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
On the spring show my friend was in the person who was playing Lysander (I think?) was supposed to do his,“though she is but little, she is fierce speech” and he forgot his ENTIRE monologue and there was a moment of dead silence before he just says,“BUT I LOVE YOU!” and just walks off stage
Tears in my eyes
My Broadway producer friends once told me a story about the eponine at the time. Everyone loves to snack on candy back stage and this girl decided to put skittles in her pockets. She went on for “Little Fall of Rain” and while she was dying in Marius’s arms, the skittles slowly started to trickle out of her pocket.
We were doing a modern version of Lysistrata, and at one point one of the husbands is supposed to toss his infant child (a doll we had swaddled in a blanket) up in the air, and his attendant was supposed to catch it, sneer back at him, and walk off stage. Well, during one of the performances, the actor tossed the baby waaaaaaay too hard, so the assistant DOVE to catch it, landing with a loud THUD that echoed throughout the theater, and slid part way off stage with a loud “squeeeeeaaaaaak.” The rest of us, waiting in the wing, grabbed his shoulders (which fortunately did make it off stage) and continued to drag him back, all while trying not to lose our shit.
My favorite will always be the production of The Diary of Anne Frank that was so bad, that when the Nazis showed up at the end, people in the audience screamed “They’re in the attic!”
During a dress rehearsal for the wizard of oz, oz forgot where he put his bag, which was supposed to hold all the ‘gifts’ for Tin Man, Lion, and Scarecrow. So his solution was to stuff the gifts into the waistband of his poofy green pants and hope for the best.
When it came time for him to pass out the gifts, it turned out that while he was walking, the gifts had slid down his pants. So he had to reach his arm down his pants to pull out the gifts, which was already bad enough, but since he had no bag, Dorothy felt the need to change her line to fit the situation.
Which resulted in a seventh grader saying: “Oh, I don’t think he has anything in those pants for me.”
“There’s one big difference between the poor and the rich,” Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time.
“The rich aren’t evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I’ve known rich people – I have played on their yachts – and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid - or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency.
No – the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can every really be so bad. They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness – like lanugo, on a baby – and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can’t be paid; a child that can’t be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much.
Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you’re comfortably middle-class, what’s the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90% and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine – but maybe cheaper – go on holiday – but somewhere nearer – and pay off your mortgage – although maybe later.
Consider, now, then, the poor. What’s the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school – with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and in a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about their treats - their tax-breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they’re fighting for their lives.
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That’s why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won’t vote. That’s why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us – no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don’t have nostalgia. We don’t do yesterday. We can’t bare it. We don’t want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That’s why the present and the future is for the poor - that’s the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now - for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post-code. It’s a miracle when someone from a bad post-code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.”
—
A rant about the divide between the rich and the poor from “How To Build a Girl” by Caitlin Moran (via itsalljustvapourtrails)
“When the rich get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about treats. When the poor get passionate about politics, they are fighting for the lives.”
if you are an eligible voter in the US this coming election and bernie sanders does not have the democratic nomination
you. have. to. vote. for. hillary.
i am not fucking messing around
i am not gonna sit here while you write in names or go on some fucking strike. hillary is not on the same level as donald trump. all of you who act like that’s a hard choice are ridiculous. you vote for hillary clinton if she gets the primary. if you don’t, you give trump the presidency. clear and simple. normally i would not advocate against writing in names, but at this point writing in names would take away from hillary’s vote if she is the nominee–EVEN IF YOU WRITE IN BERNIE SANDERS, YOU GIVE TRUMP A HIGHER CHANCE AT THE PRESIDENCY, AND YOU DON’T WANT THAT.
not even a year ago y’all were laughing about donald trump. don’t fuck this up. in no world is hillary clinton as bad as donald trump.
Who wants to hear my latest story of being a fucking disaster?
All right, so, here’s the deal: I’m pre-med, just finished my junior year of college, and, like a fucking moron I thought that I could maybe trust that, y’know, literally anyone in the department at my school would have realized that I do not actually know everything. In fact, I often don’t even know what I don’t know, and therefore am often in a position of, A, flying completely blind, B, bordering on a panic attack, and, C, totally unable to even start doing research in order to resolve my ignorance.
Why does this currently matter?
So, the deadline for the medical school app (yeah, there’s just the one, apparently, and they send it to the schools you want them to send it to) turns out to be October 13th.
That means that I need to take the MCATs at such a time that I’ll have the grades by October 13th, meaning that I need to take it in early September (because then the grades will be out on October 12th), which means that instead of having a significant part of next semester to study, I have this summer.
Now. I also have an internship this summer. A very intensive internship eight hours from my home. An entirely research-based internship that I only signed up for after my…everyone spent months talking me into it. After my organic chemistry teacher spent an entire semester talking me into it. I do not have time to intensively study for the MCATs during this internship, but I guess I’m going to have to fucking make do because I will not retain information through a gap year. If someone had thought for one second to talk to me about the MCAT thing, this all would have been very different. Given that it actually never came up, I did not even begin to realize the size of this critical gap in my knowledge.
You know, I have trust issues and I know it, and I have trust issues with teachers and authority figures specifically, but somehow every once in a while I get comfortable enough or stupid enough (fuck if I can tell the difference anymore) to think they’re actually going to take care of me. And then I am suddenly and viciously reminded of the fact that this always happens and I shouldn’t be surprised anymore and yet somehow I always am. I expect teachers to punish me for things that aren’t my fault or leave me to handle a physical threat without help–hell, I even expect teachers to punish me for handling a threat to my safety. But for some goddamn reason I always fool myself into thinking that somehow they’re going to help me with shit like this.
If you find a bunch of bones that are A: untouched and B: supernaturally clean, there is definitely a reason for both of those things. Sometimes that reason is ants. Sometimes those ants are fire ants. Sometimes those fire ants have made a nest over the entire three meter area around those bones
Sounds like someone had an adventure with fire ants
hey man i haven’t seen a single similar post (concerning???) so i feel like it’s important to make this.
tomorrow is ramadan. your eating disorder will not magically disappear in ramadan.
allah will not hate you if you relapse in ramadan. be it that you faint or you binge, if you need to break your fast because of your eating disorder THEN YOU BREAK YOUR FAST.
You are not supposed to fast when you are sick. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FAST WHEN YOU ARE SICK. IT IS HARAM TO FAST IF YOU ARE SICK BECAUSE IT BRINGS HARM TO YOUR BODY. If you start feeling horribly sick and you know, you haven’t had sufficient suhoor or iftar for a few days or anything of the sort, it is okay to break your fast and even go to the hospital if you need to.
habaybi that have eating disorders, PLEASE take care of yourself during ramadan. It is a month of cleansing and forgiveness, so forgive yourself if you relapse. You can always redo your fast after ramadan.
Jazakallah please reblog this post and ramadan mubarak to you all! ♡
Little reminder for my Muslim pals and followers. Please be kind to your bodies and remember to take care of yourselves this ramadan!
