Craziest Incident You've Encountered in the Theatre

anyone? anyone?

"Is this really appropriate after the subject matter that was discussed on theFiddler/Hamilton thread?
But I'll play along. The craziest thing that has ever happened to me was when I fainted in the theater. I was about 12 years old and I was deathly afraid of heights. We were up in the balcony and I had never been up that high before . I looked down into the orchestra level for maybe 30 seconds and fainted. The only upside to this was the ushers were kind enough to move my whole family and I down closer on account of empty seats."

What theater

Craziest incident in a theatre? Deffo Lindsay Lohan's acting. Yeah Lindsay Lohan

LOL

NOT

July 2013 about three months after Matilda opened - it was a sold out show and there was a huge line of people trying to get cancellation tickets. An old man passed out in the lobby because of the heat AND NO ONE DID ANYTHING. My father had to call the ambulance, and then a woman had the nerve to tell one of the men working at the box office "An old man just dropped dead, can I have his ticket?" Luckily the ambulance arrived and he was fine, they gave him some orange juice and he saw the show.

When I worked at the Miami Beach Theatre for the Performing Arts, a man in the balcony had a heart attack during a matinee of Angela Lansbury in MAME. This in itself was not unusual for a theater with an elderly audience. We called 911 and the EMTs arrived in the audience as the show continued.

The unusual part was that the victim's wife refused to leave the show to accompany her husband to the ER, despite the insistence of the EMTs. An argument ensued while CPR was performed in the aisle (show continuing) until finally the woman shouted so that all 3,000 patrons could hear her: "I bought these tickets six months in advance and I'm not leaving until Angela does!"

The run was sold out, but IIRC we offered to put in temporary seats for the lady for one of the remaining performances and she eventually left with her husband and the EMTs.

***

The craziest thing that happened to me personally was during WONDERFUL TOWN, starring Lauren Bacall, George Hearn and Maureen Moore. During an early scene, we see "Ruth's" (i.e., Bacall's) short stories dramatized on stage. They are all overblown tales that a young writer thinks she should be writing about even though the subjects are beyond her experience. There is an African safari, an Upper East Side cocktail party and a third scene I've forgotten. The dramatization requires multiple costume changes for the star and 20 or more sound effects, each timed to a punch line on stage.

One night I was watching from the Sound Booth when the Sound Tech jumped up from the console and said, "The sound board is overheating! I've got to go--you take over!" And with that he ran out of the booth just as the sequence described above began. In that barn of a theater the Sound Board was located over a football field's length and up 5 or 6 flights of stairs from the booth.

As non-union personnel, I wasn't normally allowed to touch any of the equipment and, although I had seen the sound tech play the cues, I had never worked the reel-to-reel recorder we used in those days. So I missed the first cue trying to figure out how the equipment worked. (Did I mention I am by no means technically inclined?) Bacall or Hearn covered with an ad lib.

Then I overshot the second cue and played the third cue instead of the second. This worked out fine because many of the cues (lion roars, breaking glass, etc.) were repeated several times. But now I'm one cue ahead and trying to following the script and work the tape player while keeping track in my head of the cue that was needed v. the cue that was next on the machine. (The scenes go so fast I don't have time to rewind.)

And did I mention that I was simultaneously turning body mikes on and off because Bacall tended to swear like a pirate as soon as she stepped off stage?

I got to the end of the tape with one cue (a lion's roar) still to go. The roar was the "punch line" of the entire sequence and rather essential to ending the scene. Since I didn't have time to rewind, I flipped on the PA system, and did my best Bert Lahr "ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!" into the PA mike.

The sequence got a huge laugh and lots of applause, and I admit I was rather proud of my ingenuity. But nobody from the WONDERFUL TOWN company spoke to me afterward; I was told Betty was not as amused as the audience. (And I can't blame her: I'm sure it was nerve wracking to play that scene while wondering if any of the sound cues would actually occur. She didn't speak to me that night, but neither was she nasty about it.)

It was quite a comedown from feeling I had "heroically" saved the first act!

Updated On: 7/28/15 at 09:19 PM

" Besides people texting and being loud, what are some crazy/rude/strange/WTF things you've seen happen in the theatre. (Talk about rude ushers, mean box office people, etc.)"

Philly's strange threads

"Had a friend flash the ticket seller in the Belasco to get better seats to JCM's final show."

But did she/he get the seats?

Center row F :)

To be fair, he asked to see her hedwig tattoo and it is on her rib cage and she "forgot" she wasnt wearing a bra.

when i bought my standing room ticket for hedwig, the man who sold me the ticket was cute. I wonder if she had to pay more, or if they did anything after the show