"Oops! Now what do I do?"
Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Acting
Forum Discription: Q&A about auditions, character development and other aspects of the craft
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2323
Printed Date: 4/29/24 at 3:51am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: "Oops! Now what do I do?"
Posted By: Nanette
Subject: "Oops! Now what do I do?"
Date Posted: 3/30/07 at 11:27am
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Let's share some stories ... some suggestions ... some smiles .... We're doing a multi-show play ... same theme, just different short plays.
At our rehearsal the other night, an actor referred to "a dream of a girl, the girl of his dreams, the love of his life" with the name of a character from a different play. As my cast is made up of youth, they simply don't have the experience how to "ad lib", so we stopped the rehearsal (after the laughter died down), and discussed what we should do if something like this happens. We did the same thing after the queen in one show was referred to as "your most gracious, royal butt" (It was supposed to be, "... your most gracious, royal majesty, but Sir Reggie has been ...").
Care to share some oops of your own? ------------- In a world of margarine, be butter! |
Replies:
Posted By: slicksister
Date Posted: 3/30/07 at 10:23pm
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I was directing Schoolhouse Rock LIVE! and we were rehearsing the part where the actors pretend they are a dike in Holland and it has a leak and the little boy puts his finger in the hole to stop the leak.... So I was telling them about the boy who puts his finger in the dike..... well this was a youth show so you can imagine the looks I was getting. I was completely oblivious to what I had said cause I had heard that story all my life. So when they finally stopped me and asked me what the H*ll I was talking about .... was my face red. I don't embarrass easily but that was a doozie! ------------- The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing |
Posted By: GoldCanyonLady
Date Posted: 3/31/07 at 11:17am
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Last year in our play, Meanwhile, Back on the Couch by Jack Sharkey, Victor, the Psychiatrist and his publisher, Parker are at the bar as Victor is fixing yet another drink (they have had several already). Parker is supposed to start his next line by saying "Victor....." But instead he said, "Parker". Quick thinking Victor said, " I'm Victor, you're Parker, have another drink". The audience loved it. Barb ------------- Barb Hofmeister, MountainBrook Village Players, Gold Canyon, Arizona. |
Posted By: eveharrington
Date Posted: 4/01/07 at 2:09pm
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last year at the height of the most pivotal scene, I was supposed to grab my co-star and yell "don't leave me, I don't care if I go to hell" instead I yelled (every bit as passionately I might add) "I don't care if YOU go to hell" needless to say people noticed and there was no fixing it so we just had to ride out the inappropriate giggles and finish the scene. :) ------------- "If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights." |
Posted By: falstaff29
Date Posted: 4/01/07 at 8:12pm
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Two recent favorites:
THE MOUSETRAP:
The correct line: I didn't go to see a woman there.
The new line: I didn't go to see a man there.
MUCH ADO:
The correct line: The smallest twine may lead me.
The new line: The tallest swine may lead me.
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Posted By: Nanette
Date Posted: 4/02/07 at 6:52am
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From THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS:
The correct line: "Peanuts. I like peanuts."
The new line: (Well ... just drop the T from peanuts.) ------------- In a world of margarine, be butter! |
Posted By: lola
Date Posted: 4/02/07 at 1:05pm
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We were doing "Angel Street". If you know the show, you know how important that darn picture on the wall is. The whole first sequence is about the picture thats not on the wall. All of the characters comment on it. And then finnally Mr.Manningham turn around and says "Bella, what have you done with the picture". Well, i'm waiting backstage for my que, when the stage mannager rushes over and explains that the picture is still on the wall. We had no way of telling them on stage that the picture was up there, and it was verry unlikely that they had realised it was still there because they aviod that part of the stage untill Mr. Manninham notices it. All we could do was wait backstage bitting our finger nails untill the line finnaly came. He turns around and looks at the picture and with out missing a beat says "Bella, why have you changed the picture?". I thought I was going to have a stroke. lol. After that all we had to do was adlib our lines to fit the brillant change. i think it almost scared us to death, but it made one heck of a story at the cast party. ------------- you know you work in community theatre when your couch has been in more shows than you have. |
Posted By: Linda S
Date Posted: 4/02/07 at 4:44pm
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At the full to capacity matinee for "Cinderella" the Fairy Godmother changed the lyrics from "Poppycock & twaddle." to . . . well let's just say "Cinderella" quickly went from "G" rated to "R" rated. There was nothing to do, but keep on singing.
Linda
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Posted By: theGeneral96
Date Posted: 4/06/07 at 2:50pm
We're in the middle of a production of 'Theft' and my character, John, is having an affair with my best friend, Trevor's wife. The burglars line is"Ididn't tell Trevor you were having it off with his wife". The line I got was " I didn't tell you Trevor was having it off with your wife". Needles to say, the ad libbig was fast and furious after that, but we managed to get back on track. ------------- It's been Surreal! |
Posted By: neilfortin
Date Posted: 4/11/07 at 10:31am
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In A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the forum...Domina's line about her father "General Magnus" turned into General Viagra one night...and people LOVED it. (It helped that our director had placed a very naughty freize of general magnus...with a rather large SPEAR above her house!) ------------- Community Theater makes us smile |
Posted By: biggertigger
Date Posted: 4/17/07 at 8:42am
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I have to add my own, during "Cinderella" and thank goodness this was a final dress, my line goes - Everything is decided for me, what I do, where I go, who I see. But it comes out - Everything is decided for me, Who I do, what I see, where I go.
Well, the pit band, begins chuckling when they realize what I said. I kept it together until the person playing my father (The King) says, We don't care who you do, as long as your happy.  We all lost it after that.------------- The two greatest days in a theater persons life, the day you start a new show and the day the damn thing closes. |
Posted By: doublezero420
Date Posted: 5/09/07 at 4:53am
| During rehearsals of 12 Angry Men, the guy playing #10 was supposed to get up in my face and say "You're a pretty smart fellow, aren't you?!" the Line i got was "You're a pretty fart smeller aren't you?!" Needless to say rehearsal stopped for about 10 minutes until everyone dried their eyes. |
Posted By: jaytee060
Date Posted: 5/12/07 at 2:50pm
| This actually came out of my mouth during the final dress rehearsal for Arthur Miller's The Crucible. I was playing Deputy Gouvenor Danforth and it was the dramatic last scene where I was to condemn John Proctor to death unless I could convince his wife to denounce herself as a witch. The line which I was to growled loudly in my best classic delivery was "Woman has the devil dried up every tear of pity within you?" However what came out was: WOMAN HAS THE DEVIL DRIED UP EVERY PEER OF TITTY WITHIN YOU. The laughter lasted for 20 minutes. The embarrassment has lasted a lifetime. This may be why I mostly directed now. |
Posted By: biggertigger
Date Posted: 5/23/07 at 8:16pm
I am surprised that no one has mentioned the most famous of errors with body mics. The dreaded sound people forgetting to shut off the mic while you are in the bathroom. Of course you hear everything and the actor speaking so eloquently of the show.------------- The two greatest days in a theater persons life, the day you start a new show and the day the damn thing closes. |
Posted By: AngelSong76
Date Posted: 5/31/07 at 2:36pm
| I love this topic! Makes me feel a little better! I was having kind of an off night about three shows into our eight show run of Fuddy Meers recently. There is a moment in the show when another character throws a package of bacon onto the floor and I was supposed to angrily pick it up and put it back in the freezer. Well, we had been using this particular package for awhile and it was a little.. damp.. from the bacon juices seeping out of the package (yuck!) so when I grabbed it, the package flew out of my hands and went straight across the stage, barely missing one of the other actors onstage, and landing at the end of the stage, which was actually supposed to be another room of the house. The line was "I'm sorry, I'll put the bacon back!" so after watching it fly across the room, I added "or not." Luckily, my exit was not long after that incident! |
Posted By: biggertigger
Date Posted: 5/31/07 at 9:25pm
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Playing the role of Bill Sykes in "Oliver" I had to be the meanie through out the show. During my big enterance I am suppose to stand on a stool and place my other foot on the table. Well, out from under me the stool tumbles and I manage to stay standing straight up. Instinct took over and I kicked the stool behind me maintaining character. The stool slid across the stage and right into the pit crashing into the drum set. Ooops. I didn't even break character. ------------- The two greatest days in a theater persons life, the day you start a new show and the day the damn thing closes. |
Posted By: doublezero420
Date Posted: 8/02/07 at 12:23am
We don't allow the actors to even touch the on/off/mute switch on the body packs. WAY to many instances of the mic not getting turned back on. We control all of that up in the tech booth.
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Posted By: biggertigger
Date Posted: 8/02/07 at 6:18pm
Yes, I know it is much easier not to have an actor touch the on/off/mute switch, but I am talking about the sound person that forgets to mute the mic from the sound board (or accidently hits the wrong button on the board).
------------- The two greatest days in a theater persons life, the day you start a new show and the day the damn thing closes. |
Posted By: whitebat
Date Posted: 11/26/07 at 12:59am
| Luckily this only happened in rehearsal... We're doing "A Christmas Carol". One of the scenes has Tiny Tim lying on the bed, dead. Since the kid was such a trouper, it was actually him lying there, not a dummy. But one night he sneezed! |
Posted By: excalibur6
Date Posted: 1/07/08 at 10:26am
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Many years ago I was dating a young actor and she was doing an off, off, off Broadway play ( That actor was a quick thinker and dedicated team player http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/smileys/smiley32.gif"> |
Posted By: stgdirector4
Date Posted: 1/07/08 at 3:38pm
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Years ago, I was playing Andrew Wyke in a production of SLEUTH. At one point, Wyke aims a gun at a figurine on the mantelpiece, utters the line, "Down with all porcelain Dresden sheppardesses!" The gun fires, sending the figurine flying off the wall. With rather neat coordination with a stagehand, the effect worked quite well--until one night when the SM had forgotten to load the pistol. I took aim, said my line, and fired. No gunshot sounded, but the figurine flew rather nicely off the mantelpiece.
I take no responsibility for my subsequent ad-lib. |
Posted By: RoseColored Gla
Date Posted: 9/03/08 at 4:13pm
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Once upon a time, my first boyfriend was playing Tim Algood, in Noises Off. During a production, one of the flats on the set fell down. Without missing a line, he grabbed some nails from backstage, and proceeded to tack the flat back up. Of course, the audience had NO clue.
------------- Dennis Dippary Artistic Director Songs for a New World http://rosecoloredglassestheater.com - RoseColored Glasses May Dionysus smile upon your every performance! |
Posted By: excalibur6
Date Posted: 9/17/08 at 10:42am
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I remember a director telling me that when you have learned your lines and your blocking and feel comfortable with your character then the fun begins. He went on to say treat the stage like your life because if things happen in your daily travels you don't stop and wait till someone fixes it or you sure don't stop and cross you arms and wait, You take care of the problem and go on. That thought has helped me out of many problems on stage. Besides they make great stories to share over a beer after the run. Good for your boyfriend!
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Posted By: jphock
Date Posted: 12/28/08 at 1:40pm
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Short play written by a local playwright. I hadn't read the script, but was sitting in on a rehearsal to give my opinion to a fellow director.
One of the actors was using a strange speech impedement and said the line..."My husband and I used to go to Zabars" I could have sworn she said "My husband and I used to go to Gay Bars" The speech impedement was changed slightly going forward. :) |
Posted By: chelserin
Date Posted: 12/28/08 at 2:52pm
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I have two, both from "Nunsense 2"
1. Sister Leo has a song on stage then has to run off, put on a Can can skirt and go on with the rest of the sisters in less than a minute. It was my job (Amnesia) to help her tie and velcro her skirt on. One night we do this and all run on stage for the Can Can song, except Leo. She enters a couple minutes later. Afterwards she tells us that I had tied her to a hook on the wall with her skirt strings!
2. In the spirit of personal mics... Sister Robert Ann had trouble with her mic all through the run... during the last show, the final song in fact, I'm standing behind Robert Ann and while we are singing and dancing I notice something drop between her legs and dangle. It was her mic. It had come loose and through the rest of the song she had to keep going with it dangling between her legs. Props to Robert Ann for being able to keep going. And the rest of us for not crackng up on stage! ------------- To be in the world, and of the world, and never to stand aside and watch. |
Posted By: dexter74656
Date Posted: 1/07/09 at 6:48pm
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During a production of Robin Hood a couple years ago, Robin is confronted by "Death" personified in the forest and it's a relatively intense moment, where "Death" is convincing Robin to go turn him self in, to his death, in order to save Marian and etc. Someone back stage knocked into the bowls and dishes that were stacked for the Merry Men's encampment so there's a nice clatter. As I watched from the booth, I thought the two actors were just going to ignore it, but Death turned around and looked off stage in the direction. Thank god Robin was a quick thinker "Oh, that's my men... they've gone off that way." On closing night, two actors got together and decided to mess with the actress playing Marian... she's talking with her father and he's very surprised to see her in junky clothes and smelling like the pig stie and he asks if the outlaws have ravished her and inserted an "Eee gads, they haven't gotten you pregnant?" Marian took it in stride with a "NO, Daddy!" What she didn't know was that later in the next scene when she returned to Prince John to make demands on him over the state of the outlaws, he *also* inquired about her being pregnant. Pregnancy joke came back this past year when the Marian actress paticipated in our Improv comedy night. They were doing a game where each performer would in turn come onto the scene and be accused by another performer based on a single given line that they then had to build a scene around. The Marian actress came into the "room" and was accosted by the performer already there with "Jenny called, who's Jenny?" And they started going at it and it eventually evolved into that Jenny was from Planned Parenthood! This wasn't even (to my knowledge) ever an intentional continuation of the pregnancy gag, but a great fluke. Last year's production of Get Smart, we encouraged them to ad lib a bit in order to develop their characters more - some very very funny stuff happened. The Chief was supposed to do a speech during black-out and we opted instead to do it live in his office as part of the scene, but he started working with his secretary and adlibbing a much longer sequence where he's lost the memo only to have his secretary find it in the desk drawers that he didn't realize he had! Another Chief/secretary gag was that we'd covered his desk with hundreds of papers to add clutter and add to his stress levels. The poor secretary (who played Marian in the above example!) would pick up the handful of papers that would fall off occasionally. As we kept going night after night, the Gadget Guy would come in and start knocking more and more papers off that she'd have to pick-up. Closing night, after she'd cleaned up and exited the stage, the trio of actors had plotted to knock the papers off the desk again and make the secretary actress come back on stage to pick up the pages! She was soooo not happy. Later in the play during her final exit of the show, she was about to leave in the custody of the agents when the Chief called her attention over, held up a single sheet of paper and very deliberatly dropped the single page onto the ground. Got a huge laugh! She came out with a sheet of paper and ripped it in half on her curtain call. (It was actually my suggestion later that they should have made yet another pregnancy pun at an appropriate moment earlier in the show, but it was after closing that I thought of it) One actor had a voice-over as a radio announcer and went into this elaborate thing about the station's sponsors being Orville and Redanbacker, etc. There was another scene where the same actor as a different voice-over was presenting ransom demands including a million dollars in fives, tens, and a few singles. Well, on our second night he added in: "fives, tens, twos, and a few singles." (requiring an adlib by the Chief of "I could never get such a sum, not even the two dollar bills!") And continued to elaborate in his Russian accent about how quote (from the video files) "I swear on my little dog, thug the pug who chews on her bone every night as she comes to bed and always chews on and brings to my lap which she always offers in exchange for some of the popcorn I'm eating that she always leaves all over the bedspread, that I will kill you if there aren't any two dollar bills or singles." |
Posted By: chelserin
Date Posted: 1/19/09 at 11:52am
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Freshman year in college, it was my first show with the theatre department, so of course I was intimidated by the older students/stars of the show and just praying I didn't do anything stupid. We were doing Dangerous Liasons and I was servant number two so I had to go out on stage during scene changes and intermission to set for the next scene. All in character, of course. In a very sweet gesture, my roomate and her boyfriend came to see the show (they are not theatre goers - more sports) and at intermission as I come on to set props I hear from the audience, "GO CHELSEA!" I died. All they were missing was the foam finger. At the time I was so embarrassed, now it's hillarious. I just heard from here that they (now married) are comming to the show I'm directing, so I had to remind her that it's not appropriate to call out during a show...;p ------------- To be in the world, and of the world, and never to stand aside and watch. |
Posted By: patrickcolvin
Date Posted: 1/23/09 at 4:54pm
When our theater did Forum, Miles Gloriosus had a RIDICULOUSLY huge codpiece. Big as your head. Hillarious.
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Posted By: divewench
Date Posted: 11/19/09 at 8:56pm
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I played Maggie in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The fellow playing Big Daddy was, shall we say, fond of listening to himself. His speech during the birthday scene got longer and longer every night. The birthday cake produced by the props folks looked fabulous - billows and scallops of "frosting" all over, frosting that was actually spackle, in order to last the run.
Each night as Big Daddy's monologue got longer and longer, the birthday candles got shorter and shorter, until one night they burned all the way down and the top of the cake and the spackle frosting caught fire.
We were in the round, and the tension was amazing as the audience grew more and more concerned watching the cake flame away, and the actors were all paralyzed trying to figure out what to do - except for Big Daddy, who droned obliviously on.
Finally I crossed the set in front of Big Daddy and blew out the entire top of the cake - it took a bit of doing - then crossed back to my place for the rest of the scene.
The candles from then on were quite remarkably large.
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Posted By: Gaafa
Date Posted: 11/19/09 at 9:33pm
Great piece of Up or Downstaging!  ------------- Joe Western Gondawandaland turn right @ Perth. Hear the light & see the sound. Toi Toi Toi Chookas {{"chook [chicken] it is"} May you always play to a full house} |
Posted By: Theater Moose
Date Posted: 11/23/09 at 5:34pm
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I was recently music director for Disney's Geppetto & Son. We had a good mix of adults and children. At one point, Geppetto is confronting Stromboli after Pinocchio sings "Got No Strings." Stromboli is trying to disavow knowledge of Pinocchio, who is in fact being kept hidden. Stromboli's line: "No - little Pinochle was a one night engagement" What came out at dress rehearsal: "... was a one night stand." The pit dissolved into giggles. He got it right during production. ------------- "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants." |