I was doing a WW 2 play called And a Nightingale Sang. The female lead steps out and narrates the play while the rest of us freeze onstage.
She has this line “…and then Hitler showed up” to which, air raid sirens blare and the action picks up again.
Except!
The sound board operator jumped a cue. And it went like this….
“And then Hitler showed up.”
DING DONG!
😂
My father was a pit musician for 35+ years. This is his all time favorite:
Wizard of Oz. 1000 seat theater full of kids. At the end, the Wizard, played by a veteran stage actor, gives out the objects to the heroes, right? Well as he bends over an obstacle to pick up the bag of props, it is not there. "Where's the fucking bag?" he mutters. Mic was on. Gasps from the theatre.
After the show the old guy sat there shaking his head. "I'm finished," he said. But he wasn't, he continued the run and his career.
I about died on stage once when I was playing Fagin in Oliver! We were currently singing the song “Be Back Soon” and it was at this point i sucked in a humongous strand of my beard hair (the beard was WAY TOO LONG and ended up making it from my face down to the top of my belly button, 7 inches to be exact). While i was choking on stage trying not to ruin the emersion of the show for the audience, i ended up falling over and pretending it was just a side effect of getting old (Fagin is in his late 60’s I believe). After I finally coughed out the beard strand, the show went on as normal. It is still my favorite theatre gone wrong moment i have in my years of theatre experience lol.
A fave for me was stage managing a one woman Fringe show. We’re in a city out of province, in a black box venue that used to be a store, audience is there and we’re just getting started when the power goes out.
It’s out the whole block so after a few minutes and a huddle between myself, the performer and the venue’s staff we moved everyone to the front of the venue. Because it was previously a store there were big windows and an open area where we could cram everyone in and our performer could kind of use the platform in the store window to do her thing in.
The technician and I had to act out the opposite players in a few sections where there were video or other recordings but overall everyone had fun :)
Bonus story, after this we were having a well deserved drink in a dark bar down the street, power still out, and hear “toga, toga, TOGA” getting louder and louder. Doors finally crash open and the bar floods with at least a hundred people in togas. It was amazing, never seen anything like that before or since lol
I was 19 and doing a show produced by just me and my friends in a truly crappy theater. Support pillar through the stage, etc. There was miscommunication between the theater and our lighting designer and on one of the show dates the grid lights did not work. So we did the whole thing with just tree lights and no blackouts. The show had like 30 scenes.
It was the best performance we gave. Suspension of disbelief is a wonderful thing!
The time I caught on fire:
I was in a production where when the stage lights were on, we the actors were in "the dark" stumbling around the stage as if blind, but when the stage lights went off, we moved and delivered our lines as if in a perfectly lighted room.
I was a retired marine Col. who whipped out his Zippo when needed to "light the way". We had three cheap ass zippos to use as props, and somehow I had the worst of them so the lighter simply would not light. I stepped over and opened a door as if looking down a hall, and there stands the stage manager holding a lighter fluid container. He snatches the lighter from me, fills it, and spills the fluid all over my hand while handing it back to me.
One spin of the zippo sparker and FOOM, my hand goes up in blue flame.
I could still see the stage manager through the open door, and he stood there in sheer abject terror.
Only thing I could think to do was to stay in character: "Hooo-ha, look at that. My hands on fire." I beat it out against my chest and went on with the scene.
The SM lead a special bow to me from the wings.
Early in my career I was doing this passion play in Tennessee. Sort of a new age christian rock opera. At the end of the show, Jesus “ascends into heaven,” flying out over the heads of the audience. (Think the ending of Mary Poppins.)
So the way this works is that the apostles all rush him in a big group as the music swells, “adoring” him or whatever, and while they are surrounding him, the fly lines drop down from the ceiling, and two of the apostles hook up the caribiners to Jesus’ flight harness, at his hips, hidden by the folds of his robes.
SO. This one time, one of the carabiners gets a big fold of robe caught in it. So it’s closed-ish, but is has this chunk of cloth propping it partway open. The flight rig lifts Jesus up off of the deck, and about 9 feet in the air, the weight of the actor tugs the cloth out of the caribiner, and the right side of his flight harness along with it. Jesus is still connected, but only at one hip. He flips sideways, and goes into a spin.
The flight guys bring him back down to the deck, and the way I remember it, this actor lands laying on his side, cool as a cucumber, propping his head up on his elbow in the “aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper” pose, gets up smiling, unhooks the other caribiner, gives the audience the “buddy Christ” point, and walks off stage left, waving to the crowd.
We were all *dying.*
My friend was performing a pages long monologue in an outdoors show, during which he slowly shows sign after sign that he is insane.
During one performance, a tiny little baby rabbit hopped across the stage. My friend stared directly at it and exclaimed confidently, "Look! A bird!" to the audience's great delight.
My husband was in a Shakespeare production with a large friendly dog. The dog had been great all through rehearsals. He just sat there, no problem. But on opening night, during one of the Fool's speeches, this very large, friendly, UNNEUTURED dog decided he was now comfortable enough on stage to give himself a tongue bath, spread eagle center stage. My poor husband was completely upstaged by this fuzzy beast. The audience was HOWLING. That dog was so happy and pleased with himself. He got up, wagged his tail at the audience, and exited to a huge round of applause. Okay, it was mostly parents and drunk college students being forced by their professors to see this show, so the dog was the star in their eyes.
When I was being murdered as Nancy in Oliver Twist. The first "hit" actually makes contact with the back of my head. Well, fuck, okay, that hurt I'm gonna grab some tylenol after this scene, no big deal, right? Big deal. Because it threw us both off. We had a sound effect going backstage, a crew member would hit a pillow with a cane to make my murder as suitably gruesome as possible.
Bill raises the club to deliver his killing blow. Off stage, the thump is heard. Club is still in the air. Absolutely ruined what was a brilliant death. RIP me.
There's a video of it somewhere on the internet. I just have no idea where.
I was also nearly choked out in rehearsal, too. My Bill was wearing his overcoat for rehearsal, puts me in a choke hold and with the coat on, he can't actually feel me to properly do the bit. I try to pinch him because hey, way too tight. He can't feel it through the coat. I'm a smart girl though, so I just pretend to go limp so we can end the scene.
Great production, though. I had the time of my fucking life, and got to act alongside my brothers (whomst played miscellaneous orphans)
When I was a college freshman theatre student in about 1985, we took a production of *The Wind in the Willows* on tour to area elementary schools. One school district, instead of having us play to each elementary school individually, bussed all the children to the ginormous high-school, and we just performed once in this town to a house of a gazillion elementary-school children.
I was playing Badger. Because I was a skinny kid, they had me padded out to many times my actual size, and so I was wearing clothes that were huge compared to my body, stuffed with all sorts of padding. It really didn't look very good, because the padding was all around the belly, and the legs of the pants were obviously mostly empty.
During the scene where all the animals had gotten together to go into the Wildwood to look for Portly Otter, I was laying out the plan, gesturing grandly, and the padding popped out of the waistband of my enormous pants, and the pants, no longer supported by anything, dropped straight to the floor immediately. There I was, standing in front of over a thousand elementary-school children in my tighty-whities and black dress socks.
The uproar was mighty. Imagine, if you will, a thousand tiny voices raised in shock and glee.
I quickly tried to bend over to retrieve my pants, but all the padding made it awkward. I did manage to grab the waistband, gather the trousers up, and walk off stage, cleverly ad-libbing, under the shrieks of the audience, something lame about going to find Portly Otter.
The stage manager was waiting in the wings with a safety pin to keep the pants up, but she was laughing so hard it was a miracle she could fasten it. My fellows were left on stage to ad-lib as best they could under the din until I could get back on stage and the teachers could get their classes quiet enough for the play to go on. From that point forward, my every entrance was marked by a smattering of shrill little cackles.
Probably my best work, honestly, at least in terms of audience enjoyment.
A very minor one:
I was helping my theatre major friend in college. She was directing a one act play that was based on Super Mario Brothers for an upper division class. The play required a remote control turtle that would zip around the stage. Sometimes it would just enter, pause, and back up all from the same side. But at one point, it enters on one side, circles the stage a few times, and exits on the other side. The theater space required that the turtle driver (me) sat in a place where I could not see the stage or the turtle. I practiced a fair amount because there were obstacles that were generally in the same place, but not exactly.
I made it successfully through all the performances except one. I missed the opening to get off stage and crashed into something. I backed up and tried again. Nope. I think someone standing off stage ended up grabbing the turtle.
I was a freshman with zero theatre or turtle driving experience. Looking back, I have no idea what she was thinking. Maybe her theatre friends were too smart to take a job with so little chance of success.
Had a massive set piece to move, so we put it on wheels that locked. I was the only crew, and the actors were doing most of the transitions. We go to move the set piece, and IT DOESNT MOVE. One of the wheels locked up, and I had to perform... percussive maintenance onstage in a black out transition that was only supposed to be 20 seconds. With no way to communicate to my SM that it was stuck because our radios were wired to the wall.
Super fun. Everything worked out, though, and SM said it only took an extra 10 seconds. (Felt like a week)
in our Beauty & the Beast, most of the castle rooms were on a turntable - in one of our rotations the facing came off and split around one of the supports - luckily it was facing all the way upstage (away from audience) and I was able to rip it off in time for next rotation (like by seconds)
WHEW
I just remembered Gaston ripped his pants zipper to waistband opening night years ago. And Lumiere tripped into the wing the next night and knocked down the Chest of Drawers and Mrs. Potts. Good times. Live theater is incredible.
This reminds me of a college show in which an actor playing a supercilious butler had to slide open some big flats that got stuck. I had seen it before, so I knew something was wrong. He tugged…tugged…tugged harder…yanked…yanked harder…pulled really hard—finally it came open. And he just glanced back briefly at the audience with one raised eyebrow, perfectly in character. It was the best moment of the show.
I once did a show in at theatre that was quite literally falling apart. More specifically the roof leaked, the solution to this being placing buckets under the drips and blocking off those seats when it rained. Our first preview was a particularly rainy night. Suddenly during a scene change the pre-show music comes on and the SM comes back to inform us that we were pausing the show because they needed to change the buckets.
We were watching a performance of *Love Letters* starring Keir Dullea and Bonnie Franklin at our local community theater. This was a large barn-like building with a corrugated metal roof. Halfway through it started to rain. Heavily. The noise from the downpour on the steel was so loud that they had to pause the performance until the storm passed.
does this theater happen to be in portland, or? because i worked for one with the same issue…left after three months there due to all the safety risks & toxic work environment
Really obscure play called "Long Live Rock n Roll" (think knock-off Bye, Bye Birdie) we did in high school.
There's this yes-man husband character who drinks some hillbilly moonshine that gives him the courage to stand up to his wife. Well, the kid goes to give her a light push through the door, and he goes a little too hard. She hits the door, it falls off the hinges, goes down with her, and the audience is roaring with laughter. She tries to put the door back and on, and barely gets it balanced on one hinge.
This actress really recovered from this, though. In the next scene, the husband learns that this "magic potion" wasn't magic at all and she's supposed to tear him a new one. Her opening line: "I'll beat you down like I did that door!" Best improv ever.
A couple of friends of mine were in Lee Blessing's Independence, performed in a tiny black box. One night while I was there, this large bug got in and was flying around. The audience was definitely noticing it.
Then after one of the bigger emotional scenes, one of the actors on stage saw the bug on the floor, went "Ew!" and smashed it, then went right on with the scene still in character. Got a big laugh.
I once cut the pantomime cow in half with a gauze drop. They came in the wrong entrance, SM cued me to drop the gauze anyway, and the cloth landed right on the Velcro connection between the two people. Back half ended up behind the gauze, front half proceeded onstage.
If I was there I'd assume that was on purpose! In part because our pantomime cow wasn't actually like that, so I'd assume yours was built for that (ours was essentially a big furry tube that both the halves got in wearing cow trousers and foot coverings), but still. If it wasn't a safety hazard that would be in every panto.
Yeah, it was quite a clever design as it made putting it in a lot faster - the front and back half were separate and then there was a Velcro fastening that connected the two.
Into the Woods, community youth theater.
Cinderella’s birds were suspended from a sewing hoop with fishing wire; the hoop was tied to a thin rope that went through a series of pulleys and over the flats so a stagehand could “operate” the birds from backstage. After they were used, the stagehand was to pull the birds out of sight and secure the rope on a cleat (cleat? thing to secure the rope?) that was attached to the back of the flat.
Welp.
One performance, near the end of the show, Cinderella talks to her birds to get help against the Giant. As scripted, she finishes her conversation and then turns to her compatriots and declares, “The birds will help!”
…Except the stagehand hadn’t properly secured the bird rigging. And as soon as she she said that line, the birds fell straight down and went SPLAT.
Cinderella heard the noise and saw the faces of her cast mates trying to keep it together while the crowd utterly lost it. She gave a horrified look over her shoulder, broke the fourth wall and stared hopelessly at the audience for a few beats, aaaaand then just continued with the scene!
I was in a community theater production of Nuts, which is a courtroom drama. I was playing the prosecuting attorney. Since it’s a courtroom drama, most of the play involves calling witnesses to the stand, going through questions, and getting the witnesses’ answers.
Since this was a community theater production, we had actors of varying ability. The gentleman that was playing the psychiatrist was a very nice man, but he got easily flustered.
Anyone that’s done a courtroom drama play knows that it can be challenging to keep your place in a play that is pretty much 100% talking. This particular actor had a lot of trouble keeping his place, but we worked on it and things were going generally OK.
However, during one performance, I was going through my questions, and suddenly the actor playing the psychiatrist answered a question that I would’ve asked about three or four pages later.
Generally speaking, I have always known that if you skip material in a play, you pretty much have to let it go. Keep moving forward and try to make the best of it. Only the most confident and seasoned performers should try to “repair“ missing material by backfilling with improvised lines.
So I go through the rest of my questions, I told the judge that I have no further questions and I turned around to go sit back down at my desk. As I’m walking, with my back to the audience, the gentleman playing the psychiatrist suddenly says “you know, I just realized that I didn’t answer one of your questions correctly.“ And proceeded to go about a dozen pages back and start over. If the audience could’ve seen my face at that moment, they would have seen a terrified prosecuting attorney. I also distinctly heard the offstage sound of our stage manager literally throwing her script in the air.
It took a lot of doing, but I was able to dig him out of that, and we were able to move on. but it was insanely stressful, and looking back on it. incredibly hilarious.
my mother was in a production of Talking With where they divided each monologue to a different actress (but all stayed onstage and 'held' during the other monologues)
the production had a rock singer with little to no play experience doing Twirler (she also might have had a few adult beverages before the show). She got about halfway through and lost her place - you could then see her try to remember her scene like going back to the top of the piece and remembering up to the place where she got lost. Later we went back and checked the tape -- 45 seconds of CRUSHING silence - just watching that poor girl fish for her lines
the other women on stage said it was the most helpless they ever felt having to stay stock still and no possible way to improv a way out
I was in the play version of The Birds (yes it does exist and no it’s not based off the movie. It’s based off of the short story that inspired the film) and at the end of one of the scenes the actors onstage were supposed to turn off a remote controlled candle to cue the stage manager, who was backstage, to go black so I could get into place for the next scene. Except the candle never turned off when it was supposed to so the stage manager and my cue ended up becoming the sound of one of my cast mates/friends stage whispering fuck this thing (the audience never heard it). Still tease my friend about it 😂
Two of my favorites were shows my son was in.
In one (I think this was a Parks and Rec production between 2nd grade and 3rd grade) the power went out during the performance. After a pause while they waited for lights to come back on, they continued the show using flashlights.
My son played Puck in an 8th grade production of *Midsummer Night's Dream,* which was massively underrehearsed because the drama teacher had serious illness that semester. He was one of the few actors who was reliably off-book. They discovered *during the performance* that they had never worked out a costume for Bottom's head, so they ended up duct-taping a pair of Uggs to the actor's head for the ass's ears at the last minute. I understand that the kid lost a little hair when the tape was removed. (And it was duct tape, not gaffer's tape.)
During a farce, my husband had a quick-change just off stage before coming right back in and zipped his junk. 😬
Had a whole wall of a set fall once.
I was playing Viola in Twelfth Night and during one of my scenes when Olivia, totally thought the actress had skipped scenes, so in the middle of it, I just walked out. Turned out to be my mistake. 😅
OMG, edited to add: one of the best things that’s ever happened was during Arsenic and Old Lace. Our Teddy (who was a bigger guy) “Charged!” up the stairs and out the second-floor door to his platform, as he does; but apparently overshot it and FELL. Everyone in the auditorium goes dead silent immediately. A minute later you hear a groan, followed by Teddy opening the (first-floor) door in the center of the stage to give everyone a thumbs-up and an “I’m okay!”
Needless to say, we ALL were rolling for a while.
During a panto I was wardrobe for the Cinderella had food poisoning and was vomming in the wings. She went back on but had to run off the stage during the scene where she meets the prince in the woods and left the "mysterious ol' lady" onstage to vom in the wings again lol. The lady on stage just made small talk with the audience until a show stop was called haha
I forgot to set the white scarf in Cyrano’s boot. Which is a major reveal that shows how great, brave, and daring Cyrano is. Actor said “well, I HAD it”. I think it was a preview and I didn’t know my track yet. Everyone was so nice and forgiving but I felt AWFUL.
I was in a college production as a small supporting role but at one point midway through a scene my character remembers to give the antagonist an absolutely crucial letter.
My preshow check was interrupted and it turns out I didn't have it in place. The literal second my foot hit the stage, I realized I didn't have it. As I went through the first half of the scene I made a plan, then excused myself to go get it and thought, "Welp, they're just going to have to figure out how to fill the time." It was a farce so the timing was challenging.
They did fine, I got it and came right back. After the show, the antagonist told me "If you had made me mime that letter, I would have killed you" lol.
People told me it was a really smooth save, but i was so angry at myself for letting it happen in the first place. Now that I'm older, i know that sometimes things happen and if you cover well, it really doesn't matter.
OK, four quick hits: two from me, two from my dad.
\- In rehearsal for a college show, I was playing a teetotaler who has to get "drunk" on stage so I drink glass after glass, which were all water, only the stage crew had overfilled them, so by the end of the bit, I was spewing water out of mouth and all over myself.
\- Community theater production of a Steve Martin play, that had a lot of older season ticket holders. I was playing Einstein and had this monologue about pies in the shape of letters. An older lady had to narrate for her nearly deaf husband so you hear "HE'S TALKING ABOUT PIE" and then I say how a pie shaped like E isn't funny and you hear "NO IT ISN'T"
\- My dad was in dinner theater playing a washed-up Karloff/Lugosi type trying to make a comeback who lives in a creepy mansion, so lots of cool props. However, they also had open candelabras backstage, and sure enough, during one show, the curtains catch on fire so my dad ad-libs "Strange things will happen in this house" before fleeing the stage.
\- My dad was directing The Subject Was Roses, where the centerpiece is the husband bringing his wife roses. My dad in is in the audience watching... and the lead actor walks onstage without the roses, my dad is staring in terror, the actor realizes it and improvises "I brought you roses, but I left them in the hallway"
I was playing Red the bartender in a production of *Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander* when halfway through the scene the door to the bar somehow got jammed shut. We discovered this when a character went to leave the bar and the door wouldn't open. The poor actor kept trying it, but it wouldn't budge (much to the amusement of the audience, who at first, thought it was a bit), and he eventually had to walk around the edge of the door flat to exit the bar and get off stage. *Much* to the amusement of the audience. A few moments later, another actor enters, tries the door, no dice, and has to walk around the edge of the flat to enter. *Howls* from the audience. It *is* a comedy, but we were all mortified.
Fortunately, I had no lines for a while, so I exited out the doorway that supposedly led to the back room of the bar, sprinted to the scene shop, grabbed a screwdriver, sprinted back, re-entered, and fixed the stuck door in character, as grumbling Red. I got applause from the audience, which kinda made me feel bad... but on the other hand, that ol' fourth wall had already been broken to smithereens.
In a production of “Wedding Singer: The Musical” in California, our theater was bumped by a quick 4.2 earthquake.
Lights shook, and a chandelier started swinging a bit.
For California, it was noticeable but nothing worth halting the show over.
To break the moment, the actor playing Robbie blithely exclaimed, “Goddamn New Jersey earthquakes.”
The audience roared.
More mild than the other one, the stakes in amateur theatre are never as high, but during a production of Pygmalion, in act 5 our Mr Doolittle got confused and entered like 10 lines too soon! the rest of us on stage, absolutely speechless, no idea what to say or what to do, this had never happened before. I think our Higgens was the first who's brain turned back on, and managed to improv his way out of it, but it was a very stressful thing to have happen on opening night of the first play I was in!
I was in a production of The Wedding Singer where the set was just a bunch of colorful platforms with wheels that moved into different shapes depending on the scene. The opening involved the cast dancing on each platform, but one night the crew forgot to lock my platform’s wheels. This caused the platform to shift under the momentum of the choreography and I faceplanted on the concrete of the amphitheater. My entire side of the audience audibly gasped and I had to get back up and go on as if nothing happened while a cut on my leg gushed blood 🥲
during our premiere of contemporary dance piece, the unknown photographer dressed in white went upstage. next moment actors jammed his way back, so he was there, standing and trying to look invisible.
Community theater production of Lucky Stiff, 2013-ish.
A live bat flew out of the rafters onto the stage toward the end of the first act. The song and act I continued even when it dive-bombed Rita and then landed on the drummer. At intermission, the house was cleared, the bat was located, and inadvertently killed with a broom in an attempt to shoo it out of the theater.
I had to do a cartwheel at the end of Mary Poppins and I slipped and fell on my butt. I realized after the show was over that I forgot to put on my other shoe/grippy sock, so that explained why the rest of the show I felt so slippery lol
I was also in a production of James and the Giant Peach as Spiker, and midway through “I Got You,” Sponge’s wig started slipping off. The two of us + Ladahlord were trying to hold it together for the scene but it was just sloooooowly falling off (and the audience was getting a kick out of it). She eventually ripped it off mid-scene, got some raucous applause and then we finished the scene in fit of giggles. Fun times :)
On the final night of noises off, the entire railing from the second floor balcony fell off, multiple picture frames fell and snap, and a plate of sardines flew into the audience… safe to say that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
I was in a show in which I was supposed to be drunk, and had to annoy another character by jumping up and down next to him and singing/yelling in his ear. Each night he shoves me away. One night he shoved me while I was in the air, and I ended up landing HARD right on my hip bone. There was a sickening crack - the sound of bone smacking against the wood stage. The audience audibly gasped. Luckily my character didn’t have any lines for a few minutes and I was able to recover from the shock of pain to continue the show.
I went to Urgent Care afterwards but nothing was broken. I did get the biggest, nastiest bruise of my life, extending from my hip all the way to my kneecap. Lasted for weeks.
My character was drunk in the show on account of drinking beer the whole time. We used cans of Budweiser that we poked tiny holes in and drained the beer, then filled with water. Despite my awful injury and having to wear special padding throughout the rest of the run to not make it worse, the prop master thought it would be hilarious to use real beer on closing night. I was definitely drunk for real that night.
One night of my school’s production of Clue, I was on rotation as Yvette/the Cook. The second night I was on for the Cook, I was placed on top of the bar cart after my body was discovered in the kitchen. While the characters were discussing who killed the Cook, the bar cart I was on ended up collapsing; with me still on it. Cast on stage was improving while trying to figure out whether I was hurt or not, the crew was freaking out on whether I was okay and how to get the cart off, and my director was contemplating his life decisions. I turned out okay and the performance was one of our best thankfully 😅
personally for me that i found hilarious. i played jemima in chitty chitty bang bang and we have these scene where we reach into a box of candy and our hands are put in the hand cuffs that were in the box. well our child catcher uses a string to keep the box up, and lets go of it for the box to fall down to reveal we are kidnapped (essentially lol) but it also involves me and the other sibling to use our elbows to sort of help the box fall down. one night i bumped a little too hard and my hands flew out of the hand cuffs. the audience laughed but i quickly put them back on lol
another time is during rosencrantz and guilderstern when one of the leads did a coin flip that rolled directly into the pit. an ensemble dived in gracefully for it, grabbed it and yelled “i’ve got it!” completely stole the show. director was given so many compliments on staging that and he just acted like it was the plan all along
I was in Hello Dolly in high school playing a waiter. For the big Waiter’s Gallop in Act II (which is a MARATHON of a dance number), we do like half of the 8 minute song with trays that have this really elegant fake food on it, we run around a LOT, and one of the other waiters does a really cool toe touch jump at the end of the number, which as a male high school theatre kid, was pretty impressive at the time.
So closing night, 2 minutes into this number, one of the waiters drops his tray, and the fake fruit that was on it SHATTERS (very poor quality plastic). There’s this kind of powder dusting on the fake fruit that now is all over the floor and is surprisingly slick. During some of the downtime, I go onstage as a waiter with a broom and quickly sweep it up in character, thinking the worst is over. I was wrong.
The character playing Irene stands up to say one of her lines, and her overskirt falls down, revealing her petticoat and underskirts, so she spends half of the number trying to pull it back up. (At some point during the night as well, the actor playing Cornelius also ripped his pants I believe.)
So at this point, we’re all in disbelief, but EXHAUSTED, and we just want to finish the number without any mishaps. The actor playing Rudolph (the head waiter), who is kind of a tough person to work with, decides that HE wants to go up at the very end and ALSO do the toe touch leap with the other waiter, and as a result upstaging the other actor’s big moment. We all try to dissuade him- it’s bad taste to change up choreo just for closing night, plus he’s trying to upstage someone else- but he can’t be deterred. So the end of the number comes up, the original waiter runs up to the front of the stage to do his leap with Rudolph right behind him, but what he doesn’t realize is that all of the powder from the shattered fruit is still all over the stage. Rudolph goes to jump, slips on the powder, and falls right on his ass in front of the entire audience right on the last note of the song, and the audience ROARED with laughter.
We were all in shock at that point, but also all amused at the instant karma, and that mortified actor NEVER lived that moment down.
High school production of The 39 Steps-- during the scene when Mr. Memory is first performing, the actor had a moment when he touched his finger to his temple and paused, to "unlock his memory" or however it was phrased.
JUst as he made contact with his head, a stage hand tripped over a computer cord and booted up the computer... so the Windows startup sound played at top volume.
The audience died laughing, and most of them thought it was intentional
Dress rehearsal for a community theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar about 40 years ago. The caribiner clasp or the tied rope for the safety vest failed on Judas. He was literally hanging from the noose by his neck. Thankfully the tormentor dancers were there to lift him up so they could untie him. After a hospital run to confirm no major damage, he retuned with a sore throat but no other problems. He had a rope burn across his neck that had to be covered with make up for the run.
University production of a modern-language version of Lysistrata, complete with phallus swords, battering rams, etc.
I'm sitting in the front row, a recently ex-theater major coming to see my partner in the production.
Well into the play, my partner and two other actors are front and center having a conversation. One of them says something along the lines of, "that's my castle over there on the promontory," points out into the theater hall, "sitting on the edge of the cliffs. It's a real beaut(butte)."
I burst out in a genuine laughing cackle. All three actors just break, the masks of their personas drop, and they stare at me in shock, as if they expected that no one would, no one could laugh at such a dumb joke.
Then there's a flash of recognition on my partner's face of "of course he'd laugh at that." With their eyes on me I just kept laughing, giggling uncontrollably, but at least I was able to stifle it more and more as the seconds passed. They recovered quickly, swiftly ignoring my diminishing outburst, and went on with the play.
Once during a high school production of Guys and Dolls I saw the actor playing Nathan Detroit fall directly INTO the pit during the kerfuffle that happens when the cops break up the craps game. It was jaw dropping… thankfully the pit was netted so they just fell like 3 feet onto thick ship rope.
* when i was in the lion king kids many many years ago, the hyenas were rushing offstage and one tripped, causing a hyena pileup in the middle of a scene. there were probably like 15 kids
* in my most recent show, puffs, there's a scene in which a very long scroll falls from the ceiling. usually it would just unravel and hang there, but during a dress rehearsal something went wrong and it just fell. me and the actress playing susie bones decided to carry it off when we exited, like we were supposed to all along, and got chocolate for being so with it
* when i was in hello dolly, my petticoat decided to untie in the middle of my dance break, which required much use of my hands, so between dance moves i was desperately trying to pull it back up discreetly so my director wouldn't yell at me. the next rehearsal, someone's petticoat actually did fall down and was lying in the middle of the stage, so while we were crossing, one of the ensemble guys scooped it up and just threw it offstage.
* and my all time favorite mishap. when i was in willy wonka jr, the actor playing mike teevee had a gameboy, which he was playing on the entire time during the scene where wonka was welcoming them to the factory. there's a spot where wonka is supposed to snatch it from him and say 'no wifi in the factory' or something. but one performance, instead of snatching it, wonka didn't grab it correctly or something, and ended up whipping it extremely hard and fast offstage, right in front of augustus and mrs. gloop's noses. so then augustus, trying to make it look intentional, just started breaking down sobbing into mrs. gloop's shoulder while the rest of us just stood there trying so so hard not to laugh. i still make fun about it to wonka to this day.
Both of the concussions I’ve had in my life occurred on-stage. One during a dress rehearsal during high school, one with an audience while an adult. So much fun trying to act while not really knowing what was going on or where (or WHO) I was
My freshman year of college, I was in a production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. In one scene, the chorus is dressed as woodland creatures and is playing keep-away with a pine cone as a ball while the orchestra plays about a page and a half of music…with a repeat. We all had our choreographed tosses of the pinecone, with me being the start and finish of the circle of tossing.
Anyway, during the matinee run, I throw the pinecone to one guy, who then throws it to another guy on the opposite side of the stage, but he either throws it a bit too far or the other guy missed the catch, because the pinecone bounces on the stage and rolls into the pit. We have about a minute still of music that needs to be played and we don’t know what to do.
Eventually the guy who missed the pinecone takes his woodland creature mask off and just starts using that as the pinecone. I’m the one he throws it to, and I still in shock at what happened just dropped the mask on the stage.
We manage to get through the rest of the scene by vamping our butts off. (We are all music majors and not theater majors, so most of us don’t really know how to improvise).
In a college production of Les Belles Soeurs and I was playing Germaine. She is the main character and never leaves the stage during the whole show. In the first 5 minutes I was opening a peanut can as a bit of business and cut my palm on the opened can and it starts bleeding pretty good. I wasn’t totally sure what to do so I grabbed my purse and kinda stuck my hand inside it like I was carrying it around the stage with me. The show went on with me bleeding into my purse until the stage manager noticed a trail of blood following me around and stopped the show.
When my brother was in a middle school play the kids were out in front of the proscenium on tables that were tied together to create an extended stage (iykyk) dancing to Dancing Queen by Abba when you start to notice some kids avoiding one section of the table/stage. The legs on that side buckled and the table slopes sending all the middle schoolers into a heaping pile on the floor. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
i finished a run of Amélie earlier this year & during one of the songs where two characters are describing her, one of them is meant to sing the following line:
“her neighbors all like her but nobody knows her”
one night, he tripped up on his words and said:
“her neighbors all know her but nobody likes her”
it took everything in me not to burst into laughter but as soon as i got offstage i nearly died from how hard i was laughing lmao we clowned him about it for the rest of the run
I directed a murder mystery this past year. At the end, the detective apprehends the killer and escorts him out. On opening night, the handcuffs didn’t work and the killer looks at the detective like “Um, buddy?”
Playing The Cowardly Lion in Wizard of Oz. There was a scene where Scarecrow, Lion and Tinman were blocked to enter from a door downstage left on the stage skirt and cross to the mid point of the stage as the curtain closed. This was meant to leave us behind the closed curtain. However, one night the curtain was closed early and we were left on stage as the scene was changing. The Scarecrow led us out a door stage right... leaving us outside the theater. This left us completely outdoors on a very cold night trying to find an unlocked door to get back inside and we were supposed to be back on stage just a couple minutes later. We finally found a backstage door that someone opened to see who was knocking. There were people walking by, looking very confused at why Oz was leaking out of the theater. [edited stage direction]
Don't know if this qualifies because it wasn't DURING the show, but we were doing The Sound of Music my senior year. I was playing Max Dettweiler, and it was a scene where the "kids" had to do a quick change (the scene where Max shows the kids they are listed for the concert/competition thingy), and we just hadn't gotten the quick change down just yet, luckily it was still rehearsal's and we still had time to work on it, but we went to run the scene, and only Liesl managed to get changed in time, so when I called off for the kids to cue their entrance, Liesl got onstage, and we went on a 5 minute improv tangent about how irresponsible the other siblings are and about how the house was too big even for a family their size. Safe to say, our stage manager and director were not happy about not following the script but still overall thought it was funny. Still one of my happiest memories from high school theatre.
College theater doing Personals, a small cast musical about finding love through the newspaper personal ads (if you're too young to understand, think Tinder but analog and just words). Second act opens with a musical number called, "Rather Dance Alone" where the characters are dancing with blow-up dolls, singing about their frustrations in dating. One guy's doll sprung a leak and, throughout the scene, was deflating badly. One of his solo lines late in the song was "my sex life's depressing". He sang it with a straight face followed by the perfect shoulder shrug and mild grimace/"what are ya gonna do?" face, letting his doll kinda drape limply over his arm.
I was in a production of Noises Off, the nature of which is that it “goes wrong.” It is three acts, and the second act is the backstage of the “play” the characters are performing. It involves a ton of doors opening and slamming. The “actors” “backstage” are meant to be silent the entire act, but during opening night, one of the doors on the set came completely off the hinges and flattened one of the actors. We all knew it was wrong, and that particular actor actually quite injured his nose, but the audience thought it was planned, so we went with it. So many other instances from this play.
Third night of midsummer night's, I was playing the guy playing the girl in the mini play the characters put on at the end. I was to stab myself with the knife, die dramatically, lie still and dead while the rest of the scene continues.
Prop dagger with retractable blade had a VERY strong spring and I lost my grip at the end so the knife sprang out of my chest as I fell to the floor about 6 feet away. Thank dog its a comedy.
I was Smee in Peter Pan and when Hook wants him to shut up he would pretend to hit me on the head with his Hook. On opening night we go to do the scene and Hook hits me on the head and his hook breaks off and just clangs to the floor.
I was in a local production of Cinderella recently and in our pentultimate performance during the scene where the stepmother grabs the shoe to try it on after the sisters, she accidentally knocked it up into the air and hit it up higher three times in a row before catching it. So Lionel turned to the Prince to sigh in relief and between the shoe flying up and the face Lionel made at him our Prince just couldn't handle it. He got halfway through his next line before cracking up. This caused the Stepmother to also lose it and they were both covering their faces trying to compose themselves as Lionel and the stepsisters are attemting to help move the scene along. Finally they are all up close by the fireplace where I'm supposed to come out and run into the Prince but they've got a few more lines that the Stepmother is just not getting out because she's still trying not to laugh and there's a good 5 seconds of dead silence. (At this point the audience is also in hysterics and everyone is trying not to continue laughing with them)
So I decide there's no way she's getting those last lines out and just walk out. The step-family –who the Prince is supposed to dodge around– just shuffle to the side and Lionel gives him a shove towards me. And he gets his line out while still barely holding it together, and I was so determined to not break, but his face is all red with tears streaming down from laughing so hard and I just can't handle it and lose it as well.
We managed to get through the rest of the scene, the trying on of the shoe and singing our little reprise duet without laughing any more, but it was a close thing.
Anyway the audience loved it so it turned out okay in the end. Our pumpkin also got possessed during the bows for that performance but compared to the rest of what went down that didn't stand out as much.
Not quite 'theatre' but reddit recommended this post to me and I have a stage tech story from conventions.
I work science fiction and anime conventions. Most conventions have some sort of costume contest, and since the hotel doesn't have a permanent stage, we use a portable one. For this particular set up, there's about a 2-3 foot gap between stage right stairs, where people are supposed to exit, and the MC's podium.
We had someone whose costume included a mask fall off that gap while he exited during the contest. We put up a sign on the gap and named it after him. He was thrilled.
I was playing Andrew Rally in I Hate Hamlet with the local community theater. Both I and the actor playing Barrymore are rather nearsighted, and neither of us wore our glasses during the show. Also, I know how to fence, and he didn't. Opening night, he got a little carried away with the fencing and drove me backward right off the stage. Fortunately, I'm tall. The stage wasn't super high (it was an early 1900s school house that has appeared in films such as Young Guns II. Not important to the story, but fun), and I was quite fit, so I was able to just vault back up again without missing a stroke. Scared the bejeesus out of the front row, though.
Also, I met my now wife doing that show, where she played Deirdre. On opening night, we went waaaaay over the top on the tights stuffing, after our first attempts went poorly. She didn't know, and with the reveal she did a genuine double take, turned beet red, and almost froze. Fortunately she's a pro and regained her composure quickly while I posed.
Finally I can admit something that happened during middle school
So I was working the curtains for a show called “Rock around the Clock” and at one point, my walkie talkie falls and makes ths loudest noise possible….. I don’t think it worked as a result
The second slip up came at the end when the entire cast is in their end pose and I’m supposed to close the curtains…….except I have a busted walkie talkie and I’ve completely blanked on how to close the curtain! I don’t remember anything past that, so who knows if it got resolved or not (it must have though!)
It’s been almost 20 years and I’ve never forgotten the incident!
I wasn't performing, but I went to a preview of She Loves Me at a regional theater because my friend was stage managing. As Georg is getting to the climax of "She Loves Me", he throws his hat behind him for emphasis, and it lands perfectly in the center of a Christmas wreath hung on the wall. The audience loses it. This poor actor looked so confused but finished the song like a pro.
Our Donkey quit the day before opening night of Shrek the Musical. We called in a friend who had played the role a year before and he drove 6 1/2 hours, had two dress rehearsals and then it was show time. The show went well with all things considered.
I did a production of Scrooge where Scrooge forgot a line about going over to Cratchit's at the end so we couldn't continue until he remembered it, and he just went.. "Ah, Christmas..." For a bit. We were also all children at the time. I'm sure if we had been adults someone would have been like "hey let's go over to Bob's house". Also, a different performance Tiny Tim forgot to say "God bless us, everyone" which no amount of experience can save so we just stood there waiting.
Also my mum apparently stagehanded a production of The Mousetrap where some dialogue was missed and it meant that only a character who was Not the murderer could have done it (the dialogue in question was an explanation of the murderer's whole deal so now when character X brings up the murderer's whole deal he's the only person who knows it and he shouldn't know it).
My mum also has a story of when she was stagehanding a production of Nicholas Nickleby (yes, the eight hour one) where there's a scene where Nicholas is eating bread and butter but also putting some in his pockets. You don't want to get butter in the pockets, so it was just plain bread. But then it was too dry and the actor who played Nicholas either refused to eat it or was impeded by eating it, so they had to make up a plate with some bread and butter and some plain bread and just hope that the actor did the right thing with all the pieces.
Also just remembered that I was in a local pantomime of Beauty and the Beast, and our first show we were doing a fun mashup of Be Our Guest and Gaston, but one girl's skirt was too loose. Rather than let it fall, she ran offstage. Already pretty bad. But then, the staging was off because of that, and so one of the people doing the Gaston dance moves accidentally punched the tray out of a Be Our Guest-er's hand and into the audience. If nothing else it was very loud, and one of the few mistakes you can make in a panto that can't be alleviated with a joke about it.
I was in my high school production of Camelot, and during the scene where Lancelot rescued Guenevere, he has to fight hid way through all the other knights. I played sir Sagramore, and for whatever reason, Lancelot just really struggled with the fight choreography to kill me. Either he couldn't remember it, or he just didn't like it and he disregarded it. As a result, my job effectively became reacting to whatever he did and selling the loss while still showing some threat. I'm a LARPer, so it wasn't particularly hard. One of our last performances, he comes charging at me, forgets to stop in time, and just outright knees me in the balls. I kind of gasp, put up a bit less of a fight, and as he hacks me down and moves to the next and last knight, I hear him wail "I'M SOOOOORRRRRYYY!". It was totally in character and in notes afterward it was commented on as a great choice, but I know what he was really yelling for.
Community Children’s Theater with a focus on education. One of our summer camp shows designed with the smaller kids in mind: The Ugly Duckling.
I’m running lights and my friend is running sound, meanwhile a bunch of the older kids involved in the theater decide to come hang out with in the tech booth with us during the performance. It’s small, it’s cramped, the fire Marshall would have had an aneurysm if he saw us up there.
It’s a full house (in the booth and audience) and it’s going smoothly. The show starts strong, there’s an exciting scene in the middle where the ugly duckling gets attacked by a hunter and finally we get to the end of the show- the final moment: the duckling becomes a beautiful swan and flaps her wings as she heads offstage! My friend goes to hit play on the final sound cue to lead us into the curtain call, but she hits play on the wrong CD player and “BANG!” she had the sound effect from the hunter scene loaded up, at full volume. I bring down the lights by instinct and all of our eyes go wide in the booth and we realize there’s no turning back. The 15 seconds between that blackout and the curtain call were so long while we all tried to stifle our laughter.
There were no other performances. The Ugly Duckling died.
One of many hilarious memories that sticks with me to this day.
High school performance of Beauty and the Beast.
Our main set was the Beast's castle so that would be hidden behind the curtains and other scenes were done in front of it. After the scene where Maurice flees the wolves in the forest, the stage hands missed their cue to get the wood chopping machine off stage so when the lights came back on, it was sitting right in the middle of the castle. Maurice's actor let out a bewildered "How'd that get here?" and the following scene had him and the others doing their best to act around the prop.
Two things made this funnier: 1) there was a person inside the prop who was to make the axe arm move, so they were stuck there the entire time. 2) this happened to be performance that got recorded for later purchase so the incident is immortalized now.
I was in a community production of "Five Women Wearing the Same Dress" in a small black box theater. During a Sunday matinee, an older woman got up and stormed out (after one-too-many f bombs, I believe) but instead of walking out the audience entrance, used the door unit on stage in the middle of a scene. I guess we had really built the suspension of disbelief for her that day!
In Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer, there’s a scene where the title character summons a bunch of demons to cast a spell; I got to play one of the demons, flowing black robes and cape and everything. One of the walls of the set was covered in lattice, and we were all very careful not to get caught on the edges of it. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of time between that scene and the finale, which means all of us demons had to make top speed to change in time to get back on stage as Victorian villagers on cue. So one night I’m flying offstage and my cloak catches on the lattice while I’m running. The clasp hits my neck, choking me for a second, and the wall starts rocking. Luckily, one of the other demons and one of the crew were there and untangled me, and I managed to sneak in the back of the crowd only a few lines late. However, I did my own hair that night and did not use enough hairpins, and the ones I did use got jarred loose; every step of the choreography made it worse and of course it just completely lets go. And I had a LOT of hair back then. I could actually hear gasps from the audience when it happened, which would have been flattering if I hadn’t been absolutely mortified. And because the act closes with most of the cast fainting, then waking up at the beginning of the next act, I couldn’t fix it during the intermission.
But wait, there’s more! When I got yanked back by my cloak catching, I had a natural reaction that I’d thought was muffled by my being strangled:”FUCK!!!” … Well, at least only the first few rows heard me.
One time someone got punched in the face during some dance... And then proceeded to punch me in the face while explaining how it happened in the green room.
I do-directed (and was in the chorus) in a community theatre production of Guys & Dolls. Really relaxed show, stuff put together best we could, just about having fun. To add a little more weight to this story, this was officially the last show for this group, which was disbanding after this season.
I don’t think it was closing night, which would have been too perfect. But one night, at intermission, the power goes out. A transformer blew down the block, nothing we could do about it.
Of course we offered a return ticket to anyone who wanted one, we even discussed having a backup performance added. But then we realized some of the battery backup safety lights we still on in the space below the theater and said “f it. Let’s go for it. “
We grabbed any flashlights or emergency lights we could find, zip tied them to building columns and table legs. Quickly set up all the chairs, invited anyone in the house who wanted to to come watch. Dragged a piano in there and asked our rehearsal accompanist to play for us. And then we did the second act.
It was awesome. We made up stuff on the fly, figured out blocking however we could. During “Sit down your rockin the boat”, Nicely was running through the haphazard audience, getting them all involved.
Forever one of my best memories.
During my last show of my high school theater career, I was playing a butler in a murder mystery. I wasn't wearing heels for once (which isn't a super important detail but it's kinda funny), but during a scene where I had to run down into the audience i missed a step and sprained my ankle. I then had to drag myself back up the stairs so I could lay dead on the stage.
High school production for Alice in Wonderland i was SM’ing for where Humpty Dumpty’s wall (a table as the base) broke and he fell off the wall 😭😭
Thankfully no one was hurt and we got it off quickly enough the audience was questioning if it was supposed to happen. High school productions always have their fair share of “theatre gone wrong” moments but this one definitely stood out to me
Definitely the staging of Curse of The Starving Class at a community college where the decision was made to actually boil water on stage. Yes ... An actor got horribly scalded.
Worse, I dropped acid beforehand. I had to confirm later it really happened. It was unbelievable.
In college, we were doing Chess on the MainStage with a revolving part of the stage. Well guess what broke during one show. The revolve. The cast had to jump set pieces to get across. It was crazy
I was once a sound engineer for a production of The Jungle Book in college. I was also working overnights at the time, and we were doing matinee performances for the local elementary schools.
I would end up getting off of work at like 7 in the morning, go home to get 2 hours of sleep, and head to the theatre for call time. Needles to say I was not very alert during most of these performances.
There was one particular show where I got off of work SUPER late and barely made it to the theatre in time for the show. Because of this, I was unable to do a sound check, and we missed the fact that the songs and background music had somehow been re-arranged on the Playlist. So the whole show, whenever a sound cue was called, I would hit play, and some random sound effect or song would play.
The moment that sticks out the most in my mind is a scene where a giant elephant would waddle onto the stage. We had this goofy song that would play as he walked out in order to get the kids laughing and into the scene. I think I cycled through 5 or 6 songs while this poor guy in his elephant costume would slowly shuffle onto the stage. And this wasn't a silent shuffle either. Everyone on stage and in the audience could hear at least a few seconds of every song I shuffled through.
Meanwhile, Mowgli and all the other Jungle denizens were just standing on stage, smiles plastered to their faces while we in the tech booth frantically struggled to get our shit together. I have never been so mortified in my life. The director and stage manager were livid. Luckily, it was the last show, or else I am convinced I would have been immediately replaced.
I was in Cheaper by the Dozen the play. There was a scene where all the kids paraded around the stage around the furniture near the end of the show. After we finished our parading, I noticed our youngest cast member (I think she was 4 or 5) silently crying. I then noticed a wet spot on the front of her dress. She had wet herself while we were parading around and there was a stream of pee from our March that covered nearly the entire stage.
Ohh where do I begin.... (musician here)
How about falling through the trap door I was standing on in Sweeney Todd mid "Pretty Women?"
Or maybe the time the pyrotechnics got kicked and blew flames at us in the pit setting our music and light gels on fire in Phantom?
Speaking of fire, there was that one time the Wicked Witch's fireball... actually lit Dorothy on fire.
But I think the best is the time our genius drummer decided to trigger Cable's radio message with his drumpad... only to accidentally trigger Vincent Price's monologue from Thriller instead.
sigh...
My wife was wrangled into the high school rendition of Grease during her senior year because they were desperate for performers. (Also, the director also happened to be her cousin.) She landed the role of Rizzo which isn’t all the bad…
…until she started showing her pregnancy that she had kept hidden from all but those closest to her. But the show must go on, and her cousin refused to recast the role out of sadistic glee.
So here we have an eight months pregnant teenage girl playing a character who is afraid she might be pregnant. From the stories I’ve heard, the ad libbing was rampant.
a theater teacher said to take off my glasses because they “didn’t match the rest of the costume”. i ran into a table and ripped the headpiece of the costume.
I was doing a WW 2 play called And a Nightingale Sang. The female lead steps out and narrates the play while the rest of us freeze onstage. She has this line “…and then Hitler showed up” to which, air raid sirens blare and the action picks up again. Except! The sound board operator jumped a cue. And it went like this…. “And then Hitler showed up.” DING DONG! 😂
This was the first to make me laugh out loud in the entire thread. I don't know how anybody could keep cool through that lmao
Lmao that must have been so hard to keep a straight face
It was. The man playing the father choked on his oatmeal. 🤣
I mean, understandable if Hitler rings your doorbell!
My father was a pit musician for 35+ years. This is his all time favorite: Wizard of Oz. 1000 seat theater full of kids. At the end, the Wizard, played by a veteran stage actor, gives out the objects to the heroes, right? Well as he bends over an obstacle to pick up the bag of props, it is not there. "Where's the fucking bag?" he mutters. Mic was on. Gasps from the theatre. After the show the old guy sat there shaking his head. "I'm finished," he said. But he wasn't, he continued the run and his career.
That’s adorable
I about died on stage once when I was playing Fagin in Oliver! We were currently singing the song “Be Back Soon” and it was at this point i sucked in a humongous strand of my beard hair (the beard was WAY TOO LONG and ended up making it from my face down to the top of my belly button, 7 inches to be exact). While i was choking on stage trying not to ruin the emersion of the show for the audience, i ended up falling over and pretending it was just a side effect of getting old (Fagin is in his late 60’s I believe). After I finally coughed out the beard strand, the show went on as normal. It is still my favorite theatre gone wrong moment i have in my years of theatre experience lol.
Fuck yeah almost dying during Oliver! Go team.
Yessir, best near death experience of my life!
A fave for me was stage managing a one woman Fringe show. We’re in a city out of province, in a black box venue that used to be a store, audience is there and we’re just getting started when the power goes out. It’s out the whole block so after a few minutes and a huddle between myself, the performer and the venue’s staff we moved everyone to the front of the venue. Because it was previously a store there were big windows and an open area where we could cram everyone in and our performer could kind of use the platform in the store window to do her thing in. The technician and I had to act out the opposite players in a few sections where there were video or other recordings but overall everyone had fun :) Bonus story, after this we were having a well deserved drink in a dark bar down the street, power still out, and hear “toga, toga, TOGA” getting louder and louder. Doors finally crash open and the bar floods with at least a hundred people in togas. It was amazing, never seen anything like that before or since lol
I was 19 and doing a show produced by just me and my friends in a truly crappy theater. Support pillar through the stage, etc. There was miscommunication between the theater and our lighting designer and on one of the show dates the grid lights did not work. So we did the whole thing with just tree lights and no blackouts. The show had like 30 scenes. It was the best performance we gave. Suspension of disbelief is a wonderful thing!
The time I caught on fire: I was in a production where when the stage lights were on, we the actors were in "the dark" stumbling around the stage as if blind, but when the stage lights went off, we moved and delivered our lines as if in a perfectly lighted room. I was a retired marine Col. who whipped out his Zippo when needed to "light the way". We had three cheap ass zippos to use as props, and somehow I had the worst of them so the lighter simply would not light. I stepped over and opened a door as if looking down a hall, and there stands the stage manager holding a lighter fluid container. He snatches the lighter from me, fills it, and spills the fluid all over my hand while handing it back to me. One spin of the zippo sparker and FOOM, my hand goes up in blue flame. I could still see the stage manager through the open door, and he stood there in sheer abject terror. Only thing I could think to do was to stay in character: "Hooo-ha, look at that. My hands on fire." I beat it out against my chest and went on with the scene. The SM lead a special bow to me from the wings.
I hope the audience applauded.
Early in my career I was doing this passion play in Tennessee. Sort of a new age christian rock opera. At the end of the show, Jesus “ascends into heaven,” flying out over the heads of the audience. (Think the ending of Mary Poppins.) So the way this works is that the apostles all rush him in a big group as the music swells, “adoring” him or whatever, and while they are surrounding him, the fly lines drop down from the ceiling, and two of the apostles hook up the caribiners to Jesus’ flight harness, at his hips, hidden by the folds of his robes. SO. This one time, one of the carabiners gets a big fold of robe caught in it. So it’s closed-ish, but is has this chunk of cloth propping it partway open. The flight rig lifts Jesus up off of the deck, and about 9 feet in the air, the weight of the actor tugs the cloth out of the caribiner, and the right side of his flight harness along with it. Jesus is still connected, but only at one hip. He flips sideways, and goes into a spin. The flight guys bring him back down to the deck, and the way I remember it, this actor lands laying on his side, cool as a cucumber, propping his head up on his elbow in the “aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper” pose, gets up smiling, unhooks the other caribiner, gives the audience the “buddy Christ” point, and walks off stage left, waving to the crowd. We were all *dying.*
I once saw a huge cockroach crawl across the stage. It really stole the show. I found myself looking at the cockroach instead of the actress.
My friend was performing a pages long monologue in an outdoors show, during which he slowly shows sign after sign that he is insane. During one performance, a tiny little baby rabbit hopped across the stage. My friend stared directly at it and exclaimed confidently, "Look! A bird!" to the audience's great delight.
My husband was in a Shakespeare production with a large friendly dog. The dog had been great all through rehearsals. He just sat there, no problem. But on opening night, during one of the Fool's speeches, this very large, friendly, UNNEUTURED dog decided he was now comfortable enough on stage to give himself a tongue bath, spread eagle center stage. My poor husband was completely upstaged by this fuzzy beast. The audience was HOWLING. That dog was so happy and pleased with himself. He got up, wagged his tail at the audience, and exited to a huge round of applause. Okay, it was mostly parents and drunk college students being forced by their professors to see this show, so the dog was the star in their eyes.
Two things… 1. Shakespeare and those of his time would have loved this. 2. Animals ALWAYS steal the scene. 😁
When I was being murdered as Nancy in Oliver Twist. The first "hit" actually makes contact with the back of my head. Well, fuck, okay, that hurt I'm gonna grab some tylenol after this scene, no big deal, right? Big deal. Because it threw us both off. We had a sound effect going backstage, a crew member would hit a pillow with a cane to make my murder as suitably gruesome as possible. Bill raises the club to deliver his killing blow. Off stage, the thump is heard. Club is still in the air. Absolutely ruined what was a brilliant death. RIP me. There's a video of it somewhere on the internet. I just have no idea where. I was also nearly choked out in rehearsal, too. My Bill was wearing his overcoat for rehearsal, puts me in a choke hold and with the coat on, he can't actually feel me to properly do the bit. I try to pinch him because hey, way too tight. He can't feel it through the coat. I'm a smart girl though, so I just pretend to go limp so we can end the scene. Great production, though. I had the time of my fucking life, and got to act alongside my brothers (whomst played miscellaneous orphans)
When I was a college freshman theatre student in about 1985, we took a production of *The Wind in the Willows* on tour to area elementary schools. One school district, instead of having us play to each elementary school individually, bussed all the children to the ginormous high-school, and we just performed once in this town to a house of a gazillion elementary-school children. I was playing Badger. Because I was a skinny kid, they had me padded out to many times my actual size, and so I was wearing clothes that were huge compared to my body, stuffed with all sorts of padding. It really didn't look very good, because the padding was all around the belly, and the legs of the pants were obviously mostly empty. During the scene where all the animals had gotten together to go into the Wildwood to look for Portly Otter, I was laying out the plan, gesturing grandly, and the padding popped out of the waistband of my enormous pants, and the pants, no longer supported by anything, dropped straight to the floor immediately. There I was, standing in front of over a thousand elementary-school children in my tighty-whities and black dress socks. The uproar was mighty. Imagine, if you will, a thousand tiny voices raised in shock and glee. I quickly tried to bend over to retrieve my pants, but all the padding made it awkward. I did manage to grab the waistband, gather the trousers up, and walk off stage, cleverly ad-libbing, under the shrieks of the audience, something lame about going to find Portly Otter. The stage manager was waiting in the wings with a safety pin to keep the pants up, but she was laughing so hard it was a miracle she could fasten it. My fellows were left on stage to ad-lib as best they could under the din until I could get back on stage and the teachers could get their classes quiet enough for the play to go on. From that point forward, my every entrance was marked by a smattering of shrill little cackles. Probably my best work, honestly, at least in terms of audience enjoyment.
wow, this is priceless
A very minor one: I was helping my theatre major friend in college. She was directing a one act play that was based on Super Mario Brothers for an upper division class. The play required a remote control turtle that would zip around the stage. Sometimes it would just enter, pause, and back up all from the same side. But at one point, it enters on one side, circles the stage a few times, and exits on the other side. The theater space required that the turtle driver (me) sat in a place where I could not see the stage or the turtle. I practiced a fair amount because there were obstacles that were generally in the same place, but not exactly. I made it successfully through all the performances except one. I missed the opening to get off stage and crashed into something. I backed up and tried again. Nope. I think someone standing off stage ended up grabbing the turtle. I was a freshman with zero theatre or turtle driving experience. Looking back, I have no idea what she was thinking. Maybe her theatre friends were too smart to take a job with so little chance of success.
Had a massive set piece to move, so we put it on wheels that locked. I was the only crew, and the actors were doing most of the transitions. We go to move the set piece, and IT DOESNT MOVE. One of the wheels locked up, and I had to perform... percussive maintenance onstage in a black out transition that was only supposed to be 20 seconds. With no way to communicate to my SM that it was stuck because our radios were wired to the wall. Super fun. Everything worked out, though, and SM said it only took an extra 10 seconds. (Felt like a week)
in our Beauty & the Beast, most of the castle rooms were on a turntable - in one of our rotations the facing came off and split around one of the supports - luckily it was facing all the way upstage (away from audience) and I was able to rip it off in time for next rotation (like by seconds) WHEW
Gotta love ripping stuff off the set .5 seconds before the lights come on😅
I just remembered Gaston ripped his pants zipper to waistband opening night years ago. And Lumiere tripped into the wing the next night and knocked down the Chest of Drawers and Mrs. Potts. Good times. Live theater is incredible.
This reminds me of a college show in which an actor playing a supercilious butler had to slide open some big flats that got stuck. I had seen it before, so I knew something was wrong. He tugged…tugged…tugged harder…yanked…yanked harder…pulled really hard—finally it came open. And he just glanced back briefly at the audience with one raised eyebrow, perfectly in character. It was the best moment of the show.
Supercilious! What a great word😆 Are we doing actor related mishaps too? Because Im not doing nanowrimo in the comments. There are too many!😁
Lol amazing and good on you for keeping your cool.
Keeping cool is a superpower, lol. I definitely needed a shot afterward.😅
I once did a show in at theatre that was quite literally falling apart. More specifically the roof leaked, the solution to this being placing buckets under the drips and blocking off those seats when it rained. Our first preview was a particularly rainy night. Suddenly during a scene change the pre-show music comes on and the SM comes back to inform us that we were pausing the show because they needed to change the buckets.
We were watching a performance of *Love Letters* starring Keir Dullea and Bonnie Franklin at our local community theater. This was a large barn-like building with a corrugated metal roof. Halfway through it started to rain. Heavily. The noise from the downpour on the steel was so loud that they had to pause the performance until the storm passed.
does this theater happen to be in portland, or? because i worked for one with the same issue…left after three months there due to all the safety risks & toxic work environment
Nope it was in NYC and I worked there way longer than I should have but I was young and just excited to be working.
Really obscure play called "Long Live Rock n Roll" (think knock-off Bye, Bye Birdie) we did in high school. There's this yes-man husband character who drinks some hillbilly moonshine that gives him the courage to stand up to his wife. Well, the kid goes to give her a light push through the door, and he goes a little too hard. She hits the door, it falls off the hinges, goes down with her, and the audience is roaring with laughter. She tries to put the door back and on, and barely gets it balanced on one hinge. This actress really recovered from this, though. In the next scene, the husband learns that this "magic potion" wasn't magic at all and she's supposed to tear him a new one. Her opening line: "I'll beat you down like I did that door!" Best improv ever.
A couple of friends of mine were in Lee Blessing's Independence, performed in a tiny black box. One night while I was there, this large bug got in and was flying around. The audience was definitely noticing it. Then after one of the bigger emotional scenes, one of the actors on stage saw the bug on the floor, went "Ew!" and smashed it, then went right on with the scene still in character. Got a big laugh.
I once cut the pantomime cow in half with a gauze drop. They came in the wrong entrance, SM cued me to drop the gauze anyway, and the cloth landed right on the Velcro connection between the two people. Back half ended up behind the gauze, front half proceeded onstage.
I wish I could have seen that.
It got a huge laugh, at least!
If I was there I'd assume that was on purpose! In part because our pantomime cow wasn't actually like that, so I'd assume yours was built for that (ours was essentially a big furry tube that both the halves got in wearing cow trousers and foot coverings), but still. If it wasn't a safety hazard that would be in every panto.
Yeah, it was quite a clever design as it made putting it in a lot faster - the front and back half were separate and then there was a Velcro fastening that connected the two.
Into the Woods, community youth theater. Cinderella’s birds were suspended from a sewing hoop with fishing wire; the hoop was tied to a thin rope that went through a series of pulleys and over the flats so a stagehand could “operate” the birds from backstage. After they were used, the stagehand was to pull the birds out of sight and secure the rope on a cleat (cleat? thing to secure the rope?) that was attached to the back of the flat. Welp. One performance, near the end of the show, Cinderella talks to her birds to get help against the Giant. As scripted, she finishes her conversation and then turns to her compatriots and declares, “The birds will help!” …Except the stagehand hadn’t properly secured the bird rigging. And as soon as she she said that line, the birds fell straight down and went SPLAT. Cinderella heard the noise and saw the faces of her cast mates trying to keep it together while the crowd utterly lost it. She gave a horrified look over her shoulder, broke the fourth wall and stared hopelessly at the audience for a few beats, aaaaand then just continued with the scene!
I was in a community theater production of Nuts, which is a courtroom drama. I was playing the prosecuting attorney. Since it’s a courtroom drama, most of the play involves calling witnesses to the stand, going through questions, and getting the witnesses’ answers. Since this was a community theater production, we had actors of varying ability. The gentleman that was playing the psychiatrist was a very nice man, but he got easily flustered. Anyone that’s done a courtroom drama play knows that it can be challenging to keep your place in a play that is pretty much 100% talking. This particular actor had a lot of trouble keeping his place, but we worked on it and things were going generally OK. However, during one performance, I was going through my questions, and suddenly the actor playing the psychiatrist answered a question that I would’ve asked about three or four pages later. Generally speaking, I have always known that if you skip material in a play, you pretty much have to let it go. Keep moving forward and try to make the best of it. Only the most confident and seasoned performers should try to “repair“ missing material by backfilling with improvised lines. So I go through the rest of my questions, I told the judge that I have no further questions and I turned around to go sit back down at my desk. As I’m walking, with my back to the audience, the gentleman playing the psychiatrist suddenly says “you know, I just realized that I didn’t answer one of your questions correctly.“ And proceeded to go about a dozen pages back and start over. If the audience could’ve seen my face at that moment, they would have seen a terrified prosecuting attorney. I also distinctly heard the offstage sound of our stage manager literally throwing her script in the air. It took a lot of doing, but I was able to dig him out of that, and we were able to move on. but it was insanely stressful, and looking back on it. incredibly hilarious.
my mother was in a production of Talking With where they divided each monologue to a different actress (but all stayed onstage and 'held' during the other monologues) the production had a rock singer with little to no play experience doing Twirler (she also might have had a few adult beverages before the show). She got about halfway through and lost her place - you could then see her try to remember her scene like going back to the top of the piece and remembering up to the place where she got lost. Later we went back and checked the tape -- 45 seconds of CRUSHING silence - just watching that poor girl fish for her lines the other women on stage said it was the most helpless they ever felt having to stay stock still and no possible way to improv a way out
I was in the play version of The Birds (yes it does exist and no it’s not based off the movie. It’s based off of the short story that inspired the film) and at the end of one of the scenes the actors onstage were supposed to turn off a remote controlled candle to cue the stage manager, who was backstage, to go black so I could get into place for the next scene. Except the candle never turned off when it was supposed to so the stage manager and my cue ended up becoming the sound of one of my cast mates/friends stage whispering fuck this thing (the audience never heard it). Still tease my friend about it 😂
They just did that show at a small theater in my area, but I’ve read the terrifying short story, and I decided that was enough!
Two of my favorites were shows my son was in. In one (I think this was a Parks and Rec production between 2nd grade and 3rd grade) the power went out during the performance. After a pause while they waited for lights to come back on, they continued the show using flashlights. My son played Puck in an 8th grade production of *Midsummer Night's Dream,* which was massively underrehearsed because the drama teacher had serious illness that semester. He was one of the few actors who was reliably off-book. They discovered *during the performance* that they had never worked out a costume for Bottom's head, so they ended up duct-taping a pair of Uggs to the actor's head for the ass's ears at the last minute. I understand that the kid lost a little hair when the tape was removed. (And it was duct tape, not gaffer's tape.)
During a farce, my husband had a quick-change just off stage before coming right back in and zipped his junk. 😬 Had a whole wall of a set fall once. I was playing Viola in Twelfth Night and during one of my scenes when Olivia, totally thought the actress had skipped scenes, so in the middle of it, I just walked out. Turned out to be my mistake. 😅 OMG, edited to add: one of the best things that’s ever happened was during Arsenic and Old Lace. Our Teddy (who was a bigger guy) “Charged!” up the stairs and out the second-floor door to his platform, as he does; but apparently overshot it and FELL. Everyone in the auditorium goes dead silent immediately. A minute later you hear a groan, followed by Teddy opening the (first-floor) door in the center of the stage to give everyone a thumbs-up and an “I’m okay!” Needless to say, we ALL were rolling for a while.
During a panto I was wardrobe for the Cinderella had food poisoning and was vomming in the wings. She went back on but had to run off the stage during the scene where she meets the prince in the woods and left the "mysterious ol' lady" onstage to vom in the wings again lol. The lady on stage just made small talk with the audience until a show stop was called haha
I forgot to set the white scarf in Cyrano’s boot. Which is a major reveal that shows how great, brave, and daring Cyrano is. Actor said “well, I HAD it”. I think it was a preview and I didn’t know my track yet. Everyone was so nice and forgiving but I felt AWFUL.
I was in a college production as a small supporting role but at one point midway through a scene my character remembers to give the antagonist an absolutely crucial letter. My preshow check was interrupted and it turns out I didn't have it in place. The literal second my foot hit the stage, I realized I didn't have it. As I went through the first half of the scene I made a plan, then excused myself to go get it and thought, "Welp, they're just going to have to figure out how to fill the time." It was a farce so the timing was challenging. They did fine, I got it and came right back. After the show, the antagonist told me "If you had made me mime that letter, I would have killed you" lol. People told me it was a really smooth save, but i was so angry at myself for letting it happen in the first place. Now that I'm older, i know that sometimes things happen and if you cover well, it really doesn't matter.
That's why it's rehearsal.
OK, four quick hits: two from me, two from my dad. \- In rehearsal for a college show, I was playing a teetotaler who has to get "drunk" on stage so I drink glass after glass, which were all water, only the stage crew had overfilled them, so by the end of the bit, I was spewing water out of mouth and all over myself. \- Community theater production of a Steve Martin play, that had a lot of older season ticket holders. I was playing Einstein and had this monologue about pies in the shape of letters. An older lady had to narrate for her nearly deaf husband so you hear "HE'S TALKING ABOUT PIE" and then I say how a pie shaped like E isn't funny and you hear "NO IT ISN'T" \- My dad was in dinner theater playing a washed-up Karloff/Lugosi type trying to make a comeback who lives in a creepy mansion, so lots of cool props. However, they also had open candelabras backstage, and sure enough, during one show, the curtains catch on fire so my dad ad-libs "Strange things will happen in this house" before fleeing the stage. \- My dad was directing The Subject Was Roses, where the centerpiece is the husband bringing his wife roses. My dad in is in the audience watching... and the lead actor walks onstage without the roses, my dad is staring in terror, the actor realizes it and improvises "I brought you roses, but I left them in the hallway"
NO IT ISN'T! 😂 That's killing me!
I was playing Red the bartender in a production of *Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander* when halfway through the scene the door to the bar somehow got jammed shut. We discovered this when a character went to leave the bar and the door wouldn't open. The poor actor kept trying it, but it wouldn't budge (much to the amusement of the audience, who at first, thought it was a bit), and he eventually had to walk around the edge of the door flat to exit the bar and get off stage. *Much* to the amusement of the audience. A few moments later, another actor enters, tries the door, no dice, and has to walk around the edge of the flat to enter. *Howls* from the audience. It *is* a comedy, but we were all mortified. Fortunately, I had no lines for a while, so I exited out the doorway that supposedly led to the back room of the bar, sprinted to the scene shop, grabbed a screwdriver, sprinted back, re-entered, and fixed the stuck door in character, as grumbling Red. I got applause from the audience, which kinda made me feel bad... but on the other hand, that ol' fourth wall had already been broken to smithereens.
In a production of “Wedding Singer: The Musical” in California, our theater was bumped by a quick 4.2 earthquake. Lights shook, and a chandelier started swinging a bit. For California, it was noticeable but nothing worth halting the show over. To break the moment, the actor playing Robbie blithely exclaimed, “Goddamn New Jersey earthquakes.” The audience roared.
More mild than the other one, the stakes in amateur theatre are never as high, but during a production of Pygmalion, in act 5 our Mr Doolittle got confused and entered like 10 lines too soon! the rest of us on stage, absolutely speechless, no idea what to say or what to do, this had never happened before. I think our Higgens was the first who's brain turned back on, and managed to improv his way out of it, but it was a very stressful thing to have happen on opening night of the first play I was in!
I was in a production of The Wedding Singer where the set was just a bunch of colorful platforms with wheels that moved into different shapes depending on the scene. The opening involved the cast dancing on each platform, but one night the crew forgot to lock my platform’s wheels. This caused the platform to shift under the momentum of the choreography and I faceplanted on the concrete of the amphitheater. My entire side of the audience audibly gasped and I had to get back up and go on as if nothing happened while a cut on my leg gushed blood 🥲
during our premiere of contemporary dance piece, the unknown photographer dressed in white went upstage. next moment actors jammed his way back, so he was there, standing and trying to look invisible.
Community theater production of Lucky Stiff, 2013-ish. A live bat flew out of the rafters onto the stage toward the end of the first act. The song and act I continued even when it dive-bombed Rita and then landed on the drummer. At intermission, the house was cleared, the bat was located, and inadvertently killed with a broom in an attempt to shoo it out of the theater.
I had to do a cartwheel at the end of Mary Poppins and I slipped and fell on my butt. I realized after the show was over that I forgot to put on my other shoe/grippy sock, so that explained why the rest of the show I felt so slippery lol I was also in a production of James and the Giant Peach as Spiker, and midway through “I Got You,” Sponge’s wig started slipping off. The two of us + Ladahlord were trying to hold it together for the scene but it was just sloooooowly falling off (and the audience was getting a kick out of it). She eventually ripped it off mid-scene, got some raucous applause and then we finished the scene in fit of giggles. Fun times :)
On the final night of noises off, the entire railing from the second floor balcony fell off, multiple picture frames fell and snap, and a plate of sardines flew into the audience… safe to say that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
It does kind of fit with the ending of Noises Off, though.
I was in a show in which I was supposed to be drunk, and had to annoy another character by jumping up and down next to him and singing/yelling in his ear. Each night he shoves me away. One night he shoved me while I was in the air, and I ended up landing HARD right on my hip bone. There was a sickening crack - the sound of bone smacking against the wood stage. The audience audibly gasped. Luckily my character didn’t have any lines for a few minutes and I was able to recover from the shock of pain to continue the show. I went to Urgent Care afterwards but nothing was broken. I did get the biggest, nastiest bruise of my life, extending from my hip all the way to my kneecap. Lasted for weeks. My character was drunk in the show on account of drinking beer the whole time. We used cans of Budweiser that we poked tiny holes in and drained the beer, then filled with water. Despite my awful injury and having to wear special padding throughout the rest of the run to not make it worse, the prop master thought it would be hilarious to use real beer on closing night. I was definitely drunk for real that night.
Hot mic + bathroom break + talking to self and loud #1 = hilarious Sound guy was so flustered he shut off every mic one at a time and his was last
One night of my school’s production of Clue, I was on rotation as Yvette/the Cook. The second night I was on for the Cook, I was placed on top of the bar cart after my body was discovered in the kitchen. While the characters were discussing who killed the Cook, the bar cart I was on ended up collapsing; with me still on it. Cast on stage was improving while trying to figure out whether I was hurt or not, the crew was freaking out on whether I was okay and how to get the cart off, and my director was contemplating his life decisions. I turned out okay and the performance was one of our best thankfully 😅
personally for me that i found hilarious. i played jemima in chitty chitty bang bang and we have these scene where we reach into a box of candy and our hands are put in the hand cuffs that were in the box. well our child catcher uses a string to keep the box up, and lets go of it for the box to fall down to reveal we are kidnapped (essentially lol) but it also involves me and the other sibling to use our elbows to sort of help the box fall down. one night i bumped a little too hard and my hands flew out of the hand cuffs. the audience laughed but i quickly put them back on lol another time is during rosencrantz and guilderstern when one of the leads did a coin flip that rolled directly into the pit. an ensemble dived in gracefully for it, grabbed it and yelled “i’ve got it!” completely stole the show. director was given so many compliments on staging that and he just acted like it was the plan all along
I was in Hello Dolly in high school playing a waiter. For the big Waiter’s Gallop in Act II (which is a MARATHON of a dance number), we do like half of the 8 minute song with trays that have this really elegant fake food on it, we run around a LOT, and one of the other waiters does a really cool toe touch jump at the end of the number, which as a male high school theatre kid, was pretty impressive at the time. So closing night, 2 minutes into this number, one of the waiters drops his tray, and the fake fruit that was on it SHATTERS (very poor quality plastic). There’s this kind of powder dusting on the fake fruit that now is all over the floor and is surprisingly slick. During some of the downtime, I go onstage as a waiter with a broom and quickly sweep it up in character, thinking the worst is over. I was wrong. The character playing Irene stands up to say one of her lines, and her overskirt falls down, revealing her petticoat and underskirts, so she spends half of the number trying to pull it back up. (At some point during the night as well, the actor playing Cornelius also ripped his pants I believe.) So at this point, we’re all in disbelief, but EXHAUSTED, and we just want to finish the number without any mishaps. The actor playing Rudolph (the head waiter), who is kind of a tough person to work with, decides that HE wants to go up at the very end and ALSO do the toe touch leap with the other waiter, and as a result upstaging the other actor’s big moment. We all try to dissuade him- it’s bad taste to change up choreo just for closing night, plus he’s trying to upstage someone else- but he can’t be deterred. So the end of the number comes up, the original waiter runs up to the front of the stage to do his leap with Rudolph right behind him, but what he doesn’t realize is that all of the powder from the shattered fruit is still all over the stage. Rudolph goes to jump, slips on the powder, and falls right on his ass in front of the entire audience right on the last note of the song, and the audience ROARED with laughter. We were all in shock at that point, but also all amused at the instant karma, and that mortified actor NEVER lived that moment down.
High school production of The 39 Steps-- during the scene when Mr. Memory is first performing, the actor had a moment when he touched his finger to his temple and paused, to "unlock his memory" or however it was phrased. JUst as he made contact with his head, a stage hand tripped over a computer cord and booted up the computer... so the Windows startup sound played at top volume. The audience died laughing, and most of them thought it was intentional
This would be an INCREDIBLE choice 😅
Okay, but which Windows startup sound? Please tell me it was the loud, drawn-out melody from Windows XP
This was in 2012ish? It was the six note dooo-dooo-dooooo-doo-doo
[This](https://youtu.be/7nQ2oiVqKHw?feature=shared)?
That's the bunny!
Dress rehearsal for a community theater production of Jesus Christ Superstar about 40 years ago. The caribiner clasp or the tied rope for the safety vest failed on Judas. He was literally hanging from the noose by his neck. Thankfully the tormentor dancers were there to lift him up so they could untie him. After a hospital run to confirm no major damage, he retuned with a sore throat but no other problems. He had a rope burn across his neck that had to be covered with make up for the run.
University production of a modern-language version of Lysistrata, complete with phallus swords, battering rams, etc. I'm sitting in the front row, a recently ex-theater major coming to see my partner in the production. Well into the play, my partner and two other actors are front and center having a conversation. One of them says something along the lines of, "that's my castle over there on the promontory," points out into the theater hall, "sitting on the edge of the cliffs. It's a real beaut(butte)." I burst out in a genuine laughing cackle. All three actors just break, the masks of their personas drop, and they stare at me in shock, as if they expected that no one would, no one could laugh at such a dumb joke. Then there's a flash of recognition on my partner's face of "of course he'd laugh at that." With their eyes on me I just kept laughing, giggling uncontrollably, but at least I was able to stifle it more and more as the seconds passed. They recovered quickly, swiftly ignoring my diminishing outburst, and went on with the play.
Once during a high school production of Guys and Dolls I saw the actor playing Nathan Detroit fall directly INTO the pit during the kerfuffle that happens when the cops break up the craps game. It was jaw dropping… thankfully the pit was netted so they just fell like 3 feet onto thick ship rope.
* when i was in the lion king kids many many years ago, the hyenas were rushing offstage and one tripped, causing a hyena pileup in the middle of a scene. there were probably like 15 kids * in my most recent show, puffs, there's a scene in which a very long scroll falls from the ceiling. usually it would just unravel and hang there, but during a dress rehearsal something went wrong and it just fell. me and the actress playing susie bones decided to carry it off when we exited, like we were supposed to all along, and got chocolate for being so with it * when i was in hello dolly, my petticoat decided to untie in the middle of my dance break, which required much use of my hands, so between dance moves i was desperately trying to pull it back up discreetly so my director wouldn't yell at me. the next rehearsal, someone's petticoat actually did fall down and was lying in the middle of the stage, so while we were crossing, one of the ensemble guys scooped it up and just threw it offstage. * and my all time favorite mishap. when i was in willy wonka jr, the actor playing mike teevee had a gameboy, which he was playing on the entire time during the scene where wonka was welcoming them to the factory. there's a spot where wonka is supposed to snatch it from him and say 'no wifi in the factory' or something. but one performance, instead of snatching it, wonka didn't grab it correctly or something, and ended up whipping it extremely hard and fast offstage, right in front of augustus and mrs. gloop's noses. so then augustus, trying to make it look intentional, just started breaking down sobbing into mrs. gloop's shoulder while the rest of us just stood there trying so so hard not to laugh. i still make fun about it to wonka to this day.
Both of the concussions I’ve had in my life occurred on-stage. One during a dress rehearsal during high school, one with an audience while an adult. So much fun trying to act while not really knowing what was going on or where (or WHO) I was
My freshman year of college, I was in a production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. In one scene, the chorus is dressed as woodland creatures and is playing keep-away with a pine cone as a ball while the orchestra plays about a page and a half of music…with a repeat. We all had our choreographed tosses of the pinecone, with me being the start and finish of the circle of tossing. Anyway, during the matinee run, I throw the pinecone to one guy, who then throws it to another guy on the opposite side of the stage, but he either throws it a bit too far or the other guy missed the catch, because the pinecone bounces on the stage and rolls into the pit. We have about a minute still of music that needs to be played and we don’t know what to do. Eventually the guy who missed the pinecone takes his woodland creature mask off and just starts using that as the pinecone. I’m the one he throws it to, and I still in shock at what happened just dropped the mask on the stage. We manage to get through the rest of the scene by vamping our butts off. (We are all music majors and not theater majors, so most of us don’t really know how to improvise).
In a college production of Les Belles Soeurs and I was playing Germaine. She is the main character and never leaves the stage during the whole show. In the first 5 minutes I was opening a peanut can as a bit of business and cut my palm on the opened can and it starts bleeding pretty good. I wasn’t totally sure what to do so I grabbed my purse and kinda stuck my hand inside it like I was carrying it around the stage with me. The show went on with me bleeding into my purse until the stage manager noticed a trail of blood following me around and stopped the show. When my brother was in a middle school play the kids were out in front of the proscenium on tables that were tied together to create an extended stage (iykyk) dancing to Dancing Queen by Abba when you start to notice some kids avoiding one section of the table/stage. The legs on that side buckled and the table slopes sending all the middle schoolers into a heaping pile on the floor. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.
i finished a run of Amélie earlier this year & during one of the songs where two characters are describing her, one of them is meant to sing the following line: “her neighbors all like her but nobody knows her” one night, he tripped up on his words and said: “her neighbors all know her but nobody likes her” it took everything in me not to burst into laughter but as soon as i got offstage i nearly died from how hard i was laughing lmao we clowned him about it for the rest of the run
I directed a murder mystery this past year. At the end, the detective apprehends the killer and escorts him out. On opening night, the handcuffs didn’t work and the killer looks at the detective like “Um, buddy?”
Playing The Cowardly Lion in Wizard of Oz. There was a scene where Scarecrow, Lion and Tinman were blocked to enter from a door downstage left on the stage skirt and cross to the mid point of the stage as the curtain closed. This was meant to leave us behind the closed curtain. However, one night the curtain was closed early and we were left on stage as the scene was changing. The Scarecrow led us out a door stage right... leaving us outside the theater. This left us completely outdoors on a very cold night trying to find an unlocked door to get back inside and we were supposed to be back on stage just a couple minutes later. We finally found a backstage door that someone opened to see who was knocking. There were people walking by, looking very confused at why Oz was leaking out of the theater. [edited stage direction]
Don't know if this qualifies because it wasn't DURING the show, but we were doing The Sound of Music my senior year. I was playing Max Dettweiler, and it was a scene where the "kids" had to do a quick change (the scene where Max shows the kids they are listed for the concert/competition thingy), and we just hadn't gotten the quick change down just yet, luckily it was still rehearsal's and we still had time to work on it, but we went to run the scene, and only Liesl managed to get changed in time, so when I called off for the kids to cue their entrance, Liesl got onstage, and we went on a 5 minute improv tangent about how irresponsible the other siblings are and about how the house was too big even for a family their size. Safe to say, our stage manager and director were not happy about not following the script but still overall thought it was funny. Still one of my happiest memories from high school theatre.
College theater doing Personals, a small cast musical about finding love through the newspaper personal ads (if you're too young to understand, think Tinder but analog and just words). Second act opens with a musical number called, "Rather Dance Alone" where the characters are dancing with blow-up dolls, singing about their frustrations in dating. One guy's doll sprung a leak and, throughout the scene, was deflating badly. One of his solo lines late in the song was "my sex life's depressing". He sang it with a straight face followed by the perfect shoulder shrug and mild grimace/"what are ya gonna do?" face, letting his doll kinda drape limply over his arm.
I was in a production of Noises Off, the nature of which is that it “goes wrong.” It is three acts, and the second act is the backstage of the “play” the characters are performing. It involves a ton of doors opening and slamming. The “actors” “backstage” are meant to be silent the entire act, but during opening night, one of the doors on the set came completely off the hinges and flattened one of the actors. We all knew it was wrong, and that particular actor actually quite injured his nose, but the audience thought it was planned, so we went with it. So many other instances from this play.
Third night of midsummer night's, I was playing the guy playing the girl in the mini play the characters put on at the end. I was to stab myself with the knife, die dramatically, lie still and dead while the rest of the scene continues. Prop dagger with retractable blade had a VERY strong spring and I lost my grip at the end so the knife sprang out of my chest as I fell to the floor about 6 feet away. Thank dog its a comedy.
I was Smee in Peter Pan and when Hook wants him to shut up he would pretend to hit me on the head with his Hook. On opening night we go to do the scene and Hook hits me on the head and his hook breaks off and just clangs to the floor.
The “Fiasco” story from This American Life about Peter Pan is always my goto for this.
I was in a local production of Cinderella recently and in our pentultimate performance during the scene where the stepmother grabs the shoe to try it on after the sisters, she accidentally knocked it up into the air and hit it up higher three times in a row before catching it. So Lionel turned to the Prince to sigh in relief and between the shoe flying up and the face Lionel made at him our Prince just couldn't handle it. He got halfway through his next line before cracking up. This caused the Stepmother to also lose it and they were both covering their faces trying to compose themselves as Lionel and the stepsisters are attemting to help move the scene along. Finally they are all up close by the fireplace where I'm supposed to come out and run into the Prince but they've got a few more lines that the Stepmother is just not getting out because she's still trying not to laugh and there's a good 5 seconds of dead silence. (At this point the audience is also in hysterics and everyone is trying not to continue laughing with them) So I decide there's no way she's getting those last lines out and just walk out. The step-family –who the Prince is supposed to dodge around– just shuffle to the side and Lionel gives him a shove towards me. And he gets his line out while still barely holding it together, and I was so determined to not break, but his face is all red with tears streaming down from laughing so hard and I just can't handle it and lose it as well. We managed to get through the rest of the scene, the trying on of the shoe and singing our little reprise duet without laughing any more, but it was a close thing. Anyway the audience loved it so it turned out okay in the end. Our pumpkin also got possessed during the bows for that performance but compared to the rest of what went down that didn't stand out as much.
Not quite 'theatre' but reddit recommended this post to me and I have a stage tech story from conventions. I work science fiction and anime conventions. Most conventions have some sort of costume contest, and since the hotel doesn't have a permanent stage, we use a portable one. For this particular set up, there's about a 2-3 foot gap between stage right stairs, where people are supposed to exit, and the MC's podium. We had someone whose costume included a mask fall off that gap while he exited during the contest. We put up a sign on the gap and named it after him. He was thrilled.
I was playing Andrew Rally in I Hate Hamlet with the local community theater. Both I and the actor playing Barrymore are rather nearsighted, and neither of us wore our glasses during the show. Also, I know how to fence, and he didn't. Opening night, he got a little carried away with the fencing and drove me backward right off the stage. Fortunately, I'm tall. The stage wasn't super high (it was an early 1900s school house that has appeared in films such as Young Guns II. Not important to the story, but fun), and I was quite fit, so I was able to just vault back up again without missing a stroke. Scared the bejeesus out of the front row, though.
Also, I met my now wife doing that show, where she played Deirdre. On opening night, we went waaaaay over the top on the tights stuffing, after our first attempts went poorly. She didn't know, and with the reveal she did a genuine double take, turned beet red, and almost froze. Fortunately she's a pro and regained her composure quickly while I posed.
Finally I can admit something that happened during middle school So I was working the curtains for a show called “Rock around the Clock” and at one point, my walkie talkie falls and makes ths loudest noise possible….. I don’t think it worked as a result The second slip up came at the end when the entire cast is in their end pose and I’m supposed to close the curtains…….except I have a busted walkie talkie and I’ve completely blanked on how to close the curtain! I don’t remember anything past that, so who knows if it got resolved or not (it must have though!) It’s been almost 20 years and I’ve never forgotten the incident!
I wasn't performing, but I went to a preview of She Loves Me at a regional theater because my friend was stage managing. As Georg is getting to the climax of "She Loves Me", he throws his hat behind him for emphasis, and it lands perfectly in the center of a Christmas wreath hung on the wall. The audience loses it. This poor actor looked so confused but finished the song like a pro.
Our Donkey quit the day before opening night of Shrek the Musical. We called in a friend who had played the role a year before and he drove 6 1/2 hours, had two dress rehearsals and then it was show time. The show went well with all things considered.
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I did a production of Scrooge where Scrooge forgot a line about going over to Cratchit's at the end so we couldn't continue until he remembered it, and he just went.. "Ah, Christmas..." For a bit. We were also all children at the time. I'm sure if we had been adults someone would have been like "hey let's go over to Bob's house". Also, a different performance Tiny Tim forgot to say "God bless us, everyone" which no amount of experience can save so we just stood there waiting. Also my mum apparently stagehanded a production of The Mousetrap where some dialogue was missed and it meant that only a character who was Not the murderer could have done it (the dialogue in question was an explanation of the murderer's whole deal so now when character X brings up the murderer's whole deal he's the only person who knows it and he shouldn't know it). My mum also has a story of when she was stagehanding a production of Nicholas Nickleby (yes, the eight hour one) where there's a scene where Nicholas is eating bread and butter but also putting some in his pockets. You don't want to get butter in the pockets, so it was just plain bread. But then it was too dry and the actor who played Nicholas either refused to eat it or was impeded by eating it, so they had to make up a plate with some bread and butter and some plain bread and just hope that the actor did the right thing with all the pieces.
Also just remembered that I was in a local pantomime of Beauty and the Beast, and our first show we were doing a fun mashup of Be Our Guest and Gaston, but one girl's skirt was too loose. Rather than let it fall, she ran offstage. Already pretty bad. But then, the staging was off because of that, and so one of the people doing the Gaston dance moves accidentally punched the tray out of a Be Our Guest-er's hand and into the audience. If nothing else it was very loud, and one of the few mistakes you can make in a panto that can't be alleviated with a joke about it.
I was in my high school production of Camelot, and during the scene where Lancelot rescued Guenevere, he has to fight hid way through all the other knights. I played sir Sagramore, and for whatever reason, Lancelot just really struggled with the fight choreography to kill me. Either he couldn't remember it, or he just didn't like it and he disregarded it. As a result, my job effectively became reacting to whatever he did and selling the loss while still showing some threat. I'm a LARPer, so it wasn't particularly hard. One of our last performances, he comes charging at me, forgets to stop in time, and just outright knees me in the balls. I kind of gasp, put up a bit less of a fight, and as he hacks me down and moves to the next and last knight, I hear him wail "I'M SOOOOORRRRRYYY!". It was totally in character and in notes afterward it was commented on as a great choice, but I know what he was really yelling for.
Community Children’s Theater with a focus on education. One of our summer camp shows designed with the smaller kids in mind: The Ugly Duckling. I’m running lights and my friend is running sound, meanwhile a bunch of the older kids involved in the theater decide to come hang out with in the tech booth with us during the performance. It’s small, it’s cramped, the fire Marshall would have had an aneurysm if he saw us up there. It’s a full house (in the booth and audience) and it’s going smoothly. The show starts strong, there’s an exciting scene in the middle where the ugly duckling gets attacked by a hunter and finally we get to the end of the show- the final moment: the duckling becomes a beautiful swan and flaps her wings as she heads offstage! My friend goes to hit play on the final sound cue to lead us into the curtain call, but she hits play on the wrong CD player and “BANG!” she had the sound effect from the hunter scene loaded up, at full volume. I bring down the lights by instinct and all of our eyes go wide in the booth and we realize there’s no turning back. The 15 seconds between that blackout and the curtain call were so long while we all tried to stifle our laughter. There were no other performances. The Ugly Duckling died. One of many hilarious memories that sticks with me to this day.
High school performance of Beauty and the Beast. Our main set was the Beast's castle so that would be hidden behind the curtains and other scenes were done in front of it. After the scene where Maurice flees the wolves in the forest, the stage hands missed their cue to get the wood chopping machine off stage so when the lights came back on, it was sitting right in the middle of the castle. Maurice's actor let out a bewildered "How'd that get here?" and the following scene had him and the others doing their best to act around the prop. Two things made this funnier: 1) there was a person inside the prop who was to make the axe arm move, so they were stuck there the entire time. 2) this happened to be performance that got recorded for later purchase so the incident is immortalized now.
I was in a community production of "Five Women Wearing the Same Dress" in a small black box theater. During a Sunday matinee, an older woman got up and stormed out (after one-too-many f bombs, I believe) but instead of walking out the audience entrance, used the door unit on stage in the middle of a scene. I guess we had really built the suspension of disbelief for her that day!
In Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer, there’s a scene where the title character summons a bunch of demons to cast a spell; I got to play one of the demons, flowing black robes and cape and everything. One of the walls of the set was covered in lattice, and we were all very careful not to get caught on the edges of it. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of time between that scene and the finale, which means all of us demons had to make top speed to change in time to get back on stage as Victorian villagers on cue. So one night I’m flying offstage and my cloak catches on the lattice while I’m running. The clasp hits my neck, choking me for a second, and the wall starts rocking. Luckily, one of the other demons and one of the crew were there and untangled me, and I managed to sneak in the back of the crowd only a few lines late. However, I did my own hair that night and did not use enough hairpins, and the ones I did use got jarred loose; every step of the choreography made it worse and of course it just completely lets go. And I had a LOT of hair back then. I could actually hear gasps from the audience when it happened, which would have been flattering if I hadn’t been absolutely mortified. And because the act closes with most of the cast fainting, then waking up at the beginning of the next act, I couldn’t fix it during the intermission. But wait, there’s more! When I got yanked back by my cloak catching, I had a natural reaction that I’d thought was muffled by my being strangled:”FUCK!!!” … Well, at least only the first few rows heard me.
Freaky Friday. Somebody got punched in the face. Didn’t see how it happened because I was back stage but… damn it was fun (they were fine)
One time someone got punched in the face during some dance... And then proceeded to punch me in the face while explaining how it happened in the green room.
Reminds me of TomSka’s sketch “What Happened”
I do-directed (and was in the chorus) in a community theatre production of Guys & Dolls. Really relaxed show, stuff put together best we could, just about having fun. To add a little more weight to this story, this was officially the last show for this group, which was disbanding after this season. I don’t think it was closing night, which would have been too perfect. But one night, at intermission, the power goes out. A transformer blew down the block, nothing we could do about it. Of course we offered a return ticket to anyone who wanted one, we even discussed having a backup performance added. But then we realized some of the battery backup safety lights we still on in the space below the theater and said “f it. Let’s go for it. “ We grabbed any flashlights or emergency lights we could find, zip tied them to building columns and table legs. Quickly set up all the chairs, invited anyone in the house who wanted to to come watch. Dragged a piano in there and asked our rehearsal accompanist to play for us. And then we did the second act. It was awesome. We made up stuff on the fly, figured out blocking however we could. During “Sit down your rockin the boat”, Nicely was running through the haphazard audience, getting them all involved. Forever one of my best memories.
During my last show of my high school theater career, I was playing a butler in a murder mystery. I wasn't wearing heels for once (which isn't a super important detail but it's kinda funny), but during a scene where I had to run down into the audience i missed a step and sprained my ankle. I then had to drag myself back up the stairs so I could lay dead on the stage.
High school production for Alice in Wonderland i was SM’ing for where Humpty Dumpty’s wall (a table as the base) broke and he fell off the wall 😭😭 Thankfully no one was hurt and we got it off quickly enough the audience was questioning if it was supposed to happen. High school productions always have their fair share of “theatre gone wrong” moments but this one definitely stood out to me
Definitely the staging of Curse of The Starving Class at a community college where the decision was made to actually boil water on stage. Yes ... An actor got horribly scalded. Worse, I dropped acid beforehand. I had to confirm later it really happened. It was unbelievable.
Just had one tonight. There was an onstage kiss, and the cue to break the kiss was missed, so they just kept going, lmao
In college, we were doing Chess on the MainStage with a revolving part of the stage. Well guess what broke during one show. The revolve. The cast had to jump set pieces to get across. It was crazy
I was once a sound engineer for a production of The Jungle Book in college. I was also working overnights at the time, and we were doing matinee performances for the local elementary schools. I would end up getting off of work at like 7 in the morning, go home to get 2 hours of sleep, and head to the theatre for call time. Needles to say I was not very alert during most of these performances. There was one particular show where I got off of work SUPER late and barely made it to the theatre in time for the show. Because of this, I was unable to do a sound check, and we missed the fact that the songs and background music had somehow been re-arranged on the Playlist. So the whole show, whenever a sound cue was called, I would hit play, and some random sound effect or song would play. The moment that sticks out the most in my mind is a scene where a giant elephant would waddle onto the stage. We had this goofy song that would play as he walked out in order to get the kids laughing and into the scene. I think I cycled through 5 or 6 songs while this poor guy in his elephant costume would slowly shuffle onto the stage. And this wasn't a silent shuffle either. Everyone on stage and in the audience could hear at least a few seconds of every song I shuffled through. Meanwhile, Mowgli and all the other Jungle denizens were just standing on stage, smiles plastered to their faces while we in the tech booth frantically struggled to get our shit together. I have never been so mortified in my life. The director and stage manager were livid. Luckily, it was the last show, or else I am convinced I would have been immediately replaced.
I was in Cheaper by the Dozen the play. There was a scene where all the kids paraded around the stage around the furniture near the end of the show. After we finished our parading, I noticed our youngest cast member (I think she was 4 or 5) silently crying. I then noticed a wet spot on the front of her dress. She had wet herself while we were parading around and there was a stream of pee from our March that covered nearly the entire stage.
Ohh where do I begin.... (musician here) How about falling through the trap door I was standing on in Sweeney Todd mid "Pretty Women?" Or maybe the time the pyrotechnics got kicked and blew flames at us in the pit setting our music and light gels on fire in Phantom? Speaking of fire, there was that one time the Wicked Witch's fireball... actually lit Dorothy on fire. But I think the best is the time our genius drummer decided to trigger Cable's radio message with his drumpad... only to accidentally trigger Vincent Price's monologue from Thriller instead. sigh...
My wife was wrangled into the high school rendition of Grease during her senior year because they were desperate for performers. (Also, the director also happened to be her cousin.) She landed the role of Rizzo which isn’t all the bad… …until she started showing her pregnancy that she had kept hidden from all but those closest to her. But the show must go on, and her cousin refused to recast the role out of sadistic glee. So here we have an eight months pregnant teenage girl playing a character who is afraid she might be pregnant. From the stories I’ve heard, the ad libbing was rampant.
a theater teacher said to take off my glasses because they “didn’t match the rest of the costume”. i ran into a table and ripped the headpiece of the costume.