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 Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 6:05 pm
Alright, there's never a dull moment when it comes to the theatre, and there are some shows that you just wish you had maybe done differently, or just wish you hadn't participated in anymore...
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 6:38 pm
I have a few of those.
First and foremost "Ten Little Indians." It was a technical MESS that was poorly directed by someone that has never directed a person before in their life and literally used the blocking from the script. They didn't work out any of the technical issues of the piece and were not hard on people about learning lines... so only two of us actually knew our lines.
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WickedElphie Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri May 18, 2007 1:21 pm
Ouch...the lead of our show last year(blithe spirit) didn't really take the role too seriously so wound up stumbling over his lines...
However, this year, the actors have been pretty good with everything, and we usually don't have a problem with directors...our problem is most of the people on tech crew just don't want to do the work. During pirates of penzance the ship we built nearly ran into one of the flats when we were moving it back, and we couldn't get the dry ice machine to work... it was a total mess..
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Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:11 am
@@ "Sweet and Hot" my freshman year of high school. It was HORRIBLE! Only two of our leads could actually sing and one of our lead males only learned all his songs during THE LAST DRESS REHERSAL! Our musical director and actually director cut out a couple of the songs for some reason >.> yet they kept in a song about prostitution, how's that work? @@ I was actually glad I was only in ensamble, because I would've been mortified if I'd been a lead. >.> And thankfully all the leads were seniors so they graduated.
>.> Luckily this year (I skipped all the shows last year due to my horrible experiences) though was much better. We did "Play On!" with two casts (A cast and B cast). I was on the A cast as the romantic lead female. A cast were all upper classmen and the B cast were lowe classmen except for two Seniors who did both casts and one Junior since it was her first show (She's my best friend ^^).
Anywho, B cast got to do opening night and A cast did the other two mights. @@ B cast was a complete disaster. They were throwing lines all over the place, no one knew what was going on, it was really bad. >.> I'm glad to say A cast got alot more laughs and people remembered their lines. XD I almost made two of the other actors break character when I adlibbed a line the second night. They were cracking up back stage when we got off.
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Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:25 am
The first semester of my sophomore year, I worked on Into The Woods as scenic artist/paint crew head. It was my third show, and we all thought it was going to be great. It's a good musical, we had a spectacular crew, awesome heads, and our TD had some good ideas. (Ugh, we all hate paper mache now, let me tell you. That entire freaking set had paper mache on it. It looked horrid.) Everything went to hell, of course.
Our TD sucks at planning ahead. Everything was last minute. The heads were worked to death, 7am to 3am the next morning, skipping classes and meals and the like (which we would have been glad to do if we had been getting any respect or recognition). The TD wouldn't let me paint anything until tech week, and then I wasn't even allowed to paint the backdrop (only the flats, a mom painted the backdrop) because I "didn't have my act together", when I had been asking for paint and showing concept paintings for weeks. I practically begged them to let me get started, but I still didn't have paint until tech week. Even then, the TD only allowed me to paint after rehearsals at 2 in the morning. Who can honestly do their best work that early/late? I had been used to a school schedule of waking at 7 and sleeping at 10. It did not work out.
The TD also refused to show the heads his plans. He spoke about them only to the SM and Ben, a senior who is very intensely involved in acting and teching and is very high up in the social hierarchy of our theatre. The lighting guy (a junior, Mike) wasn't allowed to design the lights because the construction and painting crews needed good light to work (this was when he was finally letting us paint). On opening night, Mike threw a fit and he and TD had a shouting match before Mike left. We had to call him and apologize for the TD before he would come back. He designed the lights during the first show.
Mike, our master carpenter, our assistant stage manager, and I quit doing theatre so intensely at school after ITW. Mike is concentrating on his photography, the ASM on her graphic design, and the MC is working at a community theatre. I also am, but I go back to school, infrequently, to help out when they’re in a crunch. I’m either really nice or really stupid.
It's funny how easily high school theatre can just turn you off of theatre. confused
(Also: Wow! I'm really long winded! sweatdrop )
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 5:59 am
I'd like to forget Last Night of Ballyhoo, please. It started with practices that kept us at school every night until ten when they kicked us out, particularly because the director had a ton of notes to give. It got worse when I was asked to lug paint cans around even though I was on prop crew. It got even worse when we got the southern belle dress, and it was big and ugly and took three minutes to put on with dressers and there was not three minutes to put it on. And one night when we had a five-minute blackout because Peachy got lost in his tuxedo.
Oh, and for all our hard work less than 100 people saw the show even though we had a big auditorium and ran three nights.
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Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 9:37 pm
This year at my school's night of one acts we (as in some peoples in production theatre) did English Made Simple by David Ives...LOVE that play, but wow their acting was.........eww
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 11:17 pm
Oh my god... Narnia the musical. The third night, the night that we always film... sigh... Here's how it went;
I was an elven warrior and act two was halfway through. The scene was probably the most important scene, where half of the Narnian army was frozen on stage, and the White Witch's army was on deck, waiting for their cue... Alsan had just be brought back to life and the next part of the script, where Aslan sings a song and frees all of the statues. That part was skipped... THREE PAGES OF SCRIPT JUST OUT THE WINDOW!!!! AND A SONG! A WHOLE SONG!!! So our lead(Aslan) being stupid started talking to one of the statues. For the purpose of affect, I am going to put exactly how it went, for I remember it well:
Aslan:: "You up there, can you see the White Witch's army?" (this is directed to the frozen owl that normally would have replied with "She is upon us O' Aslan!")
**there is a moment when everyone not trained has an OH S**T look on their faces**
Me: They're statues Aslan.
**Aslan is still lost**
Aslan: "Can anyone see the Witch's army?"
** pause...**
Susan: "She is upon O' Aslan"
(at this moment, several things went through my head in a few seconds; First, we're screwed... second, if the witch's army comes on now, half of them won't have a fight partner and someone will get hurt...third, we need to get him to sing.)
Me: "Half our army is gone Aslan. We can do nothing!" (in my head: SING!)
** a pause where NO ONE knows what to do, and Aslan's mind is GONE**
Me: **turn the pause into a "discovery moment"** Aslan, what if you free the statues?!
Everyone on stage: YES FREE THE STATUES!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats where the accompany comes in, and Aslan realizes, "Oh right a SONG!" The sad thing is, when you watch the film...You can't see me because I'm too far stage left.
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Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 12:16 am
Can-Can. Ugh.
We had planned that year (my sophomore year) to do Chicago, but about a month before auditions we were told a touring company was doing it the same week as us in our area, and therefore we could no longer get the rights. Since this was a 'dance' musical year (they alternate between doing musicals that are acting-, singing- and dance-heavy), they chose Can-Can as the best quick option. It was a disaster. The seniors that year rebelled during the entire rehearsal process, making matters even worse by acting like spoiled brats.
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Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:05 pm
Okay, I know someone will kill me for this, but I'm going to say it:
Romeo and Juliet.
I was unhappy as hell during the production. I hated my role, and I never once clicked with the rest of the cast. Only one other person understood my pain (I played Friar John (or Joan, in my case) and she played the Apothacary) She and I were in the least amount of scenes and had the least interaction with the rest of the cast. We felt so left out the whole production and I just couldn't stand it. I wish I had never done it.
King and I is another one.
Once again, I was super unhappy. I was two years older than the rest of the children and like half a year older than one of the wives. I loved that girl like my sister, but I was still pissed that she got to be a wife while I was a princess. But then again, I got a lot of praise during the show because I was very 'mature about how I handled my role' or something like that.
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Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:06 pm
We did...A mid summer nights dream and we had a scene where fog came from the background. But for some reason all the fog wanted to go backstage instead of towards the audience or onto the stage. So me and the tech crew got on our stomachs and tryed to get the smoke to move, without the audience seeing us, which is hard from our backstage because the curtains hardly block us off. It was rather difficult but finally it just started to flow that way.
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Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:01 am
Shows I wish I hadn't participated in? I have a few of those.
Chicago- First of all, when you sign up for the costume crew, you should at least be able to sew on a button, however, of the eight of us on the crew only one of us could sew. (Well, someone else could but they never showed up and the other person would take stuff home to work on and bring it back the next day untouched and hand it off to me). So for a cast of 50 where everyone has at least two costumes, I never had a moment's rest from sewing. I woulf begin sewing at around 1pm and not stop until about 2am for a month-ish. To top it off, I had to step in for a cast member who had to go to the hospital ( reminding us why it is a bad ide to pick up a hot metal pan without a hotpad), luckily I knew the dances and everything, but it really kinda sucked because I was supposed to be doing quick changes also so I had to hand them off to someone else, and doing pointe on an unstable platform is not fun.
Into The Woods- Same thing happened with the sewing, but this time I was running the fog machines and the costume changes while dealing with a really high fever. I was sent home one day because of it (to rest and get better) and I had to spend the entire show at home on the phone to relay information about costume changes and fog machine stuff.
To Kill A Mockingbird- Was placed on the costume crew, the running crew, the props crew and the set construction crew. And on the final dress rehearsal I was asked by the director, 'Why wasn't I up on the fly rail?' To which my response was, 'Why would I be up there?' The decision had been made without telling me that I was also going to be on the fly crew. This was decided two days bbefore final dress and yet somehow I was never told. I was also going back and forth between two cities at the time (4 hrs appart) because my grandmother was really sick and then later died during the run of the show.
I have many more, but I doubt you want to hear them all. I will say though, now that I'm in college things are going much better. biggrin
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Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:37 pm
Haha, oh, my, we recently had our Senior directed One Acts. We did "This Is A Test".
Oh gosh.
I played Mother/Student One, and in this scene where I was the mother, I was to wake up Alan (The lead/Son) and I tap him to wake up and we go well with the lines for a while, until...
Me: What are you studying for?
Justin: A test.
Me: I can't believe how hard you're working!
Justin: I know. (He forgot the finish with I don't know any of the stuff.)
Me: (Trying to save the scene) Uhm...Do you know your stuff?
Justin: No.
Me: Do you think anyone has a goodd chance at this...?
Justin: (Finally getting his lines straight after a few lines of improve) Oh! Evan is pretty good.
Me: Don't worry aobut it, just do your best, besides..
Justin: What?
Me: I have a surprise for you. (Forgets to say downstairs)
Justin: Cookies?!
Me: And something else.
Justin: What?
Me: An envelope! (Supposed to be "It's downstairs")
Justin: What is it (Correct line)
Me: Uhrm...An envelope?
So yeah, it was an interesting show, especially when we skipped 4 pages.
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 8:52 pm
LostGayLover This year at my school's night of one acts we (as in some peoples in production theatre) did English Made Simple by David Ives...LOVE that play, but wow their acting was.........eww Honestly? I can't stand Night of One Acts that are anything other than Student-Written, but that's just me being picky. District Festival day two is for published one acts. stare
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Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:11 pm
The pillow man
First off I didnt like the play as a play, I simply didnt like it, plus the people in the theatre I was working in were cold and there was no "theatre family". It was the last show I did in college and I wont be doing anymore until i switch schools crying
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