Most Unprofessional Thing You've Done as a performer! — Page 3

During a production of Mame I played the older Patrick was in I would do two things nightly.

1. I would spit in Mame's face as much as possible during our confrontation at the Upsons place.

2. I would zip up my fly after Gloria and I made out.

I did the ensemble of Oklahoma!, and during the aucton scene, one of the actors who had a msall line, stepped foward, said his line, and went back to his place. As he was going back, his gun dropped from his holster. Everyone on stage started cracking up, and I had to hid my face behind my hat to try not to break character.

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Yelling profanities into the mike during a black out scene. I had one of the few body mikes right before the big death scene and since the cast was so big, and I was a freshmen and the director didn't really know who I was. It wasn't completely off script, but she was fuming, and couldn't figure out who it was. Then a bunch of the cast members decided to say retarded things during the black out like "Holy Kung-Pow Chicken!"...which totally didn't fit the period of piece.

during one of the last matinees for a production of hot mikado we played hide the pickle - huge jar of them bought at a market stall on the way to the theatre. they found their way into everything - plant pots, zoot suit pockets, my saxophone....

we also did the old trick of having an item passed around the cast (a plastic minature bell, its was xmas) and the one who had it at the bows was buying the drinks. the lindy hopping was fun that night.

i've completely dried, corpsed and had to ask the sound guy to start the music without the cue cos I could not figure out which rhyming little monologue ran into the song - its horrific drying when you are completely alone on stage. luckily it was panto and the audience thought it was hilarious.

i also improvised a tap routine while the fire alarm went off in the theatre and nobody came out to evacuate...

I am really bad, when I don't trust a director to make up my lines.

The worst was in our production of Into the Woods, I was the Witch, and every night, I sang "Children Will Listen" out of order.

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I haven't done anything unprofessional as an actor *yet* that I can remember, but some of the people I worked with in high school were absolutely hilarious. During our production of Godspell, Judas made his exit backstage, then yelled, "Will you guys quit f**kin' around back here?!", forgetting that his microphone was still on. Awkward moment for everyone right there.

During Guys & Dolls 2 years later, an actor tripped & yelled, "S**t, there's f**kin' cheesecake all over the floor!" right into the floor mike (Another character eats food onstage in an earlier scene, & he frequently left crumbs lying around).

oh i've got another one,
this didn't happen to me, but i was in a children's theatre production of thumbelina, and my friend was playing the sparrow.. and during one of the matinee's, i guess he thought he didn't do well, because after his opening song, he went off-stage and said [with his mic still on] "****, thaat was f*cking terrible" with an audience of little kids.
it was hilarious, just not to the audience i guess. =P

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wow...I have so many. I'll start with other people's. I was in Grease and we were body miced and waiting for mic check. Our Doody had to use the abthroom and nobody knew so as she was being mic checked she was in the bathroom so we all heard her. She was washing her hands and talking (about the director lol).

Also, our Sonny never ever wore his pants during rehearsal and I was Marty so during the dance scene in rehearsals I had to dance with him in his boxers.

In rehearsals for lunch room/Summer Nights scene, Rizzo, Marty and Jan all enter with food trays. Being big chested and wearing a really loose shirt, I shoved our bottle of fake champagne into my shirt and nobody could tell. The three of us walk on and as the girls are supposed to be silent and just fake talking to each other, I pulled the bottle out of my shirt and we all passed it around.


When I was in Guys and Dolls the following year (a show i hated so much) I was Cartwright and had nothing to do until scene 6. I sat backstage and read a book and made phone calls.

Oh, another Grease one. One day our Danny was singing Sandy (we added it for him) in rehearsal and one of the company members with a great sense of humor got behind him and did this hysterical interpetive dance. Danny had no idea. At the end of the dance Danny gets back into the car and sighs. He got back in totally focused on his song and found the company member sitting in the passanger seat chin in hands mouthing Why-y-y-y? Oh Sandy. Danny stayed in character and looked at him and sighed at him and shook his head and kept a straight face. Of course the day of the show backstage we all did the dance.

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I also cursed while backstage when my microphone was on. It's audible on the video of the show.

Neddy, it's unprofessional because you're supposed to root on your castmates and be involved and not sit in the back and ignore everyone. I, personally, agree with you, but that's what my director told me. I was reading cause I was bored and it seemed like a better choice than running around or screaming.

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As a techie I once wore glow in the dark shoelaces on my black chucks. Haha. The stage manager wasn't happy, and almost had me go barefoot.

LyTeMyCanDyI - I hope you guys got the rights to use the Sandy song!


I worked on a production of Grease (way back in high school, appropriately) where the entire cast (off stage) was in love with one another. A great sight to behold: everybody scampering out of sight for five or so minutes, thinking nobody knows. That, sadly, was the least of the problems, considering the costumes didn't fit, the musical director couldn't fake his way through the score, and the director couldn't control her cast.

Updated On: 2/18/07 at 10:52 PM

Purposefully upstaged people I didn't like.

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