Bizarre production stories

I just finished directing a community theatre production of 42nd Street a couple of weeks ago. This was one of the most stressful productions I have ever directed. This production took place in St. Louis, and as many of you have heard but last month we had a huge storm with much of the city with power outages. Well the storm hit on a Wednesday, which happened to be our final dress. The school that we were perfoming in lost power half way through the second act. And the power didn't come back on all night. Well we thought that it would be on the next day. Little did we know that there were thousands of people out of power. So it was a waiting game. I was calling up to the schools theatre director every day. No power on Thursday, no power on Friday, no power on Saturday. We thought maybe we could at least get in one good show on Sunday, but no luck. So we reschudeuled the show for the next weekend. Luckily the school was available for the next weekend, but we had to recast a couple of roles for peopel that weren't available. Well the show was ready to go the next thursday, and We didn't have microphones until about 15 minutes before we opened and then on Saturday another small storm hit, and the power went off at the school for a few minutes, knocking out the mic system, and we couldn't re boot it with out the IT director from the school. Luckily the computers rebooted themselves. and Then on Sunday a couple of our actors thought the show started at 3:00 instead of the actual time of 2:00, so we were frantically trying to call them and get a hold of them, reblocking the opening of the show with out an Andy Lee in the audition tap, but 2 minutes before the curtain they showed up. Has anyone had this manyproblems with a show trying to get it to open?

I was in a show once where the lead didn't know his music, lines, nor choreography... and we didn't actually run through act two without stopping until the opening night performance. It was a grand old time.

I can feel your pain on those storms. Having no air conditioning in that heat was murder. I saw a production of Godspell and they were saying how lucky they were to have power.
During a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat our Joseph broke his leg, so the show became Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Crutches. No joke. We wrapped his crutches with colorful fabrics and streamers.

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I directed a production of "Blithe Spirit" where my leading man quit two-and-a-half weeks before opening. As many on the board may know, Noel Coward is very verbose and not very easy to memorize. Remarkably, another actor stepped in and was able to go on in the role with only five rehearsals.

I wasn't in this but, my 5th grade teacher said at the old school where she used to teach, they did a very origional production of The Wizard of Oz. They followed the actual book instead of the movie. The girl who was playing Dorthy didn't know barley any of her lines a few days before performances started. So my teacher said her unerstudy was gonna have to do the role. Then the girl was like "I really really want to do this I know the first half of my lines." So they put her on the fisrt half and put the other Dorthy on the second half. My teacher said it was a very good production and ran for almost 2 months at a middle school and they made a big profit of it.

My directing debut was a community theatre production of Hello, Dolly! in late July in the deep south. I know, I know. Call me crazy. I was young -- in college. The local theatre group had been in a bit of a slump and had nothing planned. So, in order to have a summer show, they took a big chance on me, artistically and financially.

The production would be the first and last one held in a city-owned building that, while not ideal, happened to be vacant that summer. The city aldermen were very generous to let our award-winning but vagabond-like theatre group use the building for free. As rehearsals and set-building progressed, though, they grew increasingly worried that we would leave the building worse off than we found it. My youth, no doubt, had a lot to do with their concern. We all thought their worry was unfounded....

Once the show opened, all seemed to be remedied. The aldermen appeared pleased to have been recognized in the playbill, and some of the ones who had been most worried made a point of personally congratulating me and the cast on the show's success. The response of audiences (and of the show's corporate sponsors) was enthusiastic. The production ended with a run of sold-out performances, thereby leaving the theatre group with an unexpected nest egg for the fall. Dolly can be a real crowd-pleaser!

So, all had gone very well up until the sold-out, closing matinee -- when the air conditioning went kaput. I'm proud to say the performance was strong enough that we didn't lose any audience members. And that's saying something, since they had to watch the show in a house that was miserably humid and hot -- probably in the high-80s/low-90s inside. (It was in the mid-90s outside.)

And the actors were troopers, drinking lots of water and somehow managing not to pass out under the lights. Actually, they didn't allow their performances to change much, aside from the buckets of perspiration they produced.

After the curtain call, but before strike had begun, I was outside speaking with my family. As the last of the audience members were departing, I heard sirens in the distance... and growing closer. To my shock, and to the utter disbelief of my parents, two big 'ole red fire trucks soon careened into the parking lot. As the firemen rushed around behind the building, cast members finally found me and clued me in: the theater was, in fact, on fire.

We later pieced together that, at some point in Act II, a cast member had smoked part of a cigarette behind the theater and had tossed the remainder on the ground next to the building. At that very place, the old siding on the building had eroded, so that a couple of interior boards slowly caught fire. The fire spread inside the back wall of the theater, with the insulation apparently slowing the spread. Though no one could say for certain, even odds had our splendid Dolly as the culprit.

The firemen saved the building, which sustained minimal damage compared to what could have easily been a total loss, in the heat of July. We were even able to finish striking the set that afternoon. By the time night fell, the building was exactly as we had found it... with the exception of the conspicuous, crispy hole in the rear.

The thing that amazes me to this day is that, had that fateful cigarette been smoked and flung at any point in time prior to when it was, the production would have been immediately (and understandably) cancelled by the city aldermen. From time to time, I wonder if I still would have been encouraged -- or even allowed -- to continue directing in town, had that happened.

The arrival of those fire trucks could've happened during tech week, after 30-odd actors, ten or so orchestra members, and untold volunteers had worked all summer on the show. It could've happened just fifteen minutes before it did, which would have altered the memory of hundreds of audience members getting in their cars to depart. It could've happened right before curtain went up on opening night. It could've happened during one of the performances, resulting in evacuation. It almost did. In the end, how lucky our little family was that no one was hurt, the building was saved and... the show did go on.

Yes this was not planned. Did you think it was funny that she did that or a funny coincidence that it happened in my production, too?

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Telepathic Abigails...

Save the birds!