontrollably for several minutes.

We also had a performance of South Pacific that got really interesting. During the scene when the Lieutenant meets Liat, she reaches over and starts unbuttoning his shirt. At that point, as planned, the spot light went dark, and the two actors were supposed to reposition themselves in such a way as to suggest that they’re finished with their, um, business. The spot light, however, came back on just a little too early, and found the actors in an extremely interesting pose. It didn’t help that they froze in that position for a few seconds before realizing that they’d better continue with the scene. The three nuns in the front row of the audience were definitely not amused.

Anyone else?

2

I was in a production of Tom Sawyer at a community theatre, and had a small part as Doc Robinson, who is killed in the graveyard by Injun’ Joe. At the end of the scene, the lights go down, and I sit up. Suddenly, the lights come back up! The crowd was full of children (it was March Break), and they all screamed at Doc Robinson, rising from the dead!

Lights went down quickly and I scrambled off stage trying not to howl until I got back to the green room.

For the rest of the show’s run, I’d give myself a two count before sitting up…

3

When I was an undergrad, I was on stage crew for a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer. On opening night, the trapdoor wouldn’t open at the end of the show – if you know the operetta, you’ll know this pretty much ruins the whole plot. After a few interminable moments, during which everybody onstage and off was quietly freaking out, the guy playing the doorman came out and led the title character (who was supposed to exit through said trapdoor) offstage through the door! We were all quite mortified, needless to say.

It turns out that the reason the trap wouldn’t open was because one of the stagehands operating it got his finger caught in something that was required for the thing to work (I don’t remember exactly how the open-and-shut mechanism worked). Fortunately, his finger was okay, albeit bruised, and the trap worked without a hitch for the rest of the run (though we did come up with a contingency plan in case of future malfunctions).

4

As Prince Dauntless, I was describing the tests that my mother (the queen) had put my previous prospective brides through; Fred (my latest) was to confidently brush them all aside. I was supposed to turn and bend over, and struggle with a (styrofoam) dumbell while telling her “my mother once made a princess lift this weight!” and then she comes along and lifts it with ease to show me she’s not worried.

On opening night, I said “And once, my mother made a princess lift (turns, sees no prop, realizes sight gag is ruined) this… (makes BIG FISH gesture) … this HUGE WEIGHT!”

She looked me right in the eyes, half-panicked, and said “Really?”

pause…

I said, “Oh YEAH. It was REALLY BIG. But you’re pretty tough.”

pause…

She went from panic to cheerful in a beat: “Well, yeah! I’m sure I can handle it.”

…smiles all around…

I said “Great!” and we picked up the scene at the next piece of dialogue - something about another test. Dancing? We ended the scene with a dance, a dip, and a stage kiss, as scripted, and as soon as I dipped her, she smiled this huge smile and whispered “Nice cover.” I said “you too,” and the freshman stage hand who forgot the prop sprinted up to me as the curtain closed and threw himself on my mercy.

All’s well that ends well.

5

Katisha, when my company did The Sorcerer, we had two problems to deal with regarding JWW’s grand exit. First, our venerable but decrepit patter baritone was confined to a wheelchair. Second, our stage had no trap. We solved the problem by having two chorus members dress in Grim Reaper-type costumes and drag him away, wheelchair and all.

We had a really neat teapot for that show. At least, it was neat when it worked. The lid had a motor activated by radio control so it could open and close on its own. And each night it was packed with a small smoke bomb that was also set off remotely. We were never sure from one performance to the next whether the hinge or the smoke bomb was going to work.

6

In college, I had done a fencing routine for a Madrigal Dinner. I was the King’s man, my friend Stu was the lord’s man, and Kelli was a Lady-in-waiting.

The basic premise was that the King and the Lord have a wager as to who was the better fencer. Stu and I do a quick routine. Stu gets the better of me. The king gets upset that his man is about to lose. Stu takes a dive. Kelli, disgusted, takes my sword and roundly defeats Stu then tosses my sword back to me while saying to the effect of “See how it’s done, boys?”

Kelli had never fenced before. Stu and I trained her in basic stage combat, and made sure she knew the cardinal rule: Always have eye contact before you do ANYTHING.

One night, we do our routine, but I was distracted by a guard who was holding my hat while I fought. Kelli gives her line, forgets the cardinal rule, and tosses the sword to where I’m supposed to be. Meanwhile, I’m finally getting my hat back when I see this flash of light as the guard of the hard-flung epee hit me in the crotch. I collapse.

To this day I have no recollection of getting back up and taking my place by the king. I worked almost exclusively backstage from then on.

7

When I was a senior in high school, we did “You Can’t Take it With You”. My character (Essie) was an aspiring ballet dancer married to a xylophone player. At one point in the play, my husband comes in and plays a song which I then dance to. The actor didn’t really play the xylophone (duh), so we had to have recorded xylophone music play while he pretended to play. One night, he enters, says his lines about the music he’s just heard on the radio that he’s going to play for us, and goes up to the xylophone.
No music.
He stood, poised, at the xylophone waiting for the sound people to cue up the music.
No music.
He starts to adlib, talking about how he just heard the song on the radio, and now he’s forgotten it. We adlib some painfully awkward conversation, hoping that the next actor due out on stage will come early and sav us, but nothing happens. Finally, the actor playing my husband announces that he’s going to listen to the radio again and see if he can find the song. He exits. I’m left alone on stage with one other actress with nothing to talk about. We adlib (again painfully) conversation about our characters etc. The actor playing my husband re-enters and says that he remembers how the song went, and he’s REALLY going to play it this time. He goes to the xylophone and gets ready to play and. . .
No music.
He begins to adlib AGAIN about the song from the radio, and walks across the stage as he talks. Suddenly, the music starts up with him on the complete opposite side of the stage from the xylophone. He leaps across the stage and assumes his position at the xylophone, his face white with shock. In an attempt to cover the mishap, he announced “Wow, telekenesis!” directly to the audience.

That was six years ago, and it still cracks me up.

8

Working backstage on a thriller, we helped set up the “blood bag” for a character who was to be “shot” in the final scene.

A great device for this is a urine collection bag - it has a hose with a valve, and is design to be kind of discreet. The bag goes along his body sort of under his arm, the hose to the front of the guy’s chest. When the gun is fired, he just needs to clasp his hands to his chest as if in pain, press the one button that opens the valve, and blood flows. You can get a litre in the bag if you want. If you want to be a bit more conservative, the “victim” may need to add pressure to the bag by squeezing it against his body with his arm.

The actor was an elderly gentleman. During rehearsals he had no problem. "He do the oh-I’ve-been-shot schtick, opened the valve, blood started to flow, added a little squeeze, and we had lotsa dramatic bloodflow.

Opening night however, he got a little nervous about the blood bag. A bit jittery, he didn’t get the valve all the way open.

Not much blood was coming out.

So he squeezed the bag between his arm and body…

Still not much blood coming out.

Squeezed harder…

Still just a trickle.

So he decided to crush the bag under his arm with all his might.

The pressure forced the valve the rest of the way open and all the blood came out in on big spurt that looked like a cross between Sigourney Weaver’s alien and an arterial gusher. It accompanied by a hissing GLUT! noise.

There was a beat of total silence, then you could hear the entire audience say in unison, “Tsk, ew.”

9

In a production of Fiddler on the Roof my junior year in high school, we experienced what could have been a huge disaster. As the actor playing Tevye opened the door to enter the scene, something went wrong with the wall set for the house interior, and it almost fell completely apart. Grips and anyone else backstage at the time went rushing out to hold everything together and keep the scenery from coming down on top of Tevye and his family.

Mike, the actor playing Tevye, made one of the greatest covers I’ve ever seen in live theater. As the walls of the set shifted and nearly came down, he cast one glance back at it, and without missing a beat, looked to the girl who was playing Golda and bellowed, “Golda! Call the carpenter!” This got a huge laugh and applause from the audience, and then the scene went on as scripted.

10

Traditionally our high school casts went a little nuts with their ad libbing and grandstanding on closing night, because the director couldn’t punish them for it. Arsenic and Old Lace was no exception.

One of the two patrolmen has just been ordered to search the basement of the house for dead bodies. He refuses on the grounds that the house gives him the creeps. He points to Jonathon Brewster (the psychotic mass murderer…or should I say the obvious psychotic mass murderer) and is SUPPOSED to say “Look at that puss, he looks just like Boris Karloff”. This sends Jonathon into a screaming rage and he attempts to strangle said patrolman. The other patrolman whips out his nightstick, conks Jonathon over the head, and thereby renders him somewhat more susceptible to correction.

As it happened, our Patrolman (Barry) didn’t exactly say “puss”. So Pat, the six foot six Lurch-like fellow playing Jonathon, threw a bit more enthusiasm than usual into his attempts to throttle the hapless patrolman. Pat actually grabbed Barry by the throat and lifted him about an inch off the floor, giving him the occasional rag-doll shake. The other patrolman (Manuel) ran up to assist, and in the act of raising his nightstick, tossed it backwards into the air and over the top of the set. As Barry did a remarkably realistic depiction of being strangled, Manuel dashed off the stage and conducted a search for his nightstick, which had landed in a large pile of metal folding chairs. The entire audience could hear him shuffling around, including the part where a stack of chairs collapsed with a resounding crash. I think Barry was actually on the brink of losing consciousness when Manuel came dashing onstage (through the window) and clubbed Pat over the head with a detached chair leg.

The audience loved it.

11

I worked backstage for a production of a musical in high school. Less than a week before opening night, the music director’s son died. This was not exactly expected, but not exactly a surprise either. Anyway, this meant that the orchestra ended up being added the day before opening night, with only one rehearsal for everything to fall into place. But the performances worked out just fine.
The unplanned moment on stage occured during the technical rehearsal. The cast was wearing their costumes for the first time, and the microphones were in use for the first time. Everything was there except the orchestra, so the director was trying to fix all the little technical details she could, so she didn’t have to worry about them later. Well, the male and female leads finished a musical number featuring just the two of them, and headed offstage to change for the next scene. Then the director called them back. A tremendous burst of laughter follwed. Bill(the male lead) was dressed only in a pair of white boxer shorts. The female lead was still dressed in her costume, and practically refused to get closer than arms length from Bill.
During the cast party after the final show, Bill received the “Mr. December” paper plate award in honor of how attractive he was in his boxer shorts. The music director recieved the “Flaming Baton” award for directing the show despite the events in his personal life.

12

Final night of our high school plays were usually marked with as many practical jokes as we could come up with.

One year, I played Van Helsink in Out for the Count, a Dracula spoof. At one point, I was supposed to open up my briefcase, pull out a stake and a cross and lecture the other characters on the best way to kill a vampire.

Of course, like any other [wanna-be] professional, I made sure to check my briefcase before I went on stage to make sure everything was there. Not only were all my props there, but there was the added bonus of a rather large bra that belonged to a cast mate. My fellow performers had hoped to trip me up once I opened the case. Noticing that I’d found the bra, the owner smiled ruefully, admitted I’d foiled their plans, and asked me to hand it back. Thinking to have a little fun with it, I refused, and went out on stage, bra re-briefcased. When it came time to open it up and pull out the religious paraphernalia, I pulled out the bra in front of the whole audience and exclaimed cheekily “Ach! Zose silly frauleins!” and stuffed it back in. Best laugh of the whole evening. My cast mate was quite upset at having been foiled, too.

Unfortunately, she and I was cast together the next year in Beginnings, with myself as an Adam-type character and her as Eve. Long story short, part of the play involved me grabbing a suitcase from offstage, pulling out a military uniform complete with helmet, and marching off to war with my “Eve” bravely waving her hanky behind me.

Since I was on stage the whole time, the only chance I got to check my suitcase was before the opening curtain. It was out of my reach offstage the rest of the time. When it came time to pull on the uniform, I confidently grabbed the suitcase, reached in, grabbed the uniform, and pulled it on. Grabbed the rifle and slung it over my shoulder. Grabbed the helmet and put it on my head. And then noticed the bra hanging from the helmet right in front of my eyes.

Completely dropping my lines, I muttered “…what the hell…,” took off the helmet, and tried to pull the bra off as fast as possible. Only to find, of course, that they’d tied it around the chinstrap as tightly as possible, leaving me fruitlessly picking at a bra in the middle of one of my most emotionally charged scenes. Realizing the futility of the situation, I stood up, glared at my cast mate and hollered “How many times have I told you to SORT the laundry!?!” Clapped the helmet on and marched off stage with a large, pink bra hanging from my head.

Not my most macho moment.

13

I was at a Broadway preview of **Sweeney Todd ** in February 1979. Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou were at the point in the show where they set off, lantern in hand, looking for Toby, the young man who has run off. While they’re crossing the murky stage, a giant, visible iron catwalk that has been hanging high above them on chains begins to descend. It’s gaining speed as it goes. And it’s not stopping! Finally the thing slams onto the stage floor with a big crash, followed by the rattle and smash of the chains. We in the audience didn’t know if this was part of the show or not. Lansbury and Cariou – who were standing only a few feet from the crashsite, but were unharmed – shot each other glances of uncertainty. Finally after a beat, Lansbury, ever the pro, sings – without music but with a smile – “Nothing’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around.”

After a few seconds the director or stage manager came on stage to stop the show, apologize to the audience and ask that we give them a few minutes to reset the stage. This was not part of the show.

Gonna take that little theater memory to my grave.

The incident is mentioned on the bottom of p. 255 of Sondheim & Co. by Craig Zadan, by the way.

14

My fiance was working late last year on the Broadway production of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks a rather unsuccessful 2 person show starring Mark Hamill and Polly Bergen. During the show, there are a number of incoming calls on the telephone, so it’s a fairly important prop.

They decided to change the phone for one of the preview performances and Polly said the cord was shorter than the original and limited her movement when she’s talking. So, during intermission, you see a props guy out there fiddling with the cord. Act 2 the phone rings as normal and Mark picks up the phone, says “Hello!” just as the cord falls out. He scrambles for the cord, jams it back in and says “Are you still there?” and continues on like nothing happened.

And on preview, a dangling phone cord kind of pales in comparison to a crashing catwalk, don’t it?

15

About ten years ago, I was tech director for a very small, one-night-only production being held in a nightclub.

Part of the production was on video, in the form of a “flashback” - when the actor started saying “I remember…” the motorized screen for the club’s video projector was to lower and the video plays. It worked flawlessly in rehearsal.

So that evening… “I remember…” Screen rolls down, and stays black. Tape is rolling, sound is coming out of the PA. Projector is glowing softly out of its vent slots. Just nothing’s coming out of it.

Unknown to me, the TV monitors around the room were on a timer. When we were setting up, we paid no attention to the TVs since we weren’t using them and didn’t care about them, and had no idea that the video feed in the patch bay fed not only the big projector but all of those TVs. We also didn’t know that the timer was set to automatically turn the TVs on and off each night since the club staff was lazy or forgetful. As luck had it, our show was happening during “on” time, so even though our video wasn’t happening on the on-stage screen, it was happening on twelve or so TVs around the room.

Clip plays, screen goes back up and the actor ad-libs “Eh, I don’t remember it over there!” He gets a giggle and the show goes on.

16

I was a theatre rat in high school, and was a professional for some years afterward. On my computer there is a list of stories three pages long (single spaced) to jog my memory of the full stories so I can keep them straight. Here are a few highlights:

High school production of MASH: One of the few somber scenes in the show is when Ho-Jon, a young Korean boy who is friends with Hawkeye and the gang, is wounded and must be operated on. The scene opens with Ho-Jon on the table - or at least, it should have.

The curtain opens and we see a bunch of surgeons standing around an empty table. They all look at each other in silent panic. The guy playing Hawkeye then tries to ad-lib a bit. “Well… um… they should be bringing him in any minute…”

Another doctor adds, “Um… yeah… I hear he’s pretty bad…”

Meanwhile people are going berzerk backstage trying to find Ho-Jon, who simply hadn’t shown up for the scene. The stage manager finally pulls down the lights, grabs the nearest actor with dark hair, drags him onto the stage and throws him down on the table with his face upstage. “Shut up and stay still!”

The lights come up and they play the scene as seriously as possible, considering the stand-in was laughing almost uncontrollably.
HS production of Fiddler on the Roof: This is very similar to Blind Guardian’s story, and I’m wondering if we were at the same show but remember the incident differently. In my high school, Tevye opened a door to his house at one point and it came off in his hand. Some laughter there, but not too big a deal. He just put it aside and continued the scene.

Later on however, in one of the most moving scenes in the show, the family has been forced to leave their home. Golda spends her last minutes cleaning, which Tevye complains about briefly. Our Tevye then threw in the ad-lib, “Well I’m not fixing the door!” This got raucous laughter and applause, which pissed off the director because it was supposed to be a serious scene.
Professional peformance at an elementary school: This was a magic show with an anti-drug message performed by a troupe of four magicians. Before each act there would be a brief reading describing it and its connection with the anti-drug theme.

A new guy had just been integrated into the troupe. During the show he read the intro for an act with great feeling and inflection, and only realized as he approached the end that he was reading the wrong one. So he added, “This however, has nothing to do with the next act, which is about a guy pulling coins out of a hat.” This left the teachers in the audience in hysterics.
I’ve got lots more, but it’s late.

17

I was in a production of Les Mis at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Just in the chorus. During one of the shows, quite near the end, the lights went out. All of them. Not just the stage lights, either, I mean, the whole theater was dark.

As it turned out, it was some planned blackout (no idea), but the director of the show had requested that the building be exempt, and that request had been granted. But apparently someone forgot, and we were left in the dark. We had some candles there for a prop, which we lit and passed around the stage. The whole cast sat around for about half an hour and sang Carlebach songs, then we did another rendition of “One Day More” and called it a night. We had to do a makeup performance later.

As it happened, there was a reviewer in the audience that night*, from the Jerusalem Post (an English-language daily). He wrote a terribly sweet article about how the show ended a little differently than what he remembered when he’d seen it in London, but ours was more fitting for a show in Israel.

*Yes, we had reviewers for a production put on by college students. In a little country like Israel, a Broadway musical is a big deal! We even got a bouquet and a letter of congratulations from the President!

18

When I was in high school I got involved in a community theater production of The Pirates of Penzance. I played a pirate in the first act and a policeman in the second.

During one of the policeman numbers the choregraphy had the policemen standing in a line and the girls weaving between us. One night one of the girls weaved a little too close to me and her dress caught on one of my big shiny buttons. She didn’t notice until my coat was halfway off (with nothing underneath, of course). We spent probably three seconds trying to fix it and then ran offstage laughing hysterically.

Luckily for us nobody seemed to notice other than to wonder where the hell we’d run off to.

19

I only have one experience in my very, very brief acting career. I took one theatre/acting class in college my Freshman year to fulfill some sort of requirement. The Final was to act out a scene in a play that was assigned to us by the teacher. It was a Neil Simon play (but of course) and the scene was me and a woman in the class playing a boyfriend and girlfriend having an argument.

It was a funny scene with both of the characters making sarcastic comments throughout. My acting partner and I practiced and practiced. Neither of us had acted at all prior to this. On the last day of class we performed our scene in front of our classmates, about 20 people.

We’re doing the scene and we’re nailing it. The class was in stiches. I spoke a line that we thought was serious and the class roared with laughter. It turned out that the line was a joke that neither of us had gotten during all of our practicing. It was like we were hearing the joke for the first time. We looked at each other and for a microsecond both almost lost it but recovered enough to finish. I am certain that no one realized what happened.

Haj

20

In 97 my Gilbert & Sullivan company performed The Gondoliers. Just before the curtain closes at the end of Act I, Marco and Giuseppe (yours truly) step into a gondola and “paddle” it offstage, waving goodbye to their brides of about twenty minutes. Our gondola was on wheels, of course, and was pulled offstage by the crew using ropes. My biggest concern was that moment when the damned thing first started moving – I’m a big guy with nary a graceful bone in my body, and was terrified of falling over. So as we paddled and I strained to keep my balance, I didn’t notice that the stage manager had rigged up a shark fin to chase the gondola across the stage. I wondered why the audience was roaring, but didn’t dare turn around to look.

During the intermission, our director, a classic elderly English grand damme, informed us that there had been an “unauthorized addition” to the show, and that we could keep it because it was funny. But any other hijinks would lead to the instant execution of the perpetrator.

The most agonizing moment of that show was when the actor playing the Duke of Plaza-Toro began singing the song “I am a courtier grave and serious”, but used the words for the second verse. For those not familiar with the operetta, the first and second verses are musically identical until you come to the last line. The second verse goes into a fugal chorus, followed by a gavotte. Once the Duke started singing the second verse, Marco, Giuseppe, the Duchess and Casilda had no choice but to sing it along with him, struggle through the fugal chorus (with the wrong music playing) and then begin their dance. The orchestra found itself completely lost and stopped playing. The conductor was paging through the score trying to figure out what the heck had happened and what to do next, and the cast members were dancing around onstage with no music. I was standing backstage watching the whole time and offering a prayer a thanks to Thespis that my role had been double-cast and I wasn’t out there that evening.