Greatest Ad-libbing

[dramadude2]

Posted: 7/29/07 at 8:29pm

Every show has one point where something happens that requires you to improv a bit. Occasionally these end up being more brilliant than the actual lines.

Stories Anyone?...

[Cruel_Sandwich]

Posted: 7/29/07 at 9:48pm

This wasn't actually an ad-lib, the line WAS in the script, but the timing could not have been more perfect:

(Door completely falls apart.)
"Oh...I didn't hear you come in."

[dollwithamission]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 2:05am

^That's great!

-I don't know if anyone is familiar with the show Charlie's Aunt, but a girl missed her entrance so after about 10 seconds of dead space on stage, two of the characters, Mr. Spettigue and "Charley's Aunt", one of whom is looking for the other during the act, just ran across the stage several times after each other. They were both great at comedy, so it was actually a pretty good save which I laughed at later, however at the time as the SM, I was frantically whispering at people to find that girl (I'd warned her 10 pgs earlier, but that show was so unpredictable in terms of skipping material I don't blame her too much).

-On opening night during the beginning of G&S's Pirates of Penzance, they somehow managed to skip the song where Ruth gives all the exposition about why Fredrick is apprenticed to pirates. They found their way back to it somehow. My character in that show didn't come on 'till the second act, and I hadn't seen the scene before, and I really didn't notice anything wrong when they did it, so it must have been done well.

Posted: 7/30/07 at 11:11am

I was playing Jan in Grease, and right as "Mooning" was about to start, Roger says "I wish you were there too". I say "You do?" and the music starts. However, on our last performance, the music didn't start. I said "You do?" and then nothing! I looked at Roger, and just said "Well, I'm really glad you wish I was there too."
He said "Yeah. That would have been cool."
Me: "You really wish I had been there?"
Roger: Yeah! We should sing a song about it!"
Thank God, the music started just then! We were so freaked out, and EVERYBODY knew. It was the worst spot to try and ad-lib. We just couldn't make it work! To this day, every time we see each other, we say "We should sing a song about it!"

[uhkthxbye2]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 4:50pm

My favorite ad-lib EVER. I was in a production of Anything Goes this past year, and during the first dress, the girl playing Bonnie was still up in our Green Room and couldn't get down to the stage to make one of her entrances. That, however, was unknown to the guys playing Moon and Billy on stage. The conversation after Bonnie didn't show up went something like this:

Moon: "BONNIE!"
Billy: "Who's Bonnie?"
Moon: "Oh, this red-headed chick that travels around with me."
Billy: "Oh, yeah?"
Moon: "Yeah, sleeps with everyone in sight."
Billy: "Is that so? Well..."
Moon: "Yeah. I hope she gets here soon. Maybe I'll call her again. BONNIE!"

Then the director, who was in stitches along with the rest of the cast, stopped them, whereupon Bonnie burst in and delivered her first line. Ah, good times.

[One Song Glory]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 7:30pm

I have one just from today at my camp during my first period where the Acting, Plyawriting, and Directing class (I'm in Directing) all work together. The Playwriting class had to write "fractured fairytales" and the directors and actors had to put them together.

Well, during this Cinderella one, it was at the crucial point where The Prince was supposed to find Cinderella's glass slipper. So, when the girl playing Cinderella ran offstage, she forgot to drop her shoe, and the guy playing The Prince just looked around for a couple seconds and pantomimed picking up a slipper and quietly shouted "A shoe!" Finally, Cinderella threw her slipper onto the stage and The Prince picked it up and shouted "Another shoe!" And it the most hilarious thing. Because of this, when The Prince went to find who owned the slippers, he cleverly brought two shoes with him. It was briliant.

Also, yesterday I went to see the final performance of a production of High School Musical at my high school. There's this one scene where this geek wants to ask out Sharpay. So he says "I was wondering if maybe sometime you'd consider..." and there's this short pause. You can tell the line's supposed to be "going out with me" but actually what he really does is get on one knee and shouts "marrying me!" and he even has a ring with him. And it was so unexpected and hilarious. My high school is notorious for ad-libbing on the final performance of every show.

[BNN]

Posted: 7/30/07 at 9:57pm

Once Upon A Mattress: Right after we did the Spanish Panic, the entire cast was sprawled on the stage, leaving no room for Winnifred and I. She then went upstage to get the weight for a specific part of the show and stepped on a girl who gave an very audable scream to which I replied, "Don't step on her, she's my cousin!"

The audience found it much funnier than I did.

[VonTussleGirl]

Posted: 7/31/07 at 10:15am

Sideways Stories from Wayside School: During the scene where Mr. Gorf has the kids trapped in the classroom and has stolen all of our voices, one of the little kids playing a dead rat came running across the stage, and without thinking, we all reacted the way we usually did when this happened - by screaming at the top of our lungs. A moment later, when the rat was offstage, I looked around and said innocently, "Hey, we got our voices back!"

That was also the performance where an apple rolled out from behind the teacher's desk across the floor (it was supposed to be hidden back there after the kids did their transformation from apples back to kids at the very beginning), and without thinking, I yelled "ERIC!!!", ran over, grabbed it, and stuffed it in my backpack. That was a fun one for people who really know their Sideways Stories stuff (there's three kids named Eric in the original story, though none of them were in the show.)