Funny bloopers from your own shows — Page 2

During one performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors, someone standing in the back of the auditorium leaned against the light switches and all of the house lights blazed on. It happened during sleeping/overnight scene so it was pretty startling. =)

During Trial by Jury, the guy playing Edwin was supposed to kind of cower behind me. He grabbed by arms and pulled me in front of him, but was a little enthusiastic and actually flung me off the bench we were sitting on. Hee hee. Now, I am by no means a slight girl but I suppose his enthusiams combined with my slippery taffeta costume were a dangerous combination. During that same show, for one of the gags, we popped open a bottle of fizzy lemonade. It had gotten pretty shaken up and exploded with a gigantic pop and flowed down all over the stage and my costume. Ah, fun, fun times!

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When I was in a production of Grease a few years ago in high school, we were rehearsing Greased Lightning and the kid playing Kineckie slid in the middle of the stage and he fell into the pit. Thank god there were no instruments there otherwise there would have been big problems.

In Seussical, the Cat in the Hat had to go across the stage on a hellicopter aka a wheely platform pushed by some jungle animals. Anyway, one of the wheels got stuck, the Cat flew off the platform and luckily landed on his feet. He managed to make up a line, the jungle animals had to lift this massive wheely thing to the other side of the stage, making so much noise in the process. For those of us frozen on stage, we couldnt help but tremble from trying not to laugh.

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During a production of Of Mice and Men one of the guys was supposed to say "You come after me and I'll kick you G**d*** head off." The night his parents came to the show he was going to drop the God part because he said they would stop the show and drag him from the stage if they heard that. However when he got to the line somehow what came out was "You come after me and I'll kick you f***in' head off" complete with psuedo-Brooklyn accent (I'm from Georgia). For a good 20 seconds everyone on stage froze staring at each other, but the show did go on. We gave him a hard time during intermission, but at the end of the show no one remembered what he'd done because in the next scene I literally fell through a door on my entrance when I missed the edge of the platform.

When we did The Foreigner at our school, I was Betty, and my friend, a true redneck, decided he would get a little creative with his Klan outfit for the final showdown at the end of the show. He enters while my back is turned, wearing the entire Klan outfit...and a red baseball cap (one he wears during the entire show) on top of the hood. Just picture it.

If that wasn't bad enough, NOT TWO SECONDS LATER, he says his first line with a spoonerism. Instead of asking me "What's going on in this house," he yells in my face, WITH A BULLHORN, "What's HO-ing on in this GOUSE?"

I started crying because I was trying not to laugh, and we just stared at each other. I COULDN'T SPEAK, I was laughing way too much. Everyone in the audience loved that part.

Not funny at the time, but now we can all look back and giggle. I recently was in a production of "Hair". Our last dress rehearsal was a complete diaster. I have never seen so many injuries in my life. Our Berger cut his toe on a set piece, one of the "Tribe", tripped over a set piece right before "Intials" and almost went down for the count, I stabbed the side of my foot on a block and almost fell off a block at an earler point and the most serious injury occured when one of the "Trible" members went to step off the platform and onto a box in the backstage area, right before a scene change. Well, there was not adequate lighting and someone had moved the box (I have no idea why) and she stepped out into nothing, landing on her foot and somehow slicing it open. The actress playing Dionne fell with her and twisted her ankle, but the other cast memeber was severely hurt, screaming and crying in pain. There was blood everywhere and she had to be taken to the emergency room in the middle of the show. the poor thing had to have two toenails cut off and she was told that they'll never grow back.

She was doped up on pain meds for the run of the show and had to wear mocasions on her feet, while everyone else went barefoot. We can at least laugh about it now. She had a good sense of humor about it and was told me how upset she was that she was taken to the hospital right before the nude scene. :) And the doped up on pain killer thing would only work for a show like HAIR, so it was all good.

I've so enjoyed reading this thread!

I was stage managing a production of Oliver! which featured many 8th graders as Fagin's kids. In one scene, a beaded necklace snapped and the beads began rolling all over the stage. I envisioned the nightmare of multiple cast members tripping, etc. The kids were so great - stayed in character as pickpockets and gobbled up the beads with ad-libs like "give me those", "I want it", "mine!", etc. Not one bead was left, and I'll bet the audience thought it was planned!

I directed this same group in one-acts when they got to high school. During a competition, we had difficulties with "Sunday Tea With Desiree" (Anyone know this piece? It uses character names from "A Little Night Music".) First, the students got through 5 minutes and then had to start over because the judges hadn't been in the house. Then, a wheel fell off the tea cart, causing it to list Titanic-like and sending a few dishes crashing on the stage. Desiree didn't miss a beat - "I'll pour...CRASH....and Petra will serve."
What a great bunch of young performers!

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In The Sound of Music, we had quite a matinee one day... during the party scene, Max, Elsa and the captain all managed to be late for their scenes. Our Captain, bless his heart, couldn't remember how to tie a tie knot, and they continued to perform the scene without him (I was playing Louisa). So we get to the point where it's been about a minute and Zeller and Von Schreiber have ad-libbed an entire argument about Austria and Germany, the girl playing the maid finally comes in with "Why don't we all go out to the terrace?" This, of course, is exactly when the Captain enters and says his line, "It's much more pleasant out on the terrace."

Oy.

Then, ironically, Elsa was having costume problems of her own: she was wearing these frankly dangerous stilettos, one of which came undone and she promptly tripped and twisted her ankle. So both she and Max missed an entrance because he was busy making sure she was okay. So our Maria just sort of stood there until Brigitta had the good sense to begin their little dialogue.

My friend was supposed to pull me offstage at the end of the scene, but she pulled too hard, so my ankle buckled. I was fine, but I was wearing these shoes with a really big thick heel, and the heel banged down onto the hollow stage. The huge BOOM! echoed through the auditorium.

In the video, you can see both of our faces just fall and we look horrified, but we burst out laughing the second we got offstage, and so did everyone else backstage. Our evil teacher got mad and blamed me. Um, because yeah, I totally wanted that to happen. *eyeroll*

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There have been so many it's hard to remember them all.

#1: Annie

Rooster and Lily and Mrs. Hannigan were being dragged out of Daddy Warbucks' house when Roosters moustached came off. This kid is a great actor HORRIBLE AD LIBBER he goes "I should have used super glue!!!" Let's just say a big argument about if super glue was invented or not followed that performance.

#2 Les Miserables

This is an offstage blooper funny but scary at the same time. My friends and I were standing offstage waiting for the next scene when the scrim started to go up. My friends dress got caught on it and she started to go up with the scrim! Finally someone came to their senses and pulled her down before she got to high up or the dress ripped.

#3 Pinocchio

Yet another bad ad lib moment. And yes it involves the same kid from number one. It was Antonios monologue thing before the whale scene. This actor was told to stall so we could get the whale onstage. Next thing we know he's saying stuff like " And when the whale sneezed he got snot all over Geppetto, and Geppetto had to take seventy showers to get the whale snot off him." Disasterous when told to third graders

When we did Alice in Wonderland, I was the Dodo, and they attached feathers to the fron tof my shirt, and as I get up it starts snowing feathers...

And when we did Cabaret last year, I didn't even manage to make it to the stage, but I had a body mic and as I was leaving the dressing room and the wire from my very ill-atatched mic got wrapped around the door... and proceeded to detatch itself at the very top by the actual mouth piece where you talk into. So I had to get on stage, and I'm walking around the dressing room yelling "I broke my mic! I broke my mic!" Luckily my friend fixed it for me but it was really funny...

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Also for Cabaret, for the club scdenes, we had this big board that ha da pic of a bar on it... and it fell over.

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This goes back many years...

I was doing the lighting for a summer stock production of MY FAIR LADY when the actor playing Higgins was singing "You Did It" and uttered "I can tell that she was born Cesarean" instead of "I can tell that she was born Hungarian".

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