Freelancing in technical theater means you’re on a lot of different email lists. People need a crew, they send out an email, you respond with your availability. Now, most people start these with things like “hey folks” or “hi everyone”. Neal is not most people.
His openers started off innocent enough.
Then, he started to push boundaries.
And as you can see, it has spiraled out of control since then.
Tag yourselves. I’m the anteater in a suit who thinks he can pass.
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:
Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
I was in Twelfth Night during high school and we were lucky enough to have identical twin girls playing Viola and Sebastian. Due to the blocking in the first half of the play, their characters didn’t appear on stage together but rather almost consecutively one after the other for a majority of the first act.
It was awesome because when people saw the play and didn’t know the girls were identical twins, it literally looked like it was one actor doing multiple, uber fast costume changes.
One of our first performances was for our peers and it was a big school so lots of people didn’t know the twins. This – for some reason – was also the performance they chose to record.
Listening to the confusion of the audience during the playback was fantastic and completely topped by the moment Viola walked off stage left just as Sebastian walked on stage right and someone right beside the camera goes “OH WHAT THE FUCK” so loudly it drowned out everything else.
The best thing? That was the copy of the play that was made available for purchase by family and parents. Haha.
Oh my god. I went to one of the Spiderman shows where he flew out above the audience and then got stuck and had to awkwardly hang there for about 10 minutes, but these stories are brilliant.
okay so, my senior year of high school and I’m part of the stage crew for Peter Pan. There’s a scene where Hook and Smee are searching for Peter and the Lost Boys. Now the theater department at my high school isn’t very well funded (in the southern USA, football is king), so the sets we managed to make were pretty kickass for the money we had. We had a structure painted like a big tree stump for the entrance to the Lost Boys’ hideout. You could climb to the top of it, but also go inside it through a trap door that we kept locked up during most of the play.
It’s like our third show and everything has been going surprisingly well. Hook and Smee climb to the top of the “tree trunk”, supposedly looking for Peter and not knowing they’re standing above his hiding spot the whole time.
Turns out someone didn’t close the trapdoor properly, because the second Hook steps on it, he plunges through the thing. He’s able to catch himself, but he’s got his ass and one leg dangling through this hole where it’s like a ten foot drop to the ground. All of us stage crew are literally two feet away from him offstage, just gaping at him because???? Y’all this fall looked BAD. Looked like my dude did the splits in mid air. The whiplash caused his fucking wig to come off. The audience is dead silent, all of us backstage are dead silent, the director is like already looking up how to treat a broken groin.
The kid who was playing Hook was like a fuckin sophomore and he KILLED it. He gave himself a second to catch his breath, never broke character, just looked up at his castmate and growled “Smee, you fool, help me up!”. He ended up playing off the wig thing as an embarrassing comedic bit for Hook, and the play went on. He was completely fine. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.
There was an infamous performance of the opera Don Giovanni where in the last act Giovanni was suppose to be dragged into hell via trapdoor but the overweight actor got stuck, leading someone from the audience to shout: “Hey everyone, Hell’s full!!”
I’m pretty sure I’ve reblogged this before but the Lefou story has me in tears every time.
As someone who did Tech stuff in High school for 4 years, Lefou!
I was a costumer on a stage version of Titanic, and in the scene where the women and children are getting in the lifeboats, one of the men (who was supposed to be saying goodbye to his wife he knows he will never see again because his is about to die), realized his fake mustache was falling off and instead of playing it cool… he rips it off his face, and hands it to his wife with the line “Something to remember me by”…it was the funniest thing that I have ever seen in my 8 years in theatre, the entire cast lost their shit laughing at the most dramatic moment possible
during 42nd street a couple months ago, the actor playing julian marsh didn’t make his quick change in time for the fancy party scene and came out onstage in a tux with one shoe on and the other in his hand, which he proceeded to gesture with wildly as he said his lines. cue the entire cast on stage trying desperately not to lose our shit
Afghan women prepare backstage to perform Shakespeare in Kabul for the first time since 1979.
I wish I knew more about this production or could find any information on it (is it professional? Amateur?). But these costumes are gorgeous and clearly designed to localize the production of whatever play they’re putting on.
imagine if valjean brought home the wrong barricade boy
wasn’t there a production where the marius got too sick to stay on stage during the final battle and JVJ just grabbed Joly
i researched this. it turns out understudy marius was the one who was sick from eating some shitty oysters, so colm just grabbed joly. he made sure to indicate that joly was now marius. he carried joly home and then ANOTHER guy (i think he was some sort of director who had played marius once before?) came on and sang from post-barricade on. the night of 3 marius
the marii
It is a crime that the actual “Night of Three Marii” story isn’t included in this post, so, to rectify this crushing flaw:
The Night of Three Marii
a performance of Les Mis in Dublin that had 3 actors in one night play Marius. by Chip
There have been many times things have not exactly gone according to plan in Les Mis over the years but this was surely one of the more unique incidents featuring as it did three Marii, none of which was even the regular one, and a supporting cast of highly enthusiastic oysters.
It was late February of 1999 and the UK Tour company was settling into the special Dublin engagement with Colm Wilkinson. Colm was not the only performer to join the cast in Dublin, Matt Rawle had come aboard as Marius and had gone on through previews and opening night without a hitch but just two days later he called in sick. Well not to worry, this cast featured a most excellent understudy in the form of Adrian Smith who normally played Feuilly.
Adrian found out he would be going on that Thursday evening after having sampled some of Dublin’s fresh oysters at the opening night party 48 hours earlier on Tuesday night. He probably should have left the party and checked out Molly Malone and gone with her cockles and muscles instead since the oysters seemed to have taken umbrage at his ingesting them. Though they forgot to bring along a red banner they were about to “rise up” shall we term it and launch a little insurrection of their own soon. In short, they were about to give poor Adrian much grief.
Adrian wasn’t the only one to experience the revolt of the oysters – or was that the revolting oysters? Some of the others attending the opening night gala had come down sick following the incubation period for oyster poisoning which is 24 hours and doctors were dispatched to the fallen. Adrian was still not too queasy by early on Thursday though by curtain time he was starting to feel a bit poorly. But the show must go on as someone once said who obviously never ate tainted oysters in their life.
Adrian went on and as he performed the ensemble roles a Marius plays in the first hour he started to feel more and more sick. Things really got worse by the time Paris rolled around and he went on for the first time as Marius in the show. He soon found that departing the stage that evening after scenes featured a detour to the john as he was far more than merely queasy at this point.. I guess the oysters didn’t have their equity cards in order and felt guilty going on stage illegally and were trying their best to “leave the premises.”
Things got bad then things got worse but what to do? Les Mis casts have at least two understudies for each of the major roles so why not get Adrian to bed and send on the second cover? Well the second cover had left the cast right before the Dublin run and his replacement was brand new and had not yet been rehearsed in the role. So Adrian bravely persevered.
But his condition was deteriorating rapidly. After Thenardier and his gang try to rob Valjean’s house, Valjean rushes in and worries aloud that Javert may have discovered him and Cosette (Poppy Tierney) is suppose to use that moment to turn and rush to the garden gate to spend a few precious seconds holding Marius’ hands. But when Poppy reached the gate that night there was no romantic hand holding going on as Marius was finding the john far more attractive to be near than Cosette by that time.
Well maybe Adrian would feel better after resting during intermission or interval as it is termed over there. Adrian didn’t. Adrian felt worse. Adrian soldiered on.
Now when Adrian left the stage earlier in the show for costume changes and what not he could deal with business off stage. However Marius was now at the barricade for the duration and the students of 1832 didn’t exactly have port-a-potties on the premises. What to do? “Little Fall of Rain” was a bit of a problem since Adrian couldn’t get up and tell poor Éponine (Alex Sharpe) to wait while he used a bucket that had been stationed conveniently in the wings for him by this time. When Éponine expired Marius’ reaction was pretty dramatic though not exactly following the traditional blocking. Adrian waved wildly to the students to come over immediately and as they cradled Éponine and before David Bardsley (Enjolras) could comfort Marius singing “she is the first to fall,” this Marius had dashed off into the wings on the dead run! Rob Miller, filling in for Adrian in the role of Feuilly filled in for him here as well singing the lines, “her name was Éponine, her life was cold and dark but she was unafraid,” which makes one wonder just how Feuilly knew Éponine so well … hmmmmm.
Adrian remained off stage after that for a good while. When Enjolras is suppose to say “Marius, rest,” David, doing some very quick thinking, turned to Feuilly instead and said “Find Marius!”
After returning and getting through his part for a bit longer Adrian had to rush off again during Gavroche’s death. He returned afterwards bringing his little bucket in tow as well as Alison Crowther, a swing with the cast, who was assigned the dubious duty of making sure Adrian hit the pail and not the stage floor. So Adrian took care of business in front of 3000 patrons. The cast tried to screen him as much as possible so I don’t know how many audience members spotted Adrian and wondered at Marius’ inordinate fascination for the bottom of a bucket but hopefully not many.
But it had become obvious by this point that Adrian wasn’t getting any better and there would be no way he could sit there and sing “Empty Chairs” without emptying his chair and rushing off the stage in the process. Now the resident director with this company was Shaun Kerrison who had once been a Marius understudy in London. It was clear what must be done and Shaun went off to get into costume.
In the meantime Adrian was nearly a goner and he finally had to crawl off stage during the final battle and Tom Moss, who was playing his usual role of Joly, was quickly drafted and fell down wounded in his stead. Colm called out to him as Marius several times so no one would think Valjean had decided Joly would make a better match for Cosette then dragged Tom down into the sewers with him. Fortunately Tom was no stranger to the sewers being regularly featured as “The Body” that Thenardier (well know Irish character actor John Kavanagh) dragged in night after night. But Colm had dibs on Tom that night so John had to quickly nab himself a spare body for the occasion.
And Tom Moss that night must have entered the Guiness Book of World Records, Les Mis Division, as having performed the role of Marius for the shortest amount of stage time ever and without singing a single word. Surely a feat of such magnitude that his grandchildren will revel in the glory decades from now.
Well Shaun was ready and in costume in time for “Empty Chairs” and did an outstanding job from there through the end of the show thus holding down the anchor lap of the Marii Relay in fine fashion. It was a night he and Tom and especially poor Adrian will never forget. It was the night of the three Marii!
Both Matt and Adrian needed at least one more day to recover so the following night, just to make things more interesting, a fourth Marii popped up. It was the old second cover, Mark McGee, who had already left the cast but who was returning that day to visit his girlfriend who was still with the company. He was drafted for the day to return to the show and though he never had the chance to actually go on as Marius the whole time he had been with the tour he did that one magical night in Dublin with Colm.
And as Les Mis has an Epilogue so does this Les Mis tale. About a month later Matt came down with laryngitis and had to leave at the end of Act 1 one night. Adrian went on in Act 2 as Marius for the first time since he had shared the role with Tom, Shaun and the oysters chorus. At curtain call Colm not only shared his bow with Adrian but gave him a big grin and “thumbs up” as the cast all warmly applauded not only his efforts of that night but of another memorable one not that long ago. The oysters, not getting the star billing they felt they deserved, were a no show that night. Funny, Adrian didn’t seem to miss them at all.
what’s the difference between ninjas and stage crew?
ninjas move silently around walls, stage crew moves walls around silently.
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT IS SO GREAT
The depiction of ninjas as dressed all in black comes from traditional Japanese theatre. Actual historical ninjas didn’t dress in black because it’s conspicuous as hell in the daytime and even at night in the dark a person dressed in solid black tends to stand out; dark grey or blue is better for hiding in shadows. Usually they just wore ordinary, like, people clothes which are far better for blending into your surroundings in than a specialised professional costume.
BUT YOU KNOW WHO DID DRESS ALL IN BLACK LIKE THAT
the stage crew in a theatre
and it was a generally accepted convention that the black-clad stagehands were invisible, so they could be on stage at the same time as the actors and move things around and the audience would just mentally CG them out
but then one day because a director was a GENIUS, during an otherwise normal performance of a play, suddenly a stagehand stepped forward, assassinated one of the main characters and then melted back into the background
THEY WERE A NINJA
AND THE AUDIENCE LOST THEIR MINDS BECAUSE IT WAS AMAZING
and eventually it lost its mind-blow value because after a while everyone had seen a play like that, so although the “stagehands wear black and are invisible” convention continued, the new “ninjas wear black and are invisible until they choose to strike” convention became established, and from then on fictional ninjas have just worn black because it looks so cool.
So in fact the answer to “What’s the difference between ninjas and stage crew?” is “You will never know until they stab you.”
Okay this is the first time I have heard the second half of this information and it’s so much better now.
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:
Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience.
Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength.
So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face.
I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage.
From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.
This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.
My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.
This may be my all time favorite post.
I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.
Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them
This post holy shit
I once worked on a production of spamalot, and we had this really wobbly wooden map that the narrator would use in his opening monologue. He would act like a weather reporter,only instead of sticking on clouds/sunshine and telling the weather, he would stick in skulls and tell how the plague was spreading. One night we were running as usual when suddenly the narrator slaps a skull on a little harder than usual, which throws the map off balance and tips it straight into the orchestra pit. This huge, heavy-ass map built from 2x4s and plywood hits the pianist on the head and knocks the lamp- the orchestra’s only source of light- onto the floor, and the lamp shatters. The orchestra goes the rest of the show squinting to read their music by a tiny book light, and mess up about half a dozen times because they can’t see shit
I was once in a production of the lion king at my school. There were 3 guys on the entire sound crew. J my superior who dealt with the more complex soundboard, me, who dealt with the less complex soundboard, and since I had graduated from running sound cues (my school is sorta poor with no orchestra and a very very poor sound system) off of my laptop, my old job was handed off to a newbie. Which would’ve been fine,,,, if the newbie had the desire to work at all. She just joined because her boyfriend worked backstage and when J and I found out we were livid. We continued as normal through rehearsals with the exception of one tiny thing. Our microphones frequently cut in and out. Our Simba had the worst microphone out of all of em and we weren’t able to reroute the mic plot in time. Come Friday the following happened. – during the scene in which Simba trys to roar but fails to and then Mufasa comes in to save the day, our newbie played the cue 3 liNES EARLY. Which was obviously bad, but it was made worse by my saying to J “hey this sound cue is a little quiet,, why don’t you turn it up??” – that little stunt deafened the audience and there was stunned silence on stage until the hyenas burst out into scripted laughter as if Simba gave the weakest little roar ever – when it came time for the actual roar to occur we stopped silent as to not give away our mistake and to somehow blame it on the faulty sound system. Mufasa was left screaming by himself – our newbie was sulking so she missed the very next sound cue – during intermission apparently a 2 year old had unplugged our entire sound system via 2 cables we had daisy chained to the outlet. The place where the two cables connected was left exposed on the floor. – because of this we had to crank up all of our volume because the only way we got sound then was from speakers backstage. This nearly deafened out vocal pit backstage – we found the problem to late into act 2 which immediately launches into 2 of the best numbers in the entire thing in my opinion. The actors were the real troopers, singing out. Half way through a song, our director plugged in our sound system, deafening our audience again – during the remember who you are scene, Mufasa was supposed to come out on a tall rolling platform behind a second set of curtains further upstage. Those curtains were supposed to close when he finished his scene, they didn’t – Mufasa was forced to stand up there for a solid minute before the backstage people realized something was up – on the very last number, where rafiki was supposed to lift simba’s daughter to the sky, two things happened – someone foRGOT THE BABY – our lights system decided to cut out for whatever reason – and finally, the next showing, there was no newbie to be seen. That left me to pick up her slack. needless to say this was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had working in the theatre program ever
there was a disastrous performance of Macbeth at the Old Vic by Peter O’Toole and apparently there was this one part in the play one night where a Servant comes in and should say “Your wife, my lord, is dead” but what ACTUALLY happened was
Steel Phoenix Studios 