Most Unprofessional Thing You've Ever Witnessed During a Performance? — Page 2

During my first show, "Little Shop of Horrors"...

Two dancers left the theatre in the middle of a performance on the second to last night of the run. They went to Starbucks, came back and found the only available door locked. They had to call their friends who were still in the theatre to let them in, and somehow the word got back to our director, who promptly fired them both.

And this was after numerous talks about how you never, ever leave the theatre during a performance.

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In my high school production of 'Once Upon a Mattress', there was a scene where pretty much all of the extras were carrying mattresses around in preperation for the final test. The way it was set up, they mattress-carriers would walk behind a set of a house with a large window, so you could see them going back and forth. Two boys apparently forgot that the audience was watching them, and started hitting each other with the mattresses (they were more like large cushions). Eventually, more people got involved, and the whole set fell over.

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We did CInderella last year, and while the curtain was closed, the queen and the butler were "crab fighting" so of course, we meeble ensemble members joined in..then the curtain started to open..we almost didnt make it to our spots, but hey..we got talent..

well i never got into acting or singing until my freshman year of high school.. and we did BYE BYE BIRDIE (i was helen.. small but fun ) and uhh the guy who played conrad birdie i guess was so0o "nervous" (altho hed dun like a million shows before) that he had a water bottle with vodka in it on our opening performance... not to professional if u ask me.. although the show was AMAZING.

<3 mb

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professionally: a performance of "threepenny opera" at theatre three in dallas, a husband and wife acting couple were having sex in costume and makeup during the show in the trap door tunnel onstage where mack had to make his entrance.

educational: not "unprofessional" but during a college production of "bye bye birdie" the mr. mcaffee changed his blcoking during "one last kiss" which resulted in him smacking kim in the face and knocking her out cold for the rest of the show.

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Oh man, how could I have forgotten this one...

The female lead of HONK a few months ago got into a rather large arguement with the director and decided not to come the next day. (Even telling her "I'm not going to be here". The director probably thought she was joking.) Sure enough, she kept her word and nearly did not come the next day, which was indeed AWARDS night (When the awards people come to view the show). Luckily, we pretty much forced her to come but that was just an incredibly selfish move on her part.

Community theater drives me nuts!! Last year in august I was casr in David Ives "lives of the saints." It's a series of one act plays in which 5 actors rotated parts in multipul plays. we had a cast member who enjoyed changing lines on show nights just to see if we could recover from him not hitting out cue lines. Also all the girls doing the play were sexually harrassed during the three weekend run, everyday. The direcotrs wanted to replace him after opening weekend, because he just really pissed everyone off. Also during one of our rehersals he got up and left, just left. he told the director that staying that late at night was wasting HIS time (we were the ones having to wait for him to stumble through lines and not remember his blocking in ANY of his scenes).

During cinderella, when not onstage the freshman contnually chased eachother around backstage even making horrid noises right by our drop mics.

Funny: during our one act rehersals my senior year one of the gells caught on fire during a scene. My friend travis runs onstage and yells pointing up to the lights, "Number 18 is burning!" Then walked off stage like nothing happend.

Another funny thing also rude audience member:
During Lives of the Saints, one of the lines at the end of a play is "anyone for sex?" And everyone yells "hurahhh" and dives under a giant rug. Well a lady in the front row jumped up and yelled "OH MY GOD!" and stormed out of the theater, demanding her money back. David Ives isn't for everyone, which is why people should look into the show BEFORE they go and see it, as about 15 people walked out over our run. Most of them just niclt waited for intermission and said "it's not for us" others ran out in the middle cursing and yelling... hmmmm.

Well i've taken up enough room!
~~EM~~

I knew this girl who used to talk and wave to her friends in the audience. She had like full on conversations with them.

I've also been unprofessional. This past year I was in BATB and I was a wolf. We had a dance at the begining of the second act, but when the curtian was closed the band would play the overture while we were still onstage. Each night we would do all this crazy dancing to the overture we called it "getting our wolf on." Well one night the curtain opened earlier than usual so we were dancing with the curtain open. Needless to say we got yelled at by the director.

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Here are some middle school stories.

I was in Little Women (playing Beth), so I had to die onstage. We got a bed for me to die on, which was kept backstage until the death scene. Even though they were told repeatedly not to, a group of sixth and seventh grade girls sat on the bed during the first part. When it was time to go get the bed onstage, I politely asked them to get up so that the crew could lift it, and they refused. One of them even told me to go away. I practically strangled them. Luckily the crew told them to get the f**k up, so they did, and everything was great from there.

My school did "Emma" a few years ago, and one time, the girl playing Mrs. Elton and the boy playing Mr. Knightley were making out in the girl's bathroom during rehearsal. It was quite a shock for me when I entered the bathroom, and they were on top of eachother.

I don't really consider it unprofessional, but I had a bad cold and sore throat on the night when I was playing Maria in The Sound of Music. In one of my quick scene changes, a crew member shoved a huge cough drop in my mouth. I really didn't have anywhere to put it and I wasn't going to suck on it onstage, so I took an ensemble member's water bottle and spit it in there.

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