Broadway Actors Reveal Their Worst Onstage Mishaps

This was one of my favorites: (Gavin Creel) : Recently in Hair, I totally blanked on the entire second verse in "The Flesh Failures" at the end of the show. I finished the first verse and froze. I had no idea what the words were, so I just walked forward in silence with my arms out. Will started screaming out "CLAUDE!!!" to try and fill space but I just kept walking... in silence... Megan Lawrence told me afterwards that that is called going into "the white room." I don't like the white room. (First time I've heard of the term "the white room."

Would you be more forthcoming, as I am not familiar with this Vicodin incident?

2:34 more or less. It was a funny story.

I watched this happen during "The Drowsy Chaperone." At the end of a scene the chaperone (Beth Leavel) and Aldolpho (Danny Burstein) climb onto the murphy bed and the murphy bed folds up into the wall on the right side of the stage (looking at it). Except at this performance the lifting mechanism jammed and the bed stopped halfway up with a sickening screech, then thud -- tilted at a 45 degree angle.

At first Beth and Danny were frozen -- wondering if the bed would start moving again. Then Danny seemed to realize the bed was broken, slid down quickly, then put his arms out and lifted Beth down and out of harm's way as gracefully as he could.

Just then the stage manager ran out from the opposite side of the stage -- his headset on, a clipboard in his hands, looking around frantically.

"Oh no!," Danny ad-libbed, "here come the neighbors. We better get outta here!" as he grabbed Beth's hand and they dashed offstage.

The audience roared.

Like Will Swenson's story, I was in a show once where I forgot to bring on a prop that was a major factor in the scene and I couldn't get offstage to get it. So, I had to find something on the stage to use as a replacement which was just so much fun for everyone else to have to adlib about.



I still have have nightmares about that.

Would love to hear more stories from everyone. I know I've seen a lot of mishaps from forgetting lines to falls. My story is one year during summer theater while working front of house, the play onstage was getting a lot of laughs. The set included a door leading into a living room scene. Door is centered back of stage middle. One of the actors goes through door and door falls down. It stays that way for awhile and at one point a stage hand comes on and puts the door back on as the characters continue with their scene. The plot has to do with the characters getting a lot of money. At the end of the play as each character says what they will do with the money, one character changes their line to say, "Get the door fixed."