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

[Horton]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:00pm

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.

[C is for Company]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:07pm

At one of our final dress rehearsals in Les Mis, all of the students came out onstage with rifles in hand to the barricade and only in underwear. That was in front of the director and our dear Superintendent of Music for our school district. We love her, but apparently she didn't love us that much that day and threatened that if we didn't re-enter the stage in 10 seconds, we were out of there. Oops

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:08pm

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.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:14pm

I was playing a mute in a children's theater production of Aladin, okay you can laugh, and there's a scene where the genie makes a castle of light. The lighting effect never turned on. So being being the intelligent 8th grader I was, walks up to the stage managers booth and tries to help. It was theater in the round and there I was talking, as a mute, for 100 people. Lovely.

[Marlene]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:17pm

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.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 3:52pm

I may have told this story at some other point, so apologies if that's the case:

Many years ago I was in a production of THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. As I recall, I was playing John, the butler.

Our Lorraine Sheldon was proabably one of the worst actresses to clump across a stage. However, that didn't stop her from playing the diva when she was backstage. In short, the whole cast grew to despise her.

You may recall that Lorraine spends a good portion of the play locked in a mummy case. Well a group of cast members put together a baggie filled with raw onions, garlic and leeks that we secretly spilled into the mummy case well before show time and closed it solid. When it came time for the mummy case to be brought out in the play, many of us were able to sneak into the house and noticed that when the case was opened onstage, the auditorium smelled like a Big Mac--the odor was so strong. Lorraine was locked into it and couldn't do anything about it. Ultimately Lorraine (still in the mummy case) was carried off and when she climbed out of it in the wings there was all hell to pay.

Actually if she'd shown that emotion onstage, she would have been fine in the role!

[fairygodmother]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 4:18pm

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...

[dramaqueen2]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 4:41pm

hahaha, some of these are great!

alright well: i was in a dance piece that was more interpretive i guess you could say [don't be scared] and it was telling the story of man and woman and the vices and virtues and things.. and it the beginning with the entrance of the vices i was playing a demon and was crawling all over the stage and we had to kind of annoy and provoke the virtues on their blocks in their poses, and whenever i would crawl over [my back to the audience] i would always make faces at the actors and sometimes they would break character. it was hilarious.
and i would do it during rehearsals and stuff and when opening night finally came, i didn't make any faces and the guy playing patience looked at me and burst out laughing in anticipation.
i still laugh about it now.

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 4:42pm

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.

[Becoz_i_knew_you21]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 5:01pm

Well I kind of attributed to this but not really. My show choir(me included) were talking very loud backstage and then one of the girls shouts "Shut the f*ck up!" Updated On: 2/18/07 at 05:01 PM

[The White Half-Mask]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 5:02pm

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).

[broadwaystar2b]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 5:07pm

I've laughed when I'm supposed to be "dead" before
That's pretty much the worst thing I've done onstage

[dramaqueen2]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 6:16pm

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

[thejcm]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 7:02pm

I was in Fame as Nick Piazza and I had to exit midway through Serena's "Let's Play a Love Scene." Well I had used a bag as prop in the scene leading up to it, and during opening night I left it onstage instead of walking off with it...so instead of just waiting until the scene was over and it was dark to get it, I decided it would just be okay to walk out and pick it up while the girl playing Serena is downstage and completely oblivious. Yeah, totally not cool. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to do that, thank god she didn't see me, I don't know how she would've worked that into her emotions.

Also, same show, same song: Backstage (behind the main backdrop, it was a crappy high school fake theater in an old gym) would be myself, Mr. Meyer(?), and a couple chorus girls doing our own x-rated version of a "love scene"...well myself and one of the chorus girls are grinding and silently cracking up and what should happen? She trips and falls right into the backdrop, causing it to swing and sway in the middle of this emotional song.

Good times in high school.

[LyTeMyCanDyI]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 7:37pm

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.

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:15pm

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.


What is bad about that?

In Guys and Dolls I put Prune Juice in Arvide Abernathy's cup.

In Cabaret I replaced the pinaple with a cantelope.

In another show that I hated (and so did the rest of the cast) more than words can say, I didn't say one of my scripted lines. I added scenes that had nothing to do with the story. It didn't look bad for me since the audience didn't know the difference but it did make the director/writer look really bad.

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 8:46pm

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

[Fenchurch]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 9:00pm

Was totally stoned during most of my presentations of Bobby in a Chorus Line, but I gto great laughs every night.

[LyTeMyCanDyI]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 9:11pm

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.

[Piercemn]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 9:53pm

I got stoned before a performance of We Bombed in New Haven and laughed on my own laugh line. I never got over that and never went onstage stoned (on purpose) again. I did go one because an actor didn't show up for a show I'd directed, and I was stoned when I went to the performance. (It was a kid's show at a Catholic School that still had nuns in habits) A friend of mine was visiting and we went to see the show. I wasn't planning to go on for an actor, but what could we do? I stepped in with a script and at least I had a script to read from and the kids were young so it was fun anyway.

I didn't laugh then, though.

[Marlene]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 10:25pm

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.

[Broadwayboy2631]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 10:35pm

When I did a production of The Wiz, I missed something like 15 rehearsals. I got fired, but then another person in the cast got put into a mental institution, so I filled in for him. In a way, I wish I was kidding.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 10:52pm

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

[theaterdude87]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 10:55pm

When I did SOM I made a decision after the concert scence to go back to the dressing room and lie down.

*Granted I was Herr Zeller and I was in a suit and heavy long ass wool jacket...the lighting was so hot and I felt like I was going to pass out.*

[B3TA07]

Posted: 2/18/07 at 10:59pm

Purposefully upstaged people I didn't like.