Your Most Embarassing Theatre Moment

[Fabrizio2]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:31pm

Here are a few of mine.

Dad to Maria Friedman- "Conley (that's me) makes horrible grades. I bet you did that when you were in high school too."

...and my Dad talks a lot during the shows. That is VERY embarassing. I think it is horrible when people yell out during the shows. He also points at things on the stage. Sometimes he stands up to see things when we are in the rear part of the orchestra.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:34pm

LOL but never be embarassed by your dad. You will miss him terribly when he is gone. Believe me, I've been there.

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:44pm

Well, I love my parents because they're embarassing. So I get where both of you are coming from.

I'd walking behind Richard H. Blake on my way back to my hotel after the Wedding Singer preview and talking about how I loved the show, but didn't think he was that great - ha. Then I lookd up and saw him. haha.

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:49pm

Can they be preformance related?

[Fabrizio2]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:50pm

Yeah of course...anything to do with theatre.

[aspiringactress]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 10:54pm

I did an AWFUL production of My Fair Lady, and something went wrong with my mic, so ended having to use shriveled up duct tape found in the wings to secureit to my face. In that same production, someone waslate on a costume change, and I spent an entire 5 minutes alone on stage, and I had nothing to do, so I improvise an entire scene while they were fixing the girl's dress.

Updated On: 5/31/06 at 10:54 PM

[neddyfrank2]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:00pm

Not mine, but when I did Guys and Dolls once a kids pants fell down in Havana

[LilDiva05]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:05pm

When I was 'Annie' back in 1996 (oh god, ten years ago already?), my red finale dress wasn't red. It was 'Tiffany box' blue. =0

[wonderwaiter]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:14pm

Oh, well... If we can tell *other* people's stories, I've got a great one!

A friend of mine was in the German production of Grease. He had recently been ill and was taking medication that unfortunately created some unrest in the, er, poo-parlor division. Towards the beginning of a dance number in Act 1, (I wish I could remember which one), he soiled himself. Since it was the beginning of the song, he had no choice but to complete the number in his befouled state. Since he'd had some distance from the event by the time he was telling me about it, he was able to find it funny. He said the looks on the faces of his fellow cast members was priceless as the unmistakable stench began to permeate the stage.

I can laugh about this story, but every time I've ever been on stage it has run through my head and filled me with fear.

Updated On: 5/31/06 at 11:14 PM

[surefinewhatever]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:27pm

I was watching Avenue Q, when out of nowhere, I started getting really hot and itchy around my neck and especially around my ears. I told my brother (who was sitting next to me) and he said my entire face, ears, and neck were turning really red. I tried to keep from fidgeting in the theatre but I the itching was getting worse and I was still heating up. (I must have been having an allergic reaction something, but to this day I still don't know what) . Finally I couldn't stand it anymore, so I had to take my sweater off. Unfortunately, the only thing I was wearing underneath my sweater was a thin tank top, which kind of halfway came off with the sweater and I ended up flashing the people next to me.

Updated On: 5/31/06 at 11:27 PM

[babygiraffeboots]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:29pm

I was in a scene where i was in the background. I was a showgirl flirting with patrons. This one kid starts whispering to me about handcuffs and running away to get ice cream. I wanted to cry.

[Katurian2]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:34pm

I was in a production of 42nd Street this past year, and during the first showing, my costumer was gone during a VERY fast change for the First Act ballet where Dorothy falls. I had to change into a dress in about 2 lines, and alone. I couldn't do it, but the scene had to be done, so I ran on with the side zipper totally open, showing my entire right side to the audience. Horrible horrible night.

[Isabella2]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:42pm

i too had to sit on stage alone as miss hannigan for 5 minutes because rooster couldn't pick up a damn cue. There was also a night when i had my dress on backwards. Then the the last night, my mic almost fell out of my shorts, so i was holding my ass on stage praying no one would notice. once the lights went out i ran off the short way off stage rather thean the long way, where i was supposed to and slammed my leg into a pile of chairs. My mike was still on so i think the audience heard me say "oh ****". I still have the bruise from 2 weeks ago.

there was the time that i mispronounced mano's name.
My camera died when patti lupone came out.
when i was crying like a bitch, so hard tha i couldn't talk to any of the sweeney cast.

[gavrochegirl]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:43pm

I was in The Foreigner a while back. I remember on my last night, I made quite a noise. Like every night, I ran down the stairs, across the carpet in front of the stage, and swung the door leading to backstage open the widest it could go, causing it to slam hard against the refridgerator that was there. ><

[bwaymyway84]

Posted: 5/31/06 at 11:54pm

When I was a performer for one show I went off stage to the bathroom, did my business, talked with another performer about how much the audience was dull and boring that night, flushed, came back for the next scene I was in...my friend is about to laugh out loud, I just gave her a look we finished Act I, during intermission she tells me "um your mic was still on!!!"

Another time I was playing in the pit for a show and I turned the volume all the way down on my keyboard for whatever reason I can't remember?? I had about 15 minutes until I played again. So it's my turn to play, I start the number and I am freaking out thinking something is wrong with the keyboard, monitor, whatever whatever...the actor on stage is just kind of smiling, then I realize I still had the volume down :)

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 12:55am

I did Wonderful Town in high school - first, the cord fell out of the phone while I was talking to the "newspaper editor," which prompted me and the girl playing Eileen to frantically tap the hangup button and me to say "Mr. Baines?? Oh, thank goodness, I thought I lost you!"

Then, during "Swing," I had to go offstage and come back on from the other side during a dance break. While heading over there through the backstage area, I said to someone "My f*ckin' hair keeps getting stuck to my lip gloss." When I saw the video of the show later on, I learned my mic had still been on and you could clearly hear me cursing. It is forever preserved on the video.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 1:09am

Not my most, but this is the first thing that came to mind:

I played the role of Tommy Djilas opposite my good friend as Zaneeta. During one of the crossover scenes in act two, the two run on stage to the top of the bridge, kiss, then run off.

For some reason this night, I was either really into or something, and I totally started making out with her and put my tongue in her mouth. Yes, I'm gay. No one could tell but us, but it was just embarrasing afterwards to be like "Hey...sorry about that tongue thing..."

Luckily, we just laughed about it, because it was so random.

[wackjack132]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 1:13am

Well...basically the most emberassing thing for me was when we were doing our Lower School show this year.

It was an unpublished show (thats right...I'm an orignal cast member now lol) called The Little Prince That Lost His Voice, sounds classic right? Well...it IS a fun show, but it's intended to be performed for teeny tinny kids, and were 5th-12th. Well, we have a "Morning Meeting" every Teusday and performance week we always perform a scene, and the scene our director picked required the audience to answer a question posed by my character's sister...well, when she asked "The prince is sick and he needs his mother, what ever are we to do." EVERYONE yelled out a different answer...then at the very end of the mumbling a senior looked right in my eyes and went "Slight 'is throat and sell 'is boday to science for crack monay!"

Holy hell, we laughed for a good 3 minutes...unable to continue...and looked like IDIOTS because no one else heard him. Oh well, it was worth it

[pandajen14]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 1:27am

I was Golde in my school's Fiddler on the Roof about two years ago. I had about two minutes to go from my "Tevye's Dream" costume to my "Sunrise, Sunset" costume. I had to change in a utility closet because I didn't have time to run back to the green room before the song, but when I got there on our closing night, my dress was missing. One of the crew members had moved it by mistake, and I had to dart back to the other side of the stage to get it. By the time I was changed, the wedding procession, which I was supposed to be at the front of, had already made its' entrance. The boy playing Tevye (a close friend of mine) covered for me- but I think the audience noticed that I entered considerably behind the rest of the cast!!!

[justagirl2]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 1:59am

Oh gosh, I have so many.

When I was Dolly in Hello, Dolly! this year at school, I tripped down the stairs. Yes, THE stairs. During THE song. Very noticeably, too...I fell right onto my butt. That sucked.

I just finished playing Patty in Grease (which is embarassing enough, as it's an awful part in an awful show), and during the part of the prom scene where I danced with Danny, we would make all these lewd comments to each other, because we're horribly immature and thought it was so funny that we could have a conversation like that and no one would know. Anyway, I got too close to his mic one time, and said something REALLY inappropriate...the whole audience could hear. My sister told me later that she could hear it from her place onstage and was trying not to laugh. There were all these Girl Scouts in the audience, too...I was known as Patty the Slut from then on. Funny, but bad.

When I played Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof, on the same night that Hodel and I royally screwed up the wedding dance, my little sister, who played Bielke, told me, right into my microphone, that she could see my hot pink bra through my wedding dress. Clearly, I have issues with microphones. Updated On: 5/1/07 at 01:59 AM

[Junior]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 9:30am

I have two:

My first came when I was in a less than great production of Annie GEt Your Gun. I was in the chorus so I played lots of smaller roles. In one scene I was a cowboy, but in the next scene I was an Indian, so I had a really quick change to make. Our Indian costumes consisted of baggy tan PJ pants with beaded vests on top, but my PJ pants were far too large, so I had to safety pin them. Well one night while we were doing the severely over choreographed Indian dance, my pants fell down revealing my bright blue rubber ducky boxers! I would have just stepped offstage, fixed the problem, then went back on, but the number was choreographed such that if anyone was missing, the rest were basically screwed, so I had no alternative but to finish the number with my pants around my knees.

The second moment came when I did a production of Little Shop. I played all of the business characters in "The Meek shall Inherit" so I had several quick changes. Well, although I had several people helping me with these changes, they weren't the brightest of people and often forgot or misplaced costume pieces, even though I had correctly placed them where they needed to be before the number. Well after I came off for my first change one night, the sound guy left my mic up(he usually turned it down when we went offstage) and the packed house heard me whispaer franyically "Where are my F****** shoes? where the hell are they?"

[Kitzarina]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 10:36am

When I was in a production of "Anything Goes," I was part of a moment that my friends STILL talk about to this day.

At the end of "Let's Step Out" were were supposed to throw our hands in the air and take a little step out. However, I didn't just step. I slid a good 10 feet across the stage with my arms stretched out and a huge smile on my face. I will never live it down.

[circusliz]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 10:41am

I peed my pants on stage...and not when I was little. I was in high school!

It was during the dress rehearsal for a children's show called Stone Soup at the Albany Civic Theater. During the big finale number we were all supposed to pour these random ingredients into the soup kettle. One of the soldiers in the show, who was wearing cammo with a big bullseye painted on his face, ripped open a box of corn flakes and proceded to pour them all over his head while performing a lovely interpretive dance.

I laughed so hard I peed. I ran to the dressing room as soon as we finished, and when I director yelled at me for missing notes, I very sweetly said "Sorry, I peed my pantyhose. Did you want me to sit in my pee and ruin my costume?"

[showbiz287]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 11:06am

two stories

once when I was in Joseph, I had a really fast costume change from One More Angel in Heaven and POTIPHAR, part of my costume had a long string that needed to be tied in the back, instead of tieing it, I tucked it into my skirt/shorts that we were wearing, and during the dance scene the string came down dangling between my legs.

Also, when I was in ANYTHING GOES during the big Act I tap Finale I was sitting on a metal elaborate french style chair before I had to get up and tap, well, the belt I was wearing got caught underneath part of the metal, and when I got up to go dance, the chair came with me, as in still attached to me...

okay three stories...

...this one happend 2 weeks ago, I was playing the Prince in Cinderella and I was dancing with Cinderella and spun her a little too hard across me into a bench on the stage. The bench fell over, and she went with it...

wow...I'm a real clutz!

[Marguerite Chauvelin]

Posted: 6/1/06 at 11:15am

This was at rehearsal and I wasn't the subject.

The girl who was playing Laurey in Oklahoma! was parodying the line "Now I've rounded up a little and the boys act different to me" and groping her chest. A group of us saw her do this right as the director stood behind her. She looked back and looked shocked that he was there. It was rather humorous.