Bizarre production stories

[Joelbeans]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 10:21am

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?

[fiyero8132]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 10:38am

That sounds like absolute musical theatre hell. I'm musically directing Company starting in September and I hope we don't experience anything like that...

[HereNowhere]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 10:48am

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.

[DRSisLove]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 1:08pm

A local production of Titanic had some issues. The first weekend's Sunday show, 2nd Officer Leitoller jumped off a platform because he didnt get off quick enough, he broke his leg and had to be recast. The second weekend the guy who played Jim Farrell got arrested. The man who played J. Yates (sp?) took over and the director then played his part.

It would have been better if they hit the iceberg, ha ha

[SarahBeth]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 1:14pm

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.

[AttendTheTale2]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 1:20pm

Recently in a show that I was in, it was the Saturday before we opened (we opened that Wednesday), and our lead didn't know a single line off-script. The directors actually replaced her with such little time before opening. The new lead girl did an amazing job, though. She managed to learn the 300+ lines in a few short days.

[sidneybruhl]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 3:44pm

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.

[Aaron27]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 3:51pm

I did a production of Seussical where our Horton lost his voice and was in the hospital the morning of a matinee...General Schmidt played Horton, The Grinch played General Schmidt, and another actor was called in for the Grinch...everyone learned their lines within 3 hours and we only held the show an hour after the scheduled start.

And then I did a production of Assassins where our Moore had a stroke the weekend before opening and couldn't be there tech week or opening weekend. We found a replacement and she then performed the final weekend.

[Becoz_i_knew_you21]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 3:54pm

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.

[NathanLaneStalker]

Posted: 8/8/06 at 4:05pm

This isn't like the rest of yours "I stepped in a last minuet!" or any of those. This is about a ghost that haunted our theatre.

When I was in A Chorus Line in a very small cramped theatre there was (and still is) a legend that a little girl fell off the balcony while playing in 1945 and died. She still haunts the theatre and her name was Amber. So, we were up there rehersing and I forgot a line (they say she HATES when an actor forgets his or her line) My director says "Ambers gonna throw you off that balcony!" Me: Whatever you KNOW that isn't true! Someone made it up. As soon as i finish saying that this knob in the wings that controls the house lights starts turning, the lights go on and off and on and off (u know the creepy crap!) and if that wasn't enough the light's started changing colors....it stoped after about a minuet....that scared the $#!% out of me and the rest of the cast!

[Someday]

Posted: 9/5/06 at 10:43pm

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.

[ashley0139]

Posted: 9/5/06 at 10:56pm

Many horror stories...

I did Mame a couple of months ago and our four lead girls lost their voices all within the last week of the show. It was insane. No talking for any of us. Actually, every single one of us had to go on steroids just to be able to talk. I went into the doctor and I go "I'm sick, I lost my voice, and I have to sing tonight." The doctor goes, "Oh, you must be from Mame."

Other scary story:
I was doing the Crucible a couple of years ago. During the court scene, the girl playing Abigail actually had a seizure on stage during the show. She had to be brought off stage in the middle of the scene. For those of you who don't know the show, Abigail is the main character, and a central part of the scene. People were calling out lines all over the place. It was so scary. After the show I was talking to people about how scary it was to be onstage during that. Every single person was like "Why?" I'm going, "Did you miss the whole seizure on stage thing? It was kind of hard to miss." Every single one of them thought it was part of the scene.

[ashley0139]

Posted: 9/5/06 at 11:20pm

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?

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 9/5/06 at 11:36pm

I had the questionable pleasure of designing a play for a theatre in the Southeast about five years ago, and forgive me for mentioning no names, but in the world of regional theatre, it's sometimes a really tiny universe. My job was fairly easy, but the poor LD.....

Okay, start with a director who doesnt know how to read groundplans. So throughout rehearsal he honestly had no idea what his production would look like onstage because he couldnt "see" where the production elements were. We were building the set as he was rehearsing in another hall, and the first onstage rehearsal was scheduled for three days before opening night. It was also the night of the first tech. Stressful enough yet?

We limp through it, but everything seemed to be working, so I went to bed thinking it might actually come off okay.

However... the next night (we're now *two* days before opening), we see he's decided, without telling anyone else, to move the entire production four feet downstage -- not the physical production, thank God, but where many of the scenes themselves took place. Suddenly, people were walking into dark spots because the lighting had been set up for the previous night's blocking. During notes, the director has the cajones to tell the cast that he's sorry the LD couldnt "keep up" with the changes. I saw her eyebrows shoot up at this, but after notes, she called her crew and they started refocussing all 150 lights to match the new placement.

The next night -- remember, this is the night before opening, and this was an invited-guest performance -- he did the same thing, except now he'd moved everyone back up four feet. And once again, folks walked into dark spots, and once again, the director blamed the LD for "not keeping up". He'd no sooner said that than the door to the booth was suddenly slammed open and one very POd LD was on her way to the stage. She literally grabbed him by the arm and hauled him into a position on the deck, then yelled up to the booth to bring up a certain cue number. Suddenly he's in light. Then she drags him upstage and yells to the booth to bring up the same cue from the night before -- and again, he's in light. Then she looks at him with about three inches to spare and says, "SO WHERE THE &^*%%^$ ARE THESE DAMN PEOPLE?"

She then literally takes over the show and we re-teched the whole thing from the top with the full cast and crew. We didnt get out of there until almost dawn, but by God everyone was in their proper light on opening night.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 9/5/06 at 11:40pm

Telepathic Abigails...

Save the birds!