messing up during a performance.

[robert2]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:00am

Tonight I came in to early on a song with a Jazz Band I started working with. I only rehearsed with them on this one song twice.They did get catch up and we fixed it, I doubt the Audience knew. But does anyone out there mess up I'm sure we all do but it feels bad when you do it.

[misschung]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:03am

Everyone does, its just an inevitable part of live theatre

[robert2]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:07am

but if your a pro I have been the business a while I have seen my share of the the pros messing up I just feel its our job not to mess up. But many performers it happens. thanks for the reply it helps

[misschung]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:30am

Well I'm not saying you should do it every performance, but Idina Menzel cracked her high note on "defying gravity" and the show went on, you know?

[jordangirl]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:34am

Even pros are humans. If they didn't want mistakes, live orchestras and performances would be a thing of the past.

[misschung]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:38am

Exactly. I'm not saying that I look forward to mistakes, but its part of the tension of live theatre

[ashbash1990]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:53am

It happens... I was preforming a scene from A Mid Summer Night's Dream yestreday and totally cracked (on stage) up when Flute came out in his dress...

[theaterdude87]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 1:06am

it is ok sh*t happens. it is live theater...it cannot always go right!

[Elphie4ever]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 9:09am

and this is why i love live theater
people will screw up and the show will just go on
no one is practically perfect. the pros are all human.. everyone makes a mistake once in a while.
and i want to get into the show business tooo

[istillbelieve24601]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 9:28am

You know, they do screw up on Broadway too.

Actors and performers are human. Much as we like to think we're God, we're not, and we do mess up occasionally.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 10:11am

To make you feel better, two time Tony Award Winner Cherry Jones blanked out on all her lines in a performance of "Doubt" long after it opened, she used a script for that performance.

[uncageg]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 10:18am

I was attending classes at Society Hill Playhouse in Philadelphia in 1979 and got the lead in that year's show. There was a scene that led into a dance number. The line that led up tot he beginning of the dance number was almost the same line the opened the scene after the dance number. I delivered the line to the scene after the dance number and can remember the looks from my fellow actors. The person with the next line started winging it as did a few other actors and we brought the dialoug back around to the dance number and went on with the show. It was my first experience with improvising in the middle of a performance. The audience had no clue what had happened. My teachers did though!

[misschung]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 10:20am

I've done that during violin performances and luckily the people I talked to afterward didn't notice - the teachers did, of course...

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 10:36am

I played piano with a small jazz band at my high school once. I followed the music the way it was writte, but I guess they had changed the order of something and I didn't know. So I ended up finishing the song before they did. I don't think anyone noticed, but it was really embarrassing. That's part of live performances.

[robert2]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:33pm

Thanks for all your support and comments they really helped thank god we have a support system out there with people who understand.. thanks again
anyone interested in expressing there stories please reply.. Updated On: 5/6/07 at 12:33 PM

[gymdudeva]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 12:57pm

Jazz has such an improv feeling anyway, as long as you don't panic, and keep going, no one will notice.

I've done lots of amateur theatre, and I am always shocked at what the audience doesn't notice. Stuff that seems like major catastrophes to us, my friends in the audience almost never catch!!

[junkyard]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 2:22pm

I was in a production of "Funny Thing" at a well known summer theatre a few seasons ago......My fellow actor had a costume problem, and missed his cue.......what a moment, alone on stage during a musical farce, I stayed in character and started an improv, I was rolling .......in fact, the SM held up my friend's entrance for 4 or 5 minutes.......it was great.....i was hoping his zipper would break every night of the run!

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 2:37pm

I have a bootleg of "Putting It Together" when it was first tried in Oxford with Diana Rigg.

On the performance that my friend who taped it saw, Diana Rigg totally got tripped up in the lyrics of "Getting Married Today."

She stopped the band and told the audience something like "I'm sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, the lyrics to this song are extremely difficult and you deserve to hear them as written."

She started the song over and nailed it.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 2:57pm

The best is when it's recorded on live TV.

Try looking up Leslie Uggams on YouTube. "Spring Is Busting Out All Over"

Get ready to laugh, as well.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 3:00pm

Ruthie Henshall had a complete blank-out at the first preview of "Putting It Together" on Broadway. She said to the audience "I am talking a load of rubbish and you know it". The audience laughed, but she didn't forget her lines after that.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 3:03pm

And I worked with a girl who played Grizzabella on B-Way, and what did she do....?

Forget the first word to 'Memories'....

[jett ford]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 4:27pm

I remember YEARS ago when I was little we saw Neil Simons all female "Odd Couple" with Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno, and Rita Moreno tripped going up the little steps to the apartment door. The whole audience went "HHUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!" (that's supposed to be a worried inhalation") but the other ladies on stage just went on playing Trivial Pursuit (which they play in the all female version instead of poker).
I've never forgotten that, I always thought someone should have asked her, in character, if she was ok.

Also, Jessica Lange in "Streetcar Named Desire" knocked over a beer bottle and just watched as it rolled around and then eventually off the foot of the stage. Just watched, for a long 30 seconds or something. Maybe she was waiting for someone to yell "CUT!"

[ICEcreamAssassin]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 7:33pm

omg that leslie uggams performance absolutely HILARIOUS!!!! Thanks Diva.. omg i'm crying.. soo funny

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 9:33pm

i was talking to someone on the production staff of B&TB and apparently on night a dancing plate fell over onto her back during "be our guest" and was grounded there for the whole number. like a turtle on her back, the guy said. funny. but really, thats one of the suckiest and most wonderful things about live theatre. anything can happen.

[misschung]

Posted: 5/6/07 at 9:37pm

I've seen some Peter Pan productions go awry, to say the least..