Tag: theatre geek

Why You Should Invite Theatre Kids to Parties

ilseneumannsshoes:

  • we can perform entire soundtracks
  • and shows
  • by ourselves
  • even if you don’t want us to
  • we’ll know like 2% of the non-showtune music
  • it’s funny to watch us struggle with it
  • we have so much choreo memorized
  • like what do you MEAN the choreo for Candy Store isn’t common knowledge????
  • doesn’t everyone know at least three Newsies’ songs’ OBC choreo???
  • you don’t have Dancing Through Life memorized????
  • I mean
  • we’re not necessarily good at it
  • but we know it

the phantom of the opera: *threatens people, blackmails people, and literally murders them*
the phantom of the opera: everyone hates me because i’m ugly 😦
christine: also maybe because you’re a creepy murderer who kidnapped me
the phantom of the opera: if only i wasn’t so ugly 😦

darthsquidious:

froggingmolly:

robotslenderman:

cinder-ember:

sammywhatammy:

redheadeddisneyfreak:

sheriffwxy:

totalspiffage:

soulpunchftw:

agatharights:

musicofthestage:

crutchiee:

tbbackus:

lucasbieneke:

Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”. 

There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.

or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out

best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere

During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well

Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.

Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.

So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).

This is wild from start to finish

I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)

In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger

My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.

i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show. 

my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.

in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.

so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-

PFFFFFFFFFRRRRRBTFTBTBFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.

the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.

During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?

Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.

The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.

Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.

Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.

Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.

Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.

Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.

Sunday Night: 

Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise – apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.

Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.

When I was in primary school my teacher told us a story of the class she had before us.

They were doing Romeo and Juliet, and the scene where Mercutio was stabbed and supposed to die came on, but when Tybalt stabbed Mercutio, the blood bag didn’t get punctured.

So Tybalt stabbed Mercutio again. The blood bag continued not to break.

So these two eleven year olds paused for a moment, and their eleven year old brains decided what to do next:

Mercutio ripped the blood bag out of his shirt, jumped up and down on it, and then shoved it back in his shirt

and finally died

along with every single person in the audience from laughter.

It got better

Always reblog theater urban legends

*bows lowly* My Liege, can you tell another near-death experience that happened in theater?

dukeofbookingham:

I’m starting to think you guys want me to die. 

Anyway. 

Once upon a time I was in the world’s worst production of Hamlet. I’m not exaggerating–our Hamlet was a ginger who didn’t know his lines, our Gertrude had food poisoning, our Ophelia had never been in a play before, our ghost missed his entrance more than once and I had to ad-lib blank verse until he came back on, and in the midst of all this clowning around, I was the world’s most exasperated Horatio.  

Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the play, there’s a scene where Hamlet and Horatio talk to a friendly gravedigger, who makes a lot of jokes and just generally alleviates the uninterrupted sense of suffocating tragedy–and in our case, suffocating fucking boredom–that is Hamlet. And for some reason we’d blocked out this like slapstick Three Stooges bit where the gravedigger tosses the Yorick skull to Hamlet, who talks to it for a bit like an absolute fucking loon, and then tosses it to me to catch and hold until the end of the scene because, in case you haven’t noticed, HORATIO IS HAMLET’S BITCH, EVEN WHEN HAMLET DOESN’T KNOW HIS FUCKING LINES AND HORATIO HAS TO BE ONSTAGE FOR AN EXTRA FIVE SCENES TO MOUTH THEM TO HIM WHEN HE FUCKING FORGETS. WHY FOR THE LOVE OF RICHARD BURBAGE DIDN’T THEY JUST MAKE ME HAMLET???

But, uh, that’s beside the point.

Anywhoo, I’m standing around like a piece of fucking furniture like Horatio usually does while Hamlet is chatting up the gravedigger, and because this dude is a comedian at heart (BAD CASTING CAN YOU SAY BAD CASTING) he decides to change the blocking. He catches the skull, kisses it smack on the teeth, says, “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew thee well!” and just fucking flings that motherfucker over his head. Now, what you have to know for the rest of this to make sense is that we borrowed this skull from the fucking anatomy school at a local university and if we broke it we owed them like $500, and let me tell you, this whole damn company wasn’t WORTH $500. So, in retrospect, giving Hamlet free reign to toss the skull all over the fucking stage just maybe wasn’t the most genius plan, o Herr Directrix. But nobody ever listens to Horatio. 

So Hamlet just fucking chucks this very valuable skull over his head and I’m completely unprepared for it because this is not where he usually throws it (probably because he forgot the rest of his goddamn lines) so I hurl myself across the stage and fall and slide six feet on my knees like I’m Zac fucking Efron in High School Musical 5: Disney Destroys Shakespeare, BUT YOU HAD BETTER BELIEVE I CAUGHT THAT GODDAMN SKULL BEFORE IT HIT THE FLOOR. WHAM Yorick lands smack in my outstretched hands and I’m relieved for all of two seconds before I realize oh right, human skulls have fucking TEETH, which sank straight into my palm when this thing fell from the sky like a ballistic missile, and I am now bleeding everywhere. (There’s a hand-injury theme happening this week apparently.) And it all happened so fast that Hamlet hasn’t even fucking noticed, because Hamlet is a self-centered twat, so he’s still talking with the gravedigger and I’m just staring at the friggin’ skull in my hands like Wtf Yorick you fucking BIT me–and the audience is beside itself because this is a travesty tragedy and they don’t even know what to laugh at.

But I still have lines, I can’t leave the stage, so for the rest of the scene I’m just kind of sitting on the floor, holding a skull, casually bleeding all over it, waiting for Hamlet for finish his fucking tea party so I can wash my hands and soak poor Yorick in bleach so the anatomy school doesn’t have to deal with any actual human anatomy (i.e., my blood). But this is a long-ass scene, so I had to get up and stand in the back for the whole fucking funeral while Hamlet and Laertes are fighting over who loves Ophelia more (like it matters now, you morons, bitch be DEAD). Eventually Hamlet has his tantrum and storms out and everyone turns around and looks at me like they’ve forgotten I’m there, because everyone always forgets Horatio is there until Hamlet has a tantrum, and I’m standing there, looking sketchy as hell, still clutching a fucking skill with blood all over my hands. And Claudio gets this really confused look on his face and just goes, “Horatio…?”

And I swear, it took every ounce of my self control not to just yell, “That’s right, ‘twas I that killed Ophelia! Plot twist, motherfuckers!” and spike Yorick on the floor and swan the fuck offstage. 

And that is the story of the time Hamlet sucked and Yorick almost bit my fingers off.