Scary Stage Stories

[ashley0139]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 1:49pm

This whole Idina thing got me thinking. Has anyone ever experienced a scary on stage story? Either while in the audience or while performing. I just thought it would be interesting to see how often this happens and how many people have experienced it. I'll go first:

I was doing The Crucible during my sophomore year of high school. It was closing night so everyone was high energy and very excited about the following cast party. We were doing the courtroom scene (a very emotional, kinda crazy scene) when it happened. The girl playing Abigail (the main part) fainted and started having a ceizure- during a show, on stage!!! Eyes darted around stage wondering what was going on. When she half-way recovered, she was led off stage to lie down. The rest of the cast was left onstage to finish the scene without the main character. I must say, though, that I was very proud of my cast and someone covered every line and worked together. But those 10 minutes were some of the scariest I have ever experienced. Fortunately, she was ok and went home to rest after the show. The interesting thing was, I went out after the show to talk to friends. None of them had noticed anything unusual- they thought it was part of the show. I came out and was like, "Oh my gosh that was the scariest thing I have ever experienced!" And they were like, "Why? What happened?" It was CRAZY!! But our director was very proud of us and everything... I can only hope that that NEVER happens again to me.

Discuss!

Posted: 1/12/05 at 2:38pm

Scary? Lemme tell ya-- I saw some postings on here that Clay Aiken is headed to Broadway? Scared the HELL out of me!

[LaeloftheLakes]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:18pm

Well, I've never had an episode or cracked a rib, but I've got a couple stories.

1: General HS type fiasco. Guys and Dolls, 2001, I'm sitting onstage in my Adelaide costume when suddenly the New York skyline falls over and crushes my table. I actually jumped out of the way because someone in the audience shrieked "Look out!"

2: Less damaging, but a lot scarier. I'm a first class arachnophobe, okay? I was onstage as Aunt Eller in Oklahoma!, during "Kansas City" when I felt all the cowboys behind me brushing my shoulders. One of them whispered that there was a huge spider on my neck. I almost had a panic attack---I mean, I'm so arachnophobic that I can't move when I see spiders, and tend to create them in my mind. I stayed still, and eventually they brushed it off me--its body alone was an inch thick in diameter. As soon as my scene was over, I ran offstage, took off all my clothes, and collapsed, crying and shaking. Loads of fun.

[DestinyBeckoned]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:46pm

This wasn't actually on one of the performances, but during set construction for Hello Dolly a few years ago, my best friends dad fell off a tall ladder and has suffered permanent damage from it. It was really sad and definitely the scariest theater incident I can think of.

[lostwallflower]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:52pm

2 years ago during a dress rehearsal of Kiss Me Kate at my school a big piece of the set broke. It was a door/wall and when it was flown in a support on one of the sides broke, and as it was being flown off again during a scene change it suddenly began swinging, first towards Kate, then directly at our stage manager off stage. No one was hurt, except for the piece that broke in a few more places. I was waiting a few feet away for Kate to change batteries on her mic, and needless to say everyone was a bit scared. It took 20 kids to get it down, carry it out side (the only place big enough to lay it down, other than the stage) to start patching it up.

[GirlforTartaglia]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:52pm

Last year our highschool production was a review of New York-ish musicals, and we had 2 "two story building" where people could walk on the second story, but at the time, no one was on it. It was around 8pm, the night before opening night and one of our buildings came crashing down on the stage and backstage, since it was so big. No one got hurt, but everyone was freaked to be on it.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:55pm

This isn't that bad, but:

I wrote a show and (somehow) I ended up in it. Anyway, in the opening number, a complete improv that we did, I had to trip him from the audience to make him fly up in the air then fall. After that i was supposed to drag him and then he would flip around my arm. So, his first fall went fine. He went to do his "flip" except he kicked me in the back of the head, knocking me foward, and I let him go. With out any suppost he landed on his glutius maximus and was hurt. He was able to keep doing the show, but it was still funny.

[cturtle]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 5:57pm

i was playing CHARLIE in a production of THE FOREIGNER ... soon after the scene where CHARLIE and ELLARD eat breakfast, the glass chandelier hanging above the breakfast table FELL and crashed into a heap of broken pieces RIGHT WHERE I HAD BEEN SITTING moments before ... ELLARD was still sitting at the table, and BETTY and CATHERINE were standing nearby ... of course the audience thought it was hilarious, especially when ELLARD started picking up pieces of broken glass and shattered plates, saying "ms. meeks, we've gotta get some repairs done around here" ... CATHERINE started cracking up and had to turn her head upstage ... in the videotape, the chandelier can be seen starting to revolve a few minutes before it fell, but we didn't notice it on stage ... watching the tape is HILARIOUS now ... but i don't want to even think about what would have happened if the lamp had fallen a minute sooner, when i was still sitting at the table ... i could have been scarred for life!

oh well ... BLASNY, BLASNY ...

Updated On: 1/12/05 at 05:57 PM

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 6:00pm

Oh, I have another!

This one time, at band camp,....

[i*heart*fame]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 6:05pm

I have 2, well not really scary, but kind of

1. This summer I was in a production of how to eat like a child and in one scene it is supposed to be a giant sleepover party and I was supposed to get everyone excited and there is one part where I was supposed to start a game of tag and I was running across the stage, during the dress rehearsal, and someone had left their blanket in the middle of the stage and I did one of the slapstick things where you slide across the floor, usually on a banana peel, with one leg on the peel, or blanket in my case, and one leg in the air,and I slid across the whoole stage, and I hurt my ankle so they sent me to the nurse who did nothing because they wanted me to be ok, so I performed on it, and the next day I found out I sprained my ankle and made it much worse by performing on it.
2. I was also in a production of the little mermaid where our scenery for the under water scene was not put up well and fell all over me and the other person on stage! but we ran off stage when we saw it coming down so we were ok

[TheatreDiva612]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:09pm

I have a few scary stories from performances I've done.
1) I was in Jekyll and Hyde and during one of the show's curtain calls, I completely tripped over a lose board that was on our circular movable stage. It was sticking up and the tip of my character shoe went under it and fell flat on my face, but the lights were off because it was right before curtain call. Thank god by the time the lights came up, I had gotten up and was fine, but I had a bruise on my shoulder and hip.

2)During Look Homeward Angel (dress rehearsal) there was a set piece that fell down and I almost got crushed underneath it......That was very frightening. I was saying a line and all of sudden, a wall is falling.

3)I was in an All State Chorus, and a girl on the front row passed out during the concert.....We kept on singing, while the girl is passed out on the floor.....then the accompanist finally stopped playing, and the conductor kept conducting, and we continued to sing a capella......they took the girl offstage, and the accompanist went back to playing, and we finished the concert......Needless to say, we all were bending our knee's a lot more through the next few songs...

Anyways, i'm sure there are more stories, but these are the ones that stick out in my head.

[SallyBrown]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:13pm

hmm this one time in the audience, a man had a heart attack, we had to stop the show while the ambulance came
i was in the 5th grade, i got freaked out like crazy

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:17pm

I sprained my ankle very badly a few days before I was supposed to be in Alice in Wonderland. I had to start my scene sitting on the end of the stage, and then I had to get up from there. WEll, as I was trying to get up I got a really bad pain in my ankle, thus causing one foot to slip off the stage. I managed to catch myself, but on an already sprained ankle, that HURT.

And during one of our chorus concerts, my friend passed out on stage.

[cturtle]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:28pm

when singing in a chorus, don't forget to NOT LOCK YOUR KNEES!

[pab]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:33pm

My most recent scary story was:

Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown's performance in RENT.

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:34pm

I haven't been paying attention too much lately, but is she still in the show?

[pab]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:35pm

NO. Thank God.

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:40pm

Whew. I'm going on the 25th.

[GypsyRoseLee]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:44pm

Last year, my school did Noises Off in the spring. It was call time for the Saturday night performance and suddenly the guy playing Frederick Fellowes hobbles in on crutches with a bandage around his ankle. Now, for any of you familiar with the show, you know that it's VERY physical. The second act has no dialogue: just blocking. My director hadn't bothered to cast understudies because it would have taken to much time to teach all of the blocking to two people. Everyone was flipping out thinking we wouldn't be able to perform, and on top of it all, it was Cappies night! (Cappies is a critics program for high schools. Every school has one show a year that all of the critics from other schools go to and awards are given out, Tony-style at the end of the year, and it's a really big deal for us.) Anyway, so he gets up on stage and starts trying to go through his blocking, when he suddenly throws his cane aside and does a sommersault. He was making the whole thing up. No one spoke to him for a few weeks. It's kind of funny in retrospect though.

[VonTussleGirl]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:47pm

I've had a couple of those.

One happpened during fifth grade. I was doing Becky Thatcher in a community show, "Tom Sawyer", and we were performing outside. We had these big pieces of wood se up on either side of the stage so that the little kids could walk from the greenroom to backstage without being seen, but they weren't propped up or anything. Anyway, it was really windy during one of the performances, and I was standing behind one of the pieces of wood, not paying attention, talking to the stage manager, when all of a sudden, the wind really kicks up and the nine-foot-high piece of wood starts to blow over on top of me.

The set guy and stage manager caught it, but that was rather scary.

Oh yes: another slightly-less scary thing - I was in a production of Schoolhouse Rock, and I had to come down through the audience during "Great American Melting Pot". Well, I'm walking through an aisle when I trip over someone's coat that they've left in the MIDDLE OF THE CENTER AISLE. Who does that, anyway? So I'm just walking along and I trip over this coat and fall down. I must've looked graceful.

Also, during a performance of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", the guy who was playing the narrator was sitting up about ten feet in the air on top of "Mt. Crumpit", and right before the curtain rises, he falls. Hurt his back, but at least he did the show.

[mizzie]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:53pm

I was playing Alice in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and at one point I had to walk off the stage angrily. Well, you see, the stage in my theatre has a funny set-up, and as I was stomping backstage I ran right into the wall! I was so scared! Luckily, nothing fell, but it made quite the noise!

Also, in Joseph, the kids choir had to sit in these big towers - I was a 10 year old afraid of heights - that was scary!

[EponineThenardier]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 7:56pm

This didn't happen to me but at a local theater where I live, they did Phantom (not POTO, but Phantom) and they also had trapdoor trouble. When their Christine went down the trapdoor during some part of the show her leg got caught and in an effort to pull her back up they started to bring the trapdoor up again. She was out of the view of the audience and all you could hear wazs this Gut wrenching Screaming, and STOP STOP!!!! Her leg was trapped and as they brought the trapdoor up her leg was begining cut off, it got down tp the bone. They nearly had to amputate her leg on stage. She's fine now apparently and got to keep her leg, this was a final dress rehearsal night and needless to say they didn't open the show the next night. This really happened!

And interesting side note, the gal that they got to replace Christine was a chrous girl, who basically fitted the part perfectly. A lot like the whole Phantom of the Opera story with Carlotta and Christine. Except Carlotta never got her leg amputated by the trapdoor machinary.

[LyTeMyCanDyI]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 8:08pm

That Phantom one sounds quite scary!
My elementary school always put on a big play at the end of the year done by the sixth grade class. My brother's class was doing Little Shop of Horrors. The lady who ran it every year had a child in this years performcance. (She is the biggest stage mom...who'd have guessed she cast her daughter as Audrey?!) Anyway, she had this really great voice and she felt the need to sing Halleluja as high as humanly possible from backstage when they plant died. She was such a perfectionist that these poor kids missed literally 3 months of class for rehearsals. The night of the play, everything went eprfectly til her time to sing ehr crappy solo from backstage. She must have been either really nervous or sick because she came in really late and then her voice cracked, but in this wierd, deafening shrill, shreik kind of crack. The audience cringed. Itr was dubbed out of the video. After that, my school didn't put on anymore big plays.

[LoudIrishGirl]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 8:56pm

a) LaeloftheLakes --> spiders freak me out to, so I COMPLETELY know what you mean!

b) my story...not scary in a dangerous sort of way, but rather in a "I wish this never happens EVER AGAIN kinda way" ...

This year we were doing "You Can't Take It With You," at my high school and at the end of Act 2 there is this big important mucho grande finale where 'fireworks go off.' The rest of the play is dependent upon this. We had a ton of special effects for it...once the cue line was said the sound effects would go off (we had a couple speakers in the theatre and it was so LOUD that if you were near one you could literallly feel a blast wave of noise), then a couple of techies in one of the hallways to the side of the stage sent sparks flying out into the empty orchestra area in the left corner of the house next to the stage, the lights would go down everybody onstage would be going crazy and it was insane and cool.

SO, on the one night that they are filming our show (of course), the actor says the cue and nothing happens. I am backstage waiting for the fireworks to go off so I can run in, but nothing happens. The guy works in his cue again. Nothing. Silence. The worst bloody feeling ever. I am backstage listening to silence while starting to have a panic attack. Somebody improvs a line. Then somebody else. Then (completely in character) one of the actresses saved our asses by kissing somebody else and passing out, at which point the lights went down and we all ran in hysterics (laughing so hard at the pain and trauma we had just gone through) back to our green room. They had to improv for five minutes while waiting for an effect that wasn't coming (and apparently they kept the scene going physically even when not saying anything, so it wasn't as bad as I thought when backstage and unable to see anything onstage). As it turns out the computer that controlled the sound froze just as the button was pushed, and without the sound none of theother effects could go off without seeming...weird.

So after many of us are half-changed for the second act, our director comes in and explains what happens. She says how she LOVES us all (and I really feel like I should not be saying "us" as I wasn't onstage, but for simplicity...) and how NOBODY who had not seen the show before knew anything was wrong. They covered SO WELL (and I love them all for it).

So before the third Act our director made an announcement and we did theending of Act 2 again (with some people in nothing more than pants, an undershirt, and one sock) and then went straight into Act 3 (which was a scene of me and one other actor) with the smoke still covering most of the stage.

It was such a nightmare. It scarred me...I don't trust any of the technical stuff in shows now.

[Jwei123]

Posted: 1/12/05 at 9:01pm

scariest story on bway: scary spice. i didnt listen to rent for a few weeks afterwards because i didnt want to get memories of her hurrendous performance. horrible..absolutely dreadul!

but for me, I was playing michael in "Peter Pan"...many years ago. and while no 'close calls' came when we were "flying," i had a HUGE fear of heights and was SOOO scared! haha