Most Unprofessional Thing You've Ever Witnessed During a Performance? — Page 6

My freshman year, as part of my crew requirement, I stage managed the middle school musical. Now, it's middle school, so a certain amount of unprofessionalism definitely comes with the territory. One girl, however... oh man. Even as an 8th grader, she was a diva brat, and it's only gotten worse with time - okay, so that's catty and bitchy. It's also true. Because not a lot of actual stage-managing work was necessary, I ended up doing more work as the sound assistant and backstage manager.

In being the backstage manager, one of my more unfortunate tasks was to MAKE SURE THIS GIRL WORE F*CKING KICK PANTS UNDER HER DRESSES. We had to check if she wore spandex so that her thongs wouldn't show to a MIDDLE SCHOOL audience. SHe would proclaim her own professionalism and "blah blah blah I've done 4372819789 shows" and then pull things like that and whine about how annoying it was to have us have to check on her.

She's very talented, but has the worst attitude of ANYBODY I have ever worked with.

In terms of slightly unprofessional but HILARIOUS:
-Closing night of Annie Get Your Gun: the ensemble had a break during the 2nd act ball scene. One of the dance couples decided to deliberately come in with lipstick smeared all over the guy, her dress disheveled and hair down, all sorts of crazy things to make it look like they'd hooked up. It was hilarious.
-In Comedy of Errors, the cops, during one of our scenes, we decided that while being engaged in the scene, we would try and see how subtly we could hit eachother's asses... highly unprofessional, but we were really entertained.

when I was Frank in "Annie Get Your Gun" I didnt get much downtime but when I did during intromission breaked dance ON stage with the curtain down. Also that same show while me and Annie were singing "They Say that Falling in Love is Wondeful" She (her and I are good friends) slapped my butt while I was singing (not noticably so the audience didnt see) which made me crack up a bit, but I pulled it off as if I was in the moment tho everyone offstage knew what happened
and another in that same show, one girl (this REALY annoying girl in the cast) wouldnt get off the cart Annie's siblings have to wheel in during "Doin What Comes Naturally" she said "You have plenty of time! I'm sitting and resting!" even tho she didnt even go onstage yet AND they only had 3 lines to go before they had to go on.

THere was this guy in ou hih school theatr department who alwys ended up in roles where he had to kiss women, well now there is a new term in the department
THe Kjax: slipping the girl the tounge closing night /out notice
of course, th girls all knewand everyone found it hilarious
during closingof Anything Goes,playing Evlyn, the grl playing Reno "kjaxed" himback, we were all in the wings watching, it as hilarious becuse you could tell that he did't expect it

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during a production of HAIR, in the end our director blocked Claude getting shot...and he overacted. While we waited in the wings, some of the other actors and I would 'get shot' and 'die' right before our next song came on. We all thought it was hysterical--Claude never knew.

My favorite, though, was from Dracula. Our Lucy went to the bathroom and completely missed her cue in the beginning of act 3. Everyone was freaking out when Harker walked onstage and said "She's fallen asleep!" All you could hear backstage was "where the f*** is Lucy?! Where the f*** is lucy!" It wasn't so great at the time, but it's hilarious now.

From the same production of Dracula, it was blocked for Van Helsing to drink 'wine' so i mixed up some red kool-aid and for a while it was great, until Dr. Seward wanted some too so eventually, after getting tired of making so much kool-aid, i stopped putting sugar in it. That quart lasted us three shows instead of the usual one. XD

This isn't the MOST unprofessional, but I did a one-act called "Snappy's Happy Half-Hour" earlier this year where I played an abusive producer who talks with a thick Jersey accent. It was a few pages before I was supposed to come in, but no one on stage knew what they were doing, and they just kind of froze, and then some kid onstage started saying, "Schmerg! Schmerg! Get out here!"

So I came onstage, but since the show was so campy, I decided it would be a good idea to say something like, "SURPRISE! I'm not supposed to come on for three more pages, but that's how I roll. Now I'm here and I'm gonna make your lives miserable three pages sooner!" or something like that. It was really unprofessional, and I regretted it after the show.

But it was a show that had basically completely shredded the fourth wall already, so it wasn't as though it was some serious character-based drama or something, and luckily, the theatre teacher and student directors thought it was funny.

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Umm when during Tommorow in Annie the Orchestra changes to hard knock life in the second verse and one orphan runs on stage and goes **** i missed my cue.

during my sophomore in h.s. we did bye bye birdie. during one dance break out choreographer taught us this move that made us sorta look like chickens and so to remember it every time he'd say "chicken, chicken!". well, during our very last performance, the seniors thought it would be funny to say "chicken, chicken!" during the dance break when we did that chicken move. our director thought it was not funny what so ever.

I saw West Side Story done by a community theatre and apparently people had messed with some of the props because in the final scene, Maria was holding not a gun, but a knife up. As she started saying her lines I think she realized why the knife would be a bad idea...

"How many stabs are left in this knife, Chino?" Haha! Very funny!

Also I don't remember the show, but during a scene where one person kills another, he couldn't find his weapon so he brought on a random boot and threw it at his victim while screaming "Poisonous Boot!"

Updated On: 3/23/09 at 01:38 AM

During a production of Blood Wedding at my college (One of the best theatre schools in GA, Columbus State University) One of my friends at the time was attached to his cell phone. A little too much. SO much so in fact that he carried it with him ON HIS COSTUME (1930s period costume) And it went off while he was in the wings. Needless to say, the theatre faculty didn't hold him in too high regard after that. He did things like that all the time and was eventually kicked out of the program.

Well Patti LuPone thought that texting was unprofessional as an audience member. TWICE. Loves her.

when I was in Annie Get Your Gun the guy who played Frank forgot the exact order of the things he can do better than Annie in "Anything You Can Do" during the INTERMEDIATE school performance (we just performed for little kids) and he let out a few choice words by accident.. it was bad.