The Official VENT ABOUT YOUR WORST ROLES Thread- Page 2

[Aqualline2]

Posted: 12/12/06 at 1:10am

I'm in Our Town right now, and it's a nice play and I've grown to appreciate it... but it's hard when you play a townsperson. because my director somtimes juggles you around, don't get me wrong he's a great director but I feel snubbed because the senior year ahead of me (I'm gr.11) ia a big class so they took most of the roles (I hate the seniority rules rule) and the roles of Mrs. Soames went to a tenth grader and there aren't a lot of female roles besides the mothers, the women in the theatre, and the dead people, and of course Emily which went to two of my really good friends (they share the role) and so as if I didn't feel bad enough I have to chase after them during intermission to get them ready for the next act. And to make it even worse, when we sing the hymns no one knows when to begin so and me and another girl were given the task of starting the hymns so that everyone knew when to start, but one of the girls who plays Emily is a townsperson when she doesn't play Emily took that job on the nights she's a townsperson which made me REALLY mad, because I only really have one job and I don't get to do it every other night.

But I really shouldn't complain too much, were doing a musical next year (thank god!) and the cast for this show is great, and since I'm considered a "drama geek" I was easily acceted

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 12/12/06 at 1:19pm

Oh my.

Well, there was the disasterous role in the THE HAPPIEST MILLIONARE, the DISNEY MUSICAL turned straight PLAY in which I played a footman who all he did was place a vase on the set during the top of ACT 2 and not speak or do anything. It was unmemorable and I wasted 3 months hanging around, that I got the job of prompter. My "advisor", I don't call her a director, because she couldn't direct her way out of a paper bag and I feel she'd be a embrassment to all directors, IF she was one, told me that it was almost cut right before I took the part.
I hate straight plays.

Updated On: 12/12/06 at 01:19 PM

[ItsTheLastMidnight]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 3:12pm

I'd definitely say Chorus Member in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

[ForTheLoveOfLea]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 3:36pm

I just finished doing a children's theatre show of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and I played Mrs. Gloop and they wouldn't give me a fat suit so I would match my son. Plus we went on tour during the week to elementary schools to perform and my part required me to get whipped cream all over my face and it was a real pain in the ass waking up at 5:30 to do three shows and be sticky all day.

[dramatothemax]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 8:23pm

I'm currently playing an "asian" hooker. It's fun...for the 5 seconds I'm singing. I'd rather play an American soldier. hahah

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 8:31pm

Play It Cool, KMK is my favorite musical ever! Why don't you like it?

[gertiecummings]

Posted: 12/14/06 at 1:19am

Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The director was awful and it was the firs show I was ever embarrassed to be in. I'm still trying to block that from my memory.

Last summer I was a nun in The Sound of Music. Boring, boring, boring, boring, and boring. Plus the cast was so f*cking cliquey (if that's a word) I wanted to scream.

[gertiecummings]

Posted: 12/14/06 at 1:19am

Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The director was awful and it was the firs show I was ever embarrassed to be in. I'm still trying to block that from my memory.

Last summer I was a nun in The Sound of Music. Boring, boring, boring, boring, and boring. Plus the cast was so f*cking cliquey (if that's a word) I wanted to scream.

Posted: 12/15/06 at 9:59am

Fruma-Sarah in Fiddler on the Roof, because the director I was working with thinks I'm only good for old lady roles.
That whole dream sequence is just in that goddam musical for shock factor.

[keely2]

Posted: 12/15/06 at 4:11pm

I don't really have a "worst role": although I've had a lot of fun experiences, nearly all my roles have been rather small. Thank god, therefore, that I'm taking acting lessons in the spring... but, honestly, I think it isn't all me. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the middle school director really, really hated me! (Thank god, too, I'm in high school...)

Anyway, my "worst experience" was in 7th grade, when I auditioned for "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". Ms G was going to cast 3 of each role, because the set was going to be laid out like a comic strip--with three different panels--and the scenes and songs would be divided among the mini-casts. I gave what I thought was a good audition, if you looked past the fact that it was between rather and very reserved.

Now, I don't remember whether it was just the show, or even the callbacks, but whichever one I didn't make, well, the end result was that I wasn't in the show. There were some of the most talented actors in the middle school in the show. There were also some very bad actors... some of whom I considered myself better than. In fact, I think it might have been the callbacks. Either way, I was already having a very bad day (I was stressed out about schoolwork and also had yet to give my student council vice president election speech; in addition, I knew I was fighting a bit of a losing battle as I wasn't and am still not that popular: neither very popular nor that kind of popular). I had a bit of an emotional breakdown, but I got over it and was fine.

Then, after the show is cast and there's already been a rehearsal or two, Ms G sends me an email asking me to accept the role of Snoopy 3. I remember thinking, How INSULTING! She barely cast me in Grease, not at all in Peter Pan, and didn't think I was good enough for Charlie Brown either, and yet she thinks I'm the type of groveling theatre GEEK who's going to do anything to get any role when, really, the show and the people who drop out of it are now none of my concern? Who does she think she is!?

Well, folks, I was/am that sort of groveling theatre GEEK. I said yes. But, hahah, I gave her a stern talking-to... or as much as a 7th grader can get away with giving to their teacher.

She pretended to understand, but I don't think she did. I got skipped over once more for casting in the next show, and then as an 8th grader (a "senior" of the middle school) got a tiny part in Oliver Twist even though some not-so-good actors got larger parts (some of those were seventh and sixth graders; another was an 8th grader who was auditioning for a show for the first time: come on, I was the one who had bothered to audition despite the fact that I only actually landed one miniscule role and was offered a larger one in desperation)!

I FRUCKING HATE THAT DRAMA TEACHER.
I realize that 'hate' is a strong word. That's why I'm using it.

The high school drama teacher/show director, however, is brilliant. She also does all the costumes herself as well as, well, pretty much everything! All the high school shows are stunning. Yay for 9th grade!

[Becky2]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 7:36pm

I don't really have a worst role story, but I did have my share of bad costumes. One costume was made entirely out of those raffle tickets. I had to wait for my team to perform, in costume, for about two hours and couldn't sit down.

[ILoveMyDictionary]

Posted: 12/17/06 at 7:54pm

While we're on the subject of worst costumes...

I played a Native American in Annie Get Your Gun and we didn't get our costumes until the dress rehersal. Someone relized that they didn't have any costumes for us Native Americans so someone was sent to a Halloween store to buy them. Well they forgot about me, so to get me a costume they raided the closet where the costumes from former shows were and they came out with a fish net and a hula skirt and told me to do something with it. So yeah. It was pretty bad.

Posted: 12/18/06 at 11:15am

bwaylvsong -
This is our second cole porter in a row.
Enough said.
Other than that - its my senior year and I've been cast as a featured dancer for four years now. I'm just getting tired of getting shafted like this Updated On: 12/21/06 at 11:15 AM

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 12/18/06 at 12:22pm

Ohhhhh...
Well, I hope this bad experience doesn't ruin that amazing show for you. Maybe you'll enjoy doing it in the future.

[1peter4:10]

Posted: 1/27/07 at 5:24pm

A few years ago my community theatre group did a an origanal show called "Alice from Wonderland through the looking Glass." In act one i was a playing card. You remeber the croquet scene? I had to stand in a backbend for an entire scene! it hurt! Then came act two... I was a Jam Pot. That's right, a Jam Pot. And we danced (I should say waddled, our costumes didn't let us move very much). Purple tights and a giant cardboard pot that i wore over my shoulders. Only time i asked people not to come to my show out of embarassment.

[fabala4077]

Posted: 1/27/07 at 8:02pm

Well.... I was Frenchy in Grease. And I KNOW everyone says it is a great part - but it really isn't. Not when the rest of the cast was really really bad. Like I-can't-sing-on-key bad. And I'm not a fantastic singer, but I can hit pitches and harmonies and stuff, with a decent tone. But Frenchy doesn't sing. AT ALL. And her lines are basically filler stuff so you don't forget she's there. Actually, that entire show sucks. Oh well.

Other then that, I've had pretty good parts... except I tend to get the really miserable costumes. Par example...
Egeus in A Midsummer Night's Dream - fake mustaches and eyebrows, with really bad spirit gum that smelled like a cross between rubber cement and rancid nail polish remover. Bad Bad Bad. I had no eyebrows by the end of the show.

We were in this show about Japanese mythology. My costume was actually rad - I was one of two to get a Kimono! But the problem was, those obi bow things are tight like corsets. I had to grab onto Troutman (the biggest guy in the cast) every night while Brandon and Carter and Emily and Alliene pulled and tightened until I couldn't really breathe that easily. But yeah, the costume looked really cool.

And in Brilliant Traces I had to ravenously gulp down minestrone soup - but we didn't have a microwave, really. It was cold and clammy and disgusting. So a fellow cast member made me hot chicken soup, which was nice of him but he forgot I'm a vegetarian. Oh well.

Venting is fun!! Now I kind of feel like a whiner, though. Oh well.

[Broadway_Bound_Star]

Posted: 1/28/07 at 11:44am

I was Pepe in West Side Story, and I was the ONLY Puerto Rican that could sing... and I had to sing offstage mic'd with the Jets, to help them sing the right pitches... worst time of my life..

Oh.. and our Maria.. was pretty much a low alto, practically a contralto...

Imagine that now...

[sofiestar93]

Posted: 2/2/07 at 9:14pm

Wow, how do I choose...?
I guess I would say "The Enchanted Rose" an original play that I was in when I was, like, 7. It was like: There's this emperor on a purple mountain who needs a wife, but doesn't like any of the women, so goes to search for one, and the dew fairies (me) changes a yellow rose into a beautiful woman who he marries when he comes back without a wife.
I did love my costume though. Perfect for a seven-year-old, lavender satin with a lot of body glitter.

[notsovirginmary]

Posted: 2/3/07 at 12:23am

I'm currently playing Shprintze is Fiddler on the Roof. Yes, it's a small role, but it's a big equity production, great experience. The director has given Bielke and I a lot to do, added us to Matchmaker, given us lots of little moments in the ensemble numbers.

The problem is that I am seventeen, and while I am very short, I have huge boobs. Taping them down eight times a week is PAINFUL. I am so sore when I get home that I can hardly move.

Thank God for my heating pad.

[MerMaggieGalinda]

Posted: 2/3/07 at 11:01pm

Playing a workhouse boy and a lost boy in Oliver and Peter Pan were probably the worst experiences of my life. In Oliver, I fell of the spiral staircase on the set and had to go the hospital, but I was okay in the end. I was really upset about playing a boy because I was 12(but I looked a lot younger and I hadn't hit puberty yet) and I'm a very girly girl, so getting all dirty and grimy was not a fun experience for me, the only good part about it was that I had a short solo during "Food Glorious Food". The next year, the same group did Peter Pan and I got called back for Wendy/Peter Pan/Tiger Lilly and I ended up as a lost boy. This time I was really angry because I didn't look that much like a boy anymore but still I had to be one. They're doing Joseph this year, and that's pretty much all boys and I don't want to get stuck playing one again, so I'm not trying out this year.

[fabala4077]

Posted: 2/4/07 at 12:02am

I'm currently playing Pridament of Avignon in Tony Kushner's The Illusion. I'm very, very excited about this role because it will be more difficult emotionally then anything I've had to do before. BUT - - I never go offstage. I enter to say the first line in the show, stay onstage for the first act, stay onstage for intermission, and exit at the end of act two three lines before the end of the show.
The LINES aren't that difficult - I spend a lot of time sitting and watching the action unfold - but a three hour play with no breaks or anything is going to be intense. I'll have to drink lots of water...

[Broadwayboy2631]

Posted: 2/4/07 at 12:30am

Ah! I have talent in both singing and acting. For the fall play we were doing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. After an admittedly lousy audition, I was cast as one of the many people in the flourish that followed Gertrude and Claudius. People always say "there are no small parts, just small actors" but this was a small part. We did nothing, we said noting, and we were told not to distract the audience from the "real actors". I was also with a bunch of freshman, and just plain idiots who didn’t know anything about the theatre, and they are just all around idiots. I've never felt so humiliated in my life. I was a step ahead of the flourish because I understudied a bunch of roles, and I even got to go on a few times, but I still was not happy. I was a talking prop! Thank god that I have a better part in Urinetown.

[Andante]

Posted: 2/7/07 at 9:01am

All of my roles, though a combination of major and minor ones, have been pretty good. But two roles really irked me- Joe Cable in "South Pacific", and the Peasant in "Pippin."

I hated playing Joe because I was a girl (there was only ONE guy in our cast of 30-something), and let's face it- women aren't born to play men's roles. I had to strain my voice so much lower than normal that I nearly ruined it. And I was only in the 7th grade.

As for the Peasant, that was the spring of my Junior year. I got callbacks for Catherine and Berthe, and even though I knew I wasn't going to be either role, I was expecting to get at least a good bit part. The Peasant had a grand total of TWO lines. And I did NOTHING for the rest of the show. Pippin is an awesome show to be a part of...if you do it right. Let's just say the choreography, costumes, and people that were in it were pretty much stupid. But on the plus side, I got to hug a pretty cute guy, the guy who was playing Pippin, on stage. All my friends were insanely jealous. :)

[dkb1390]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:08am

i was the guard in the wizard of oz. you know, "WHO RANG THAT BELL!", green fuzzy hat, etc.

it should be noted that i'm a girl.

[BDavis0092]

Posted: 4/8/07 at 12:55am

Winthrop in The Music Man, back when my voice hadn't changed and I really did have a lisp. I still have people who bring that show up and it was about 5 or 6 years ago.