Mess ups!!

[Broadway_Baby]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 11:13am

Anyone got any funny on-stage mess up stories?? It could be you, or in a show you saw... I'm just curious, and looking for a laugh!

Love Always,
Lauren

[StephanietheStar]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 11:21am

well..when I was in big! the musical I didn't start my opening song until the second verse BECAUSE the stupid band didn't play the measure before it right so I couldn't tell what part it was...the piano player just liked- STOPPED! so it didn't sound right so i didn't start singing!

I never see mistakes at professional shows...not that they don't happen..i'm just like "WOAH!" and i don't notice that stuff...

[FabalaCohen]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 11:26am

At my old high school, opening night for either of our yearly productions must go off without a hitch, lest we face the wrath of the drama teacher. Last year, for our Follies productions, two people forgot to make their entrances at seperate performances. The first, for the middle and elementary students, the actress was having mic problems and couldn't come out in time. The drama teacher had to run out and make up a conclusion on the spot.

Later, on opening night, the same thing happened in a different scene. Thankfully, the actor (for a high school senior, IMO, he's pretty damn good) can improvise on a dime.

My little sister attended her MS production of Annie Jr. During the scene when Rooster and Lily are introduced, those actors had also missed their cue. The girl playing Miss Hannigan sat at her desk for a minute or two, and then said, "Well, what would YOU do with $50,000?"

However, in all three instances, my drama teacher was apparently livid afterwards.

[theatrelover13]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 12:30pm

I was in an African period piece called, "Anowa." During rehersals we practiced bare foot, but I wore beat up socks when I wasn't on stage to keep my feet clean. Keep in mind that our costmes were beautiful African wraps and head scarfs, and the scenery really made the audience believe that they were back in the colonial days.

During one performance I forgot to remove my beat up socks before going onto stage!!! I didn't notice I still had them on until I started dancing. I was horrified, but I tried to play it off. The socks were completely destroying the illusion of being in that time period.

This just happend to be the next that our show was being formally evaluated by some judge. At the end of the performance he gave a critique, and the whole time I was wishing he wouldn't say anything about my socks. He saved the best for last saying, "I just have to ask, was the gym socks supposed to represent something?" I just about died. All the cast tried to comfort me and say that it was alright, but I just felt so bad.

[FabalaCohen]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 1:14pm

I also forgot- at the end of second night performance of our school's production of "Joseph," the coat got stuck on its wire. By the time the tech people got it moving, the Narrators (we had two) had only enough time to throw it over our Joseph's shoulders before the curtain.

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 1:55pm

Wonderful Town seems to be the show I catch mistakes in. When I was in it in high school, I was on the phone with "Mr. Baines," the city editor. As I was talking, the cord fell out of the phone. The girl playing Eileen and I desperately made a big show of freaking out and tapping the hang-up buttons, and we miraculously got "Mr. Baines" back, thank the Lord.

The other day I was ushering there and poor Kate Baldwin tripped and almost fell down the stairs when she was coming into the apartment while Wreck was in his shorts. Ray McLeod delivered his line "Heyyy, honey bunch!" and added "You OK?"

Posted: 1/13/05 at 2:00pm

I remember seeing Ragtime on Broadway and the stage during Atlantic City would not drop. The Hydrolics were messed up and it made this horrible grinding sound.

Also, When I saw The Phantom of the Opera in Los Angeles there were a slew of mistakes. The chandeller got stuck. And let me see.... There were two phantoms and two christines on stage at once (big oops)

[LaeloftheLakes]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 2:14pm

Okay, I have the Mack Daddy of all mess-ups that happened to me.

I was in "The Miser" in High School a few years ago, and they didn't have anyone else who could play the lead character. Our teacher asked me if I'd do it, and I accepted. Unfortunately, (not to brag, this caused me a lot of grief) my boobs are too large to be taped down, so they decided to make the character a fat guy instead. So I had all this stuffing in my costume, which was EXTREMELY hot and uncomfortable. Our school's really low budget, so they told me to just rip up a sleeping bag and use that stuffing. Yeah. Very classy.

Anyway, I was doing one of the final scenes, and the girl playing my daughter was down on her knees, and grabbed my leg to beg me to let her fiance go. Sure enough, my pants came down, my shirt came untucked, and all the stuffing fell out onto the floor. Everyone was completely still for about two seconds, then the audience, went nuts. People fell out of their chairs, they laughed so hard. It was ridiculous. We couldn't start the play again for almost ten minutes.

[IdinaRocks]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 2:37pm

When my school did the Music Man, there was a scene that Harold Hill was supposed to come out on while Marian and her mother were outside the house, and he came on about 3 minutes late, leaving me and another girl to talk about virtually nothing...it was my first real play that I was in, and I had never had to improvise before on stage, so that was interesting lol

[N0tThatGirl213]

Posted: 1/13/05 at 4:20pm

Were you Marian or Mrs. Paroo?

A similar thing happened in our production...he came out on time, but totally blanked on his lines. I spent the entire scene arguing with myself. Twas quite painful.

Updated On: 1/13/05 at 04:20 PM

[VonTussleGirl]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 6:44pm

When I was in "Tom Sawyer", we had the scholroom scene where Tom gets engaged to Becky, but then they break up because Becky finds out that he's already engaged to Amy, right? Well, we had a bunch of lines before Tom says "Say Becky, was you ever engaged?" but during the last performance, the kid playing Tom SKIPPED about ten lines and started off the conversation by saying "Was you ever engaged?" Really tripped me up but I improvised a little thing like "Isn't that a little soon? We've only just met now, Thomas" and we got back on track.

[stagemomfromhell]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 6:47pm

I saw Crista Moore really get tangled in a bunch of sillystring in BIG and have trouble finishing the scene. She kept finding more sillystring on the set her co-stars etc. and picking it off.

[Popular]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 6:48pm

That Ragtime messup reminded me of one that I saw. My friend understudied Sarah on the National tour and in Chicago so I saw it quite a few times....the best was when Tateh and Mother are singing "Our Children" and Tateh's mustache is literally flipping around with every breathe the poor guy took. I don't know how it stayed on or how they didn't crack up. It was hysterical! I bet he made sure to stick it on well from then on!

[TheatreDiva612]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:04pm

I was Ado Annie in Oklahoma, and during "Cain't Say No" I got two of the verses mixed up on opening night. It didn't really make a difference though. So, it wasn't that bad. I saw a production of The Music Man and during the Pick A Little, Talk a Little song, all of the girls messed up and got tongue tied and started laughing...it was pretty bad.

[LilElphaba]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:14pm

I went to see Wicked again January 5th-Duriing WONDERFUL idina went to fix her hat and she accidently touched the mic on her hat. The sound was REALLY loud and everyone started laughing! Idian was cracking up and then she tapped her hat in a funny way and gave a thumbs up to the audience. Then she contnued the line RIGHT where she left off. It was the funniest thing ever.

Also, in popular JLT was saying Toss Toss in low voices and high squeaky ones and Idina tried to copy them. She was laughing so hard she fell back on the bed twice. Then she got up off the bed and walked around and JLT said "SIT SIT SIT down!, FOCUS!" They were laughing for like 5 minutes!

[Letty2]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:19pm

I was in Music Man also and right before the "Wells Fargo Wagon" scene and the Mayor's daughter (not Zaneeta the younger one.. i forgot her name..lol) is supposed to come out and say "Papa, Papa, the WELLS FARGO WAGON!" But she forgot to come out and so it was me (I played Mrs.SHinn), Mayor Shinn, and Marian and we had to improvise like a whole conversation..it was so fun though!

Also in the same show.. i know this sounds really immature and gross.. but someone tooted during "Ya Got Trouble" which means everyone is onstage and it STUNK up the whole stage. Later my friends in the audience were asking me why everyone had a weird expression on their face during that song. :)

[FOAnatic]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:20pm

When I did "Guys and Dolls" for my high school 5 years ago there was a lil mishap during the song "Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat." The stage at my school used to be small and rotatable. But, they had expanded it. Well, where the old stage met the new stage there was a tiny bit of an uneveness. So, during the song the entire cast has to be sitting on these benches in the "mission office." The dance we were doing required a lot of standing and sitting. Well, the bench that my row was sitting on was mistakenly placed on that uneven spot in the stage. So, when we stood up during the song we had no idea that the bench had fallen over behind us and when we went to sit back down...we all fell backwards and hit our heads on the stage. It was hysterical...but the funny part was that it happened at a precise moment where the audience thought that it was just part of the show. So, it worked out. But, that was opening night...we slapped the person who wished us luck that night.

Updated On: 1/14/05 at 07:20 PM

[gertiecummings]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:25pm

So many good ones...

In R&J Capulet forgetting his line and yelling "Shut up!" to the Nurse.

Our Curly forgetting the words to Surrey when we did Oklahoma!

The best one I ever heard about though was a production of West Side Story where Chino forgot to bring his gun on to kill Tony so instead the actor playing him took off his shoe, threw it at him and yelled "POISONED BOOT!!!" My friend and I laughed for about five minutes.

[Carl Magnum]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 7:29pm

Little Night Music. We did a conert version my junior year at college and during what we called 'Crew View' (a chance for the crew to see and become framiliar with the show). Anyways I played Carl Magnus and we got to the scene where he is supposed to strip. So I'm doing my lines and I figure "oh what the hell" so even though I wasn't in costume, just street clothes I start to strip and then drop trou. Well it came as a shock to the cast and crew that I was wearing bright red boxer briefs and they all got a pretty good look at what I was packing. Basically the whole place broke up for a good 2 minutes and when the laughter, onstage and off, died down we still couldnt get on with the scene.


*and no the luaughter wasn't over what was in my shorts, just the fact that I did it and that the underware was red. Got hit on alot more by the gay boys in the department after this incident*

[tspin6]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 8:30pm

I saw Wicked on July 17th (Kristen Chenoweth's second to last performance). There were several mess-ups. First, in the first classroom scene, the blackboard didn't come out. Two of the students realized and brought it in manually right before Dr. Dillamond needed it.

The funniest was the Popular scene. Kristen's bed didn't come out. She was really funny and started dancing around looking for it, peering behind her wall of shoes. Both Idina and Kristen started laughing and finally Idina said something like "It's her second to last show... Give the girl a bed". When the bed finally came out, Kristen jumped on it and said something like "A 14 million dollar production and you can't get a bed around her". Then she was so out of character that she seemed to forget where they were in the scene so she actually re-said the past few lines (hers and Idina's) and then said something like "Okay, I'm ready now". It was hysterical and I think they both handled it really well. The audience was definitely amused!

[musicman117]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 8:42pm

A friend of mine told me about of production Man of La Mancha she saw where Aldonza forgot the lyrics to the song "Aldonza." So instead, she just sang "I'm a whore I'm a whore" over and over to fill out the rest of the song!

Wish I had seen it myself

[musicgal04]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 8:48pm

A director of mine did a European Tour of West Side Story a few years ago and told me a story about the final scene when Maria has the gun. Well, in her frantic "how many bullets are left ine this gun" speech, a blank went off when the gun was facing the women playing Rosalia. There was a shocked pause follwed by the Rosalia saying "Bitch" and falling to the ground.
Also when I saw Wonderful Town a couple months ago, the bedroom set didn't come on so the Apopolous was left on stage with Brooke and Jennifer Hope Wills just talking about all of the funiture that would arrive at some point, once it did arrive he did his whole schpiel all over again.

[CatieElphie1]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 8:55pm

So many and so small a space:
Ah, let's see:
Music Man: I played Mrs. Shinn and I had this HUGE hat that I wore. They pinned it to my hair, but I have really, long, heavy hair, so it kept falling out of my bun. So during Pick-a-Little, I kept bobbing my head around and finally my hat flew off into the audience and my hair flew in my face "The Ring" style!!
Guys and Doll: 3 benches broke during the mission scence and the mission office collapsed (during rehersal)
The Sound of Music
The ramp that was carrying the VonTrapps into the alps broke and they had to stand there, completly still untill they evacuated all the little kids off the set!!
And then there were none;
During the big shooting scene, the gun didn't go off. It broke. The kid who had to die just stood there waiting as the other kid tried desperatly to get it to work. Finally, after six tries and hysterical laughter from all the dead bodies on the floor, I grabbed a book of a shelf slammed it on the flor and yelled BANG!! (but I still think poisoned boot would be better!!!)

[threatXthree]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 9:05pm

When I was in a production of "The Hollywood Hillbilly Renuion" (don't ask, very very VERY low budget school), the opening night was a disaster in every scene a person lost a line. So when we got to the final scene and at the very CLIMATIC point of the show the girl who was supposed to say this very revealing line forgot and just stood there for TWO minutes. So after the silence, the guy that was playing her husband turns to the audience and says, "The conversation just flows doesn't it?" Of course he was being sarcastic but it sent the audience on a laughing riot. The girl who forgot her line went backstage during this laughing stock went to the stage manager, got the script, got her line, and continued to the finale. At our second and last evening performance, the show ended up being perfect. And then during our morning school performance, it got worse. I wont go into detail but the school drama program was drastically changed after. :)

[CatieElphie1]

Posted: 1/14/05 at 9:07pm

I should explain that gertiecummings has the new honor of being the little line at the end of my post!! That is the funniest thing EVER!!
and threatXthree...I want to know what happend!! don't leave me hanging!!!