What show horror stories do you have to share? Shows that almost never got up? Shows that crashed and burned? Leads dropping lines, skipping songs, shows that you found yourself making changes to an hour before curtain?

I only ask because I find myself in a potential one now- the musical opens in 17 days, and I don't have one person off book. I do have a half dozen chorus members who I'm quite sure have never even looked at a script and would have a hard time relaying the plot of the show. Choreography is forgotten as soon as it is learned, and short of my leads (and not even all of them), nobody knows the music. My rehearsal accompanist can't play the show, so I've been using midi files I found online and the broadway soundtrack for rehearsals. Just found out that our wireless mics were reserved before the start of the school year... For the elementary school to use them from now until the day before we open. I've sunk a lot of time and money into one certain scene and now it seems i may have to cut it.

I know this has a lot to do with our lousy rehearsal schedule, lack of sufficient directing staff (my choreographer decided to audition for another show right before we started rehearsal and my MD got too busy to do the show... So I'm doing it all), and my insistence in having a larger cast (25)... But that doesn't make it any easier!

So... What's your horror story? Any show cancelled at the last second? Any that you'd wished you had cancelled?

With a very thin directorial resumé, I offered to direct a "small" production for a local park district, when they were looking for one.  It was a pretty hackish fairy-tale musical, but I wasn't being picky, I just wanted the experience.  They offered me half of the job, with a co-director who'd worked with them before.  We basically split it so that I would take the music and the acting, and she would handle choreography and blocking.

My background is in music, so I made some minor changes in arrangement to one of the pieces to work the chorus in (otherwise, they spent like an hour offstage in the middle of the show) and to compensate for a hearing deficit by one of the cast members to allow him to come in with some backup (I'd worked with him before, and once he got going he was fine, but sometimes had trouble finding his entry).  I got pretty much immediately second-guessed, BY THE OTHER DIRECTOR, during a rehearsal, for making things "too hard."

We continued butting heads through the process, up to and including the night before opening night, when I told someone to sure, go ahead, and wear what costumes were available (some were still under construction) for the run, and got complained about because they weren't all ready and that's just not how they did things.

How they DID do things?  The opening night, I showed up 3 hours before curtain to.... a big utility room with a bunch of tables and chairs in it.  We had to build the set, the house risers, the lighting and sound systems, the backdrops, the set curtains, and all the rest of the regular preshow stuff before we could open the doors.

That was by far my biggest headache as a director.

As an actor... hmm, well, I have two.  One's kind of excusable.  My daughter, then age 4, was doing a kid's theatre summer thing, and they were doing a spoof as their production, but the 8-10 kids they had couldn't quite cover all the roles, so the woman who ran the program, asked if I could fill in on a small role.  It was like 10 lines, so I said sure.  I came to 3 or 4 rehearsals, and just before open, I recognized I'd never actually run my last scene, part of the finale sequence.   We were ALWAYS doing start-stop, even on "final dress rehearsal runs" and the program ended at X o'clock, so the kids had to go THEN, and we never got to the end. But hey, I knew my cue line to come on, I said one line, then I knew my cue to exit stage left.  Simple enough.  I'm sure the kids know it, they've been working this for like 3 months.  So, opening night, things are kinda off the rails a little, but hey, they're kids, none older than about 12, and we get to the closing sequence... but... my line doesn't quite come.  But we're in the right SECTION, they're obviously just a little lost.  So I make my entrance, say my line, that helps re-rail things a little, then... they skip over my exit cue and go to the chase sequence... and then just all hell breaks loose and they obviously have no idea how to end it, running around the audience and up and down the stage...
after a couple minutes, I just exited stage left and waited for the director to come backstage and start whisper-shouting "END IT!  SHUT IT DOWWWN!"  Which they eventually did.

The other... well, I could go on, but let's just say that it was a Sondheim musical that the orchestra director was NOT ready for, and the whole pit ended up getting fired the night before opening night.  Opening night got cancelled... and we did the rest of the run with the rehearsal accompanist on piano only.  But that actually turned out okay.

Originally posted by MusicManD I only ask because I find myself in a potential one now- the musical opens in 17 days, and I don't have one person off book.

Not necessarily going to be a disaster; sometimes shows DO come together in the final rehearsals; sometimes it takes the cast and crew hitting rock bottom even to get there.  Some of the worst, most tense tech week rehearsals turned around shows that could have really been travesties into half-decent productions or better.  I can remember some tech weeks where punches got thrown (including at the director), a wooden leg got thrown, people walked off set (including our pianist in final tech for a musical, and, in a different show, a smaller but linchpin cast member, without whom the plot couldn't really be resolved), the theater board stopped a final dress to stage an "intervention" with the director over the color choice of the costumes and certain minor details of the set dressing, etc., and the shows still came together.  Sometimes, it's that one rehearsal during tech week where EVERYTHING goes SO wrong that the cast and crew feel compelled to buckle down.

I remember being in one show where both leads and one of the other four featured roles (so, 50% of the major cast) were just awful--weren't off book, didn't know cues, didn't have the stage presence to make something up when they dried, didn't have chemistry despite it being a romantic comedy--and I was more or less carrying all of them.  Had a three person scene where I ended up improvising leading statements to walk the other two boobs through all of their lines.  I had happened to have a pre-existing conflict for two nights of tech week, which apparently saved the show, because the other actors realized I might not be there to push them on stage and save the scene!  When I came back for final tech, neither performer was Olivier, but they knew their entrances and their lines well enough I was able to invite friends to the opening without being embarrassed.

Of course, sometimes the shows continue to suck.  (Cf. my recent comment in the Acting forum, particularly #8--that show was an embarrassment.)  But "nil desperandum"--never despair.

Originally posted by falstaff29 Not necessarily going to be a disaster; sometimes shows DO come together in the final rehearsals; sometimes it takes the cast and crew hitting rock bottom even to get there.

I agree. It is amazing how things almost always pull together and go up a notch once the lights are on and there is an audience. Though it is hard to keep that in mind when going through a stressful final week.

Oh where would I begin?  There simply far too many horror stories I could tell.  Read my book when I write it   "My Life In Community Theater - The First 50 Years". HAHA!! No seriously, I'll just have to go through my show list and pick the worst experiences I've ever been involved with and repost - or amend THIS response.  Seriously there are just far too many nightmares I've had in my time to put them all down much less try to water it down to a couple of the worst - but I'll try to do that strictly for entertainment purposes and so forth.  I've TRIED to block many things from my memory but sometimes they rear their ugly heads and remind me WHY I no longer do theater - only what I want, when I want, IF I want and am offered something that interests me.