Funny Stories From The Theatre

[pulchrare]

Basically, a thread for fellow preforming artists to share their amusing stories from either rehearsals, outings with the cast, or even on stage. I'll share a few from my school's recent production of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly".

So, our play is about the Holocaust, and there is a scene in which we (the children) are being literally torn away from our parents. On the second night we preformed, for some reason, I had the giggles. Turns out, Arielle, who played the lead, found my face amusing and as soon as we were behind the backs of our cast members, started to giggle. Now, I saw this, and I couldn't help myself from giggling as well. So here we are, in front of 200 people, during the most heart-breaking scene in the play, giggling. Thankfully, no one saw, but our director nearly ripped our throats out when she heard.

My second story is more of a set mishap than a funny story, but none-the-less, amusing. Our set for Butterfly consisted of three ten foot tall wooden frames with chicken wire attached, so called by the cast, "The Fences". On opening night, we discovered just a little too late that one of the fences was broken, and could not be opened fully without falling. This fence was required to be opened fully through the entire play. The curtains brushed across it, and that was enough to start it tipping. Unfortunately, I was the one who was stuck on this fence, and when I left stage, it was unattended for a good five minutes. I'm about 5'2", and I am not allowed to lift the fences because I can't support the weight. So as I left stage, I had to stick my hand out from behind the curtain to hold it up and keep it from crushing the first two rows of the audience. Thankfully, the next wave of people came and I could finally let go and move into position.

Suffice to say, that fence was fixed the moment the curtains closed.

Now it's your turn. Tell me some interesting stories from productions YOU have been in. I'd love to hear them smile

[SammyTheShaddyCat]

well i danced off the stage i missed juged where the front was and i fell
but i cept going even though i fell

[KaneCares]

i know that show i did watch it every saturday intel my cabel went out and know im board to death exclaim

[ziah3436]

my story is that i was playing a lead role i was dorathy and the famus line theres no place like home i have a mexican accent and i couldnt said it and my friend behind me has stage fright so she is shaking and she farted and she is next to the mic every one smile and some gigled.she was so red redface

[xMyrsky]

Oh I have two biggrin

One was during rehersal from last year during Thoroughly Modern Millie, and durring the opening dance sceen the moderns were suppse to be dipped. Well my dance partner was sick that day, So I wasn't expecting to get dipped or anything. So I heard someone say my name then the next thing I know I was grabbed and dipped. I was so freaked out then I turn and looked who it was, I see Charlie (Who's a good foot taller then me.) trying not to laugh at my reaction.

Second was during out last performance of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Mike and Charlie (Who played Bun Foo and Ching Ho) forgot thier dance moves during They Don't Know, and Charlie looked over to our choreographer/ stage director and myself who mouthed to him 'Do something' He looked away the whipped he head, grinning and mouthed "Bernie?!" Well anyway Charlie bernie'd and then Mike copied. We just facepalmed, atleast they got a good laugh from the audience..

[blueRainyupsters]

Well we were putting on "Fame Jr" and the boy playing Schlomo had to wear make up so...Everyone kept saying "SCHLOMO WEARS MAKEUP SCHLOMO WEARS MAKE UP!!!" And he played the drums so he played "We will rock you" to go along with our shouts! It was so funny XD I will never forget...

[Sionja]

During staging rehearsals for Rigoletto, we were doing a run-through of the whole opera and since I do pretty much nothing, I was sitting in the back of the space watching. So here I was, enthralled by our Rigoletto and Duke, and as he's running upstage to exit, he goes directly for my face, yelling, "Gilda!"

Scared the crap out of me.

And then of course, during the rehearsal for the opening of act one, we were told to flirt shamelessly with the Duke and because I was being the most outrageous of my group, he winked at me and gave me the "call me" gesture so I lost it.

The funniest thing I can think of from any of the other shows is that in Madama Butterfly, when Pinkerton and Butterfly are signing the marriage certificate, Pinkerton's got this long, ridiculous signature, and our Butterfly just wrote a : ( face. Trying to hold it together during this beautiful backdrop of Puccini is not easy. (Or during rehearsal, when they pretty much dumped all of the flower petals on Butterfly and Suzuki all at once - it was like a downpour of fake petals. It was kind of awesome.)

Most of the funny stuff happens backstage, though, haha. Mostly because we are terrified of the wrath of the director and maestro too much to be silly during rehearsals.

[pulchrare]

Sionja

Most of the funny stuff happens backstage, though, haha. Mostly because we are terrified of the wrath of the director and maestro too much to be silly during rehearsals.

I completely agree. I can remember waiting around in our school theatre, just me and a few of the other actors, and we got bored really quickly so we decided to play hide and seek, as we had about 3-4 hours before we even left the building to go to the theatre we were performing in. It got to the point where we left the theatre and started hiding around the school. It was hysterical waving to the janitors while we tore down the halls.

[EstoPerpetua]

During a production of the Phantom on the Opera that I was in, Buquet's "dead body" fell during the Hannibal scene, but then they couldn't get it back up to fall when it was supposed to. So the stage manager comes out during that scene with the dummy in his arms and in this absolutely horrific French accent goes "Oh no, Buquet is dead." He then tripped over something and the body goes flying across the stage. Everyone broke character and we all were chewed out by the director after the show, but it was worth it.

[LaneyFaney]

I have a Phantom story too! During the prologue, when they were auctioning off the poster, they lost it. They lost the poster. So the kid gets back on stage and starts talking about how wonderful the poster was and everyone on stage started luaghing and it was funny but not funny because our director was furious.
And I will leave you with this visual. I played Christine and I am 5'2". The boy cast as Raoul was 6'4". All I Ask Of You was interesting.

[Amoreista]

During my high schools production of Bye Bye birdie earlier this year,on the last scene the Mr. MacAfee character ( I was Mrs MacAfee) was supposed to faint into my arms and myself and the boy playing Randolph were supposed drag him off stage and he was to mutter a few lines about how kids are disrespectful yaddayadda... So during our first warm up performance Mr M kinda blanked and instead said. "I think Im gonna sell the house..move onto a farm..raise some Ponies.. I like Ponies.." XD

[Anya Rain]

Fell into the pit...
At the end of my solo...
Good times...

[SaraIsImportant]

I've been doing theatre seriously for well over a decade, so the hilarious moments have sort of piled up.

When I was doing "The Fall of the House of Usher" in fall of 2001, I was playing Lucy, the maid. For some ungodly reason, that role was the female lead and Madeline had one scene. Most of my lines were exposition, and the adaptation was horribly written.

Anyway, I was 13-years-old, a freshman doing my first production as a high school student, and there was to be a tremendous sound and I was supposed to be the first to enter, with a panicked, "What was the bang?!"

As I was a complete douche at 13, I wanted to test the "Don't say Macbeth backstage," theory, and did so just before the show. This was about twenty-five minutes into the show, and my microphone cord was falling out of my shirt, and my mic pack got stuck on my apron.

As I tried desperately to run onto the stage to deliver my line, one of the small tables which held a few quick props got tangled in my microphone cord. I was running onstage, got trapped on the table, and dragged it with me onstage, in view of the audience, and fell flat on my back.

The line became: "What was th-OH s**t!"

My director was not happy with me.

A more recent one was when I was performing as Sante in a collection of short Poe plays: My short was "The Pit and the Pendulum." That particular production had been picked up by an area charity who was doing a really high-class masquerade ball with all of the rich doctors and lawyers of the city, and I found out that I'd have to be performing my...essentially solo show...in the round.

It may have been nerves. It may have been that they'd given me handfuls of free wine vouchers. I'm not sure what the cause was. In any case, I had to fall flat on my face in the scene, supposedly slipping on the damp dungeon floor.

As I walked along, readying for the fall but remaining natural, as though walking through the dark, I suddenly realized that I was too close to the "pit" and needed to fall immediately, lest my character fall into the "pit."

My solution was to do a very comical faceplant, which can only be described as a "Ric Flair face-bump."

I don't expect you to watch the whole video: the first segment will give you the gist of what I did, if you're having trouble visualizing it:


Yes. I did that. Then, I realized I'd just done that, and started giggling.

In order to cover, I had to begin laughing maniacally and ad-libbing before going back into my lines.

After the presentation, the man in charge of the event came up to me and said, "Wow. I thought that your falling and maniacal laughter bit was unsettling. It showed the throes of madness Sante was thrust into, and really helped to cement for the audience the horrors he was enduring. It raised the hair on the back of my neck. That was amazing."

It was absolutely the only time I did that. My director even believed it to have been a brilliant creative decision.

[Black Snow 303]

i was doing my dance recital a year or 2 ago cus im a dancer and the girl in front of me was dancing and i was watching her in this 1 part cus it was weird and hard and she messed up like really bad. i was able to stop myself from messing up but she looks a lot, and i mean a lot like me, so i probaly was mistaken for her from most of the audience. but how she messed up...she skipped to the end of the dance halfway. so funny. it was 1 of those things u hav 2 b there for.