tonight-im-a-rock-and-roll-star:
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.
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)
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-
PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
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
In high school I did costuming for The Wiz and accidentally made the Lion’s wig too backheavy and didn’t even know that toupee clips were a thing then. (it was the first ever show I designed and costumes for) In the first show, during the middle of the scene when the lion is introduced, the wig fell off his head. There was a beat of stunned silence, followed by a scandalized “MY WEAVE” from the actor for the lion and the audience lost it. It was practically glued to his head after that.
During my high school’s production of Chicago the boy playing Amos got a little flustered with his lines during Funny Honey and ended up calling Roxie his ‘waifu’
In the final dress rehearsal for our high school production of A Christmas Carol, we had to do a quick set change from Scrooge’s office to his bedroom in the scene where he meets Marley’s ghost. However, this also meant that the actor playing Scrooge had about 15 seconds to peg it to the wing, and do a quick change from a full suit to a set of pyjamas, then hop into a bed to be carried on stage. But on this show, Scrooge just couldn’t make it in time and the only people who knew about it first were the assistant director, the costume/makeup people and those in charge of carrying the bed on stage. Everyone else was oblivious. So the silence settles in, the lights come up, and the music starts, with the sounds of Marley’s chains pre-recorded over the music. Marley has no choice but to make his way on stage without a Scrooge to confront. This is the moment when everyone realises, and the tension in the air is unreal. The music guys fade the sound out and Scrooge still isn’t in the bed. So Marley takes a seat by Scrooge’s bed and pulls off this huge, incredible, improvised monologue about his time with Scrooge and what he has come here to do. Throughout this, everyone backstage is dying. Some doubled over laughing, some trying to claw Scrooge’s eye out for missing his cue. But the audience did absolutely nothing. Then Scrooge vaults himself into the bed and makes like he’s asleep. Marley slowly stands up and says “time to make myself seen” and the rest of the scene went on without a hitch.
tl;dr - Marley enters Scrooge’s bedroom and Scrooge isn’t there. Marley saves the whole play by coming up with a huge and brilliant monologue to the audience about his time with Scrooge just when we all thought we were fucked.oh boy do i have some stories from my most recent show
- my buddy drew and i both played Puck in our high school’s rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (don’t ask, our drama teacher had a cool idea that we’d both play him at the same time as if we were twins and like alternate our lines and say things at the same time and stuff, it was neat, you had to be there) and during our second showing the person who played Robin Starveling brought one of those fake candles onstage except at one point she dropped the candle and iT SHATTERED ALL OVER THE STAGE and we had dancers coming onstage after Puck’s monologue and they were all barefoot and we didn’t want them to step on the glass so drew and i had to nonchalantly bring a fuckign BROOM onstage as if it were just any stage prop and right after we finished our monologue and the lights went down we had about 5 seconds to sweep the glass off the stage as quickly as possible it was a shitshow
- during our final show there was this one moment where drew has to hop on my back and i have to piggyback him offstage and it worked flawlessly every other time but for this oNE PARTICULAR SHOWING my dumb ass didn’t plant my feet well enough and as soon as he got on my back my knees buckled and i deadass just collapsed onstage so we quickly and non-verbally agreed to have drew piggyback me offstage instead but i’m also like 40 pounds heavier than he is so it looked really awkward with me on his back and him kinda just hobbling away
- ok during the parts where either Puck or Oberon has to sprinkle this magic whatever from this love flower onto certain characters there’s usually a pinch or two of glitter in the flower props that we get from a cup that’s filled with glitter backstage but for our final show we still had a lot of glitter left in the cup that we had to get rid of so we had the brilliant idea to just fuckin pour the entire rest of the contents of the Glitter Cup into the flower prop so it was filled to the literal brim and have the person who played Oberon dump it all over the person who played Demetrius so during that scene drew and i watched from the wings and struggled to hold in our laughter as we just saw this GIANT CLOUD OF BRIGHT PINK GLITTER emerge from the flower prop and settle all over our Demetrius so like the entire right side of his face and body was absolutely coated in glitter it was so fucking hilarious and the best part was there was this big confrontation scene between Demetrius, Lysander (shoutout to my pal brad), Hermia, and Helena and they all had to stay 100% serious doing probably the most intense scene of the whole play with Demetrius looking like a vampire from twilight the whole time. as soon as he came backstage he came after our Oberon angrily yell-whispering “FUCK YOUUUU” at him it was AMAZING
(Source: stardustschild, via bronzedragon)
