Well frustrated, she spots a knife lying on the table and grabs it and instead intends to commit suicide by knife.  Well Friar Laurence is supposed to grab her hand and struggle to free the knife from her hand and prevent her from being successful.

 

SO....I grabbed her wrist and did a GENTLE twist only for her to drop the knife and I watch this knife drop to the stage, as if in slow motion, STICK IN THE STAGE and waft back and forth ketwang, wang, wang, wang like a knifethrowers knife would do.  I lost it right there.  Some INSANE props person had used a knife that looked rustic and old and period but was as sharp as a razor blade with a point that could pierce steel.  As I watched this in horror and disbelief at someone's utter stupidity to use a REAL, SHARP, DANGEROUS and potentially VICIOUS instrument of destruction or at least - slaughterhouse or meat packing plant quality - I lost my place. Immediately, I pulled Juliet to me in a fatherly embrace and whispered in her upstage ear - "where the hell are we"?  At that point, she angrily (in character) pushed me away and cried, "Hast thou NOTHING for me"?  And that seemingly millenium of time (though only seconds) triggered the mechanism and I was back on track.  Yea, Tara!!! She saved my tush that's for sure.  Then I picked up the knife after she exited, and went on the hunt for the props person after I left the stage.

 

Suffice it to say, I DID NOT commit murder that evening but I don't think I saw the props person after that night for the whole run of the show. Ah, the memories of real life props. Where DO we hire these people?

 

OR there was the night during Pippin, yet another props person (first performance) rigged up this contraption on my back so Pippin can STAB me in the back (I was Charlemagne his father).  Well FORTUNATELY and I say this with reservation, when he DOES stab me in the back the rig FAILS (as I feared it would) and I feel a knife plunge into my back.....I thought.  But I didn't know.  I laid there on the stage while they sang MORNING GLOW, I come back to life and leave the stage.  Well the whole time I THOUGHT I felt the familiar letting of blood and thought it flowed nicely.  Ok, offstage, rig removed......THANKFULLY THE BLADE of the knife had a plastic sheath on it, the blood was merely SWEAT (no kidding), but the BLADE of the knife was bent and I did have a bruise on my back.  Needless to say I redesigned the rig and that never occurred again.  Another brain-trust props person that I even asked at the time where they hired her.

 

Okay that's enough. There are more but you'll just have to buy the book!!

 

 

TonyDi