The Show Must Go On

Every Friday is devoted to a collection of things heard and seen over the past week that I find amusing, poignant, or embarrassing. I could probably cultivate these tidbits into separate posts, but then what would be the fun in that? Everybody likes lists.

Friday Fragments is my end-of-week list for your utter enjoyment.

In the run-up to next week's opening night of "See How They Run" I thought I would share with you some personal anecdotes about my own experiences in productions over the years. Live theater can be hazardous and fun. Live community  theater can be downright hilarious.

Don't Forget to Duck 

 

In the first play I ever acted in, called "The Rainmaker", I played "Jim", a young cowboy not too quick on the up-take. In one particular scene my character spars with the local sheriff, played by a good friend and work colleague. In our fictional fight, his character was supposed to punch my fictional character across the jaw and I was to fall to the ground.

Opening night, the sheriff drew back, swung, and hit me - literally - across the cheekbone.

Everyone's a Critic

 In a production of probably my least favorite show I've ever done, The Pajama Game, I played "Prez", the president of the union of the local pajama factory. The opening number was a grand spectacle, as all opening musical numbers tend to be. The "factory" featured sewing machines atop rows of desks, around which the entire cast danced and sang "When You're Racing With the Clock."

Imagine upwards of 40 people singing and dancing, choreographed down to the last minute, when the final note rings out and we're all standing on stage with our arms up in the air. There is a beat just after the song ends and, from the front row of the audience comes the voice of a darling little old lady.

"That was horrible," she said.

Mind Your Head

 

Same show, different night. We ran the show on the stage of a private academy, who needed to use their stage for academics the Monday following the first weekend of our show. So, we were required to remove as much from the stage after the end of our first weekend performances.

At intermission, we hurried to move the desks and their sewing machines downstairs beneath the stage. I picked a partner to help move one of the last desks, a sweet older actress, the kind of person who knitted sweaters for dogs and would never hurt a fly.

She took the rear, I the front, and we proceeded to move our desk down the stairs. The Singer sewing machines were these heavy beasts, bolted down to the desks. Well, all but ours anyway. Halfway down the stairs I heard my partner say "Uh oh," and then I blacked out.

It seems our sewing machine was not bolted down and tumbled off the desk and onto my head. I woke up, dazed, in the women's dressing room. I don't recall anything about the remainder of the show.

My lifting partner did, however, bake me a pie because she felt responsible for my concussion.

Le's Try This Again

 

Same show. Another different night. The signature song of Pajama Game, "7 1/2 Cents", explains the basic premise behind the show: the pajama factory workers demand a raise and if they don't get it, they'll walk.

The song is led by Prez, my character, in two verses. The first verse was sung in front of a few other factory workers on stage, with the remaining cast to storm through auditorium doors behind the audience and down the aisles when I began the second verse.

On this particular evening I finished the first but, inexplicably, started the song all over. I knew the minute it happened and I searched the eyes of the accompanist in the pit below me for a signal for what to do. She wasn't watching me, however. She was too busy rifling through her score to get back to the beginning of the song in order to continue accompanying me.

I finished the second helping of the first verse, then launched into the second verse. The back doors of the auditorium burst open and the remaining cast streamed down the aisles to sing out the rest of the song with me.

Convinced my colleagues were ready to lynch me for flubbing the song - and their entrance - I was surprised to hear that my screw-up was a blessing. Someone had locked the auditorium doors and they were frantically trying to get the keys before I launched into verse number 2.

Tom Foolery

 

During The Nerd my character was required to open a door, check to see if anyone was there, deliver a line, and shut the door. The door was positioned in such a way as to ensure that the audience could not see what was behind it. Closing night of the show, my fellow cast members thought it would be fun to prank me. During this particular scene, I tore open the door and standing there, to my surprise, was a cast member covering her rather ample breasts with a pair of shoes.

I forgot my line. And the next four lines after that.

 

Mala-Props

 

~ In Damn Yankees I played the Devil. In one scene I was required to "light" a cigarette and "smoke" it. I played the entire scene, one night, with the wrong end of the cigarette in my mouth.

~ Dress rehearsal for a show in which I was required to remove my pants on stage and stand in my boxers, I realized almost too late that I wasn't wearing underwear

~ In a show in which I was expected to shatter a vase, I threw it to the floor and it bounced, unbroken, into the audience