What's the most embarrassing thing that happened to you on stage? — Page 3

It was my first college production and I was in Paderewski's Children, a play that my director wrote about the famous Polish politician/musician Ignacy Paderewski. Well it was a scene where an army troop stationed in Buffalo, NY was putting on a show with about the life of Paderewski, using a marionette to impersonate Paderewski, for him to view when he was visiting and some dancing girls near by as well. As one of the soldiers it was my job to be in charge of the curtain on our small platform stage built on the actual stage. It was opening night and I was strugging with the "boot camp" I had to go through for 6 weeks prior to the show and getting the marches and commands down so I was really nervous. Well anyway I was closing the curtain for a transition of a scene of this mini play and I pulled on the rope too hard and half of the curtain fell down. I panicked inside but I ran to it to tried to fix it, which was hopeless so I pulled it as close to the center as possible so there wasn't a big gap. Then I smiled at the dancing girls watching our performance and sheepishly returned to my seat. But since we were amateurs in the theater world, only being soldiers, people I worked with said it looked like it fit the show and the audience members probably didn't notice a thing. But being my first college show, I didn't think I ever get cast again after that.

I am a very hard person to embarass onstage. And what I have to relate didn't embaarass me at the time, but it has subsequently.

I was Molina in a production of "Kiss of the Spider Woman: the musical" and our director had this thing that he loved to do called "Word of the Day", a word or phrase that someone had to seamlessly work into the script of the show. It was o.k. when it started, but as the run went on they got more and more sexual and/or obscene.

Well, it's the last performance. It's the scene that leads into "Mama, It's Me". After, the bit where I'm getting the shopping list from Mama and giving it to the Warden, the guard says to the other guard, "Don't write his mother's chicken, write his Personal Satisfaction Device. (that day's word of the day) He probably needs it." The actor playing the Warden and I just stare at him for a second and proceed with the scene.

The embarassing thing about that incident is that that night is the night that we videotaped the show for our archives. And whenever I show that to someone, when it comes to that scene, I die a thousand deaths when that bit comes up.

---

I was playing Hot Blades Harry in a production of Urinetown last month.
At the beginning of Act II on the opening night performance, somehow our Hope's head mic fell off, she doesn't have that much to say in the first scene of Act II anyway so we were okay. Before Bobby and Old Ma Strong come in we put a noose over her ("That's it she gets the rope!"). After her talk with Bobby and her reprise of Follow Your Heart, there's a blackout for the next scene, so I clipped her mic back on.
Then durring 'Tell Her I Love Her' I was supposed to take the noose off, I lifted it up over her head and noticed that I had clipped the mic over the rope! I took a few seconds to mentally freak and mutter **** in my mind, then put the noose back on her. I could hear some people in the audience doing a general "uh-oh" kinda chuckle. When Hope takes over as leader of the rebels and removes her gag and ties she just wisked the rope off and her mic went flying behind her, she just held it there until she could put it back on when we hid in the "sewers" (the blocked off first row of the audience) after We're Not Sorry.

---