Horror stories
Printed From: Community Theater Green Room
Category: Producing Theater
Forum Name: Directing
Forum Discription: For questions about handling shows, actors, crew, board members, children ...or do we repeat ourselves?
URL: http://www.communitytheater.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5191
Printed Date: 11/23/24 at 3:08pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 8.05 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Horror stories
Posted By: MusicManD
Subject: Horror stories
Date Posted: 10/26/11 at 12:53am
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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? 
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Replies:
Posted By: Thudster
Date Posted: 10/26/11 at 1:47am
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My worst experience was for a short play I had selected for a competition. I had my 3 actresses lined up a few months in advance (summer break) but couldn't get them together to rehearse, and then schedules got tight. With 2 months to go, they all dropped out and needed to be replaced... and then the replacements started dropping out, and were replaced again, and again... with 2 weeks before the performance (and after programs had been printed and advertisements made), my last remaining actress (out of 15) dropped out. No choice but to cancel. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to enter that competition again. ------------- "Hey look! That's my dad up there whacking himself with silverware!" |
Posted By: Rorgg
Date Posted: 10/26/11 at 1:29pm
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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. |
Posted By: Majicwrench
Date Posted: 10/26/11 at 6:06pm
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I don't really have any disasters. Or maybe I've just blocked em out of my memory :)
Perhaps the closest was a few years ago when I got an email from one of the leads, about two weeks before open, telling me I was being too unkind, and the he and his bunch of friends ( three other actors) were done with the show. Really he just needed to vent, we had a good chat, and all was good. But guess what, he ain't been in a show with me since.
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Posted By: falstaff29
Date Posted: 10/26/11 at 9:25pm
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. |
Posted By: directorjm
Date Posted: 11/05/11 at 6:16pm
| I had one that was scary but didn't turn out to be a disaster. At noon on the day of the final dress rehearsal I had a featured actor come up to me and tell me that he just realized that he had religious problems with the liberties taken with the bible in our musical "Children of Eden." He would not be doing the show. Fortunately I had a twenty-something vocal director who was able to take the (singing) role. Felt like crying at the time but it worked out. I love that show. This is at a high school where our actors are subject to an activities code that can bar them from participation in a performance based on grades or drinking. Over the years I've lost four or five actors in the last week or so of productions due to these issues. Never fun. |
Posted By: jayzehr
Date Posted: 11/06/11 at 12:14pm
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. |
Posted By: drama coach
Date Posted: 11/07/11 at 5:46pm
| Actually, I'm in my disaster right now. Show opens on Fri. Kids don't know their lines, and stand in stunned silence staring at each other. 2 have chosen to miss tonight's practice, one had major dental work and won't appear tonight and another has the flu. All are leads. The 2 that chose not to come said that I hurt their feelings when I said that they were letting the team down. One said he didn't like all the negativity. Another said that he should apologize to me........but then didn't. Why am I doing this again??? |
Posted By: TonyDi
Date Posted: 11/08/11 at 7:38am
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.
I'll add to this post later.
TonyDi
------------- "Almost famous" |
Posted By: MusicManD
Date Posted: 11/08/11 at 8:53am
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You know, it's funny. Some of the kids wanted me to push the production date back a week (as if it's that easy), and I said no. After all, without the pressure of a looming production, the lack of commitment would simply push over to the next week and we'd be in the same situation... just a week later. Now, though, on Tuesday of production week, I'm thinking if we had another week, this production could come together nicely. Ah, well. We're in a scary but decent place. Everyone has come a long way in a short amount of time. Still a lot of terrifying moments- people finally put down their books for the songs and promptly forgot how long the rests are, my rehearsal pianist had a particularly lousy day reading the charts, kids who were arranging their own costumes were standing up on stage in street clothes (it was our first dress rehearsal last night), and my personal favorite- I looked up at the stage during a certain scene and two actors who have NEVER been in that scene before were standing up there as if they always had been there... the kicker was that they were supposed to enter the scene toward the end with another group- they just "snuck" off to the side and joined their group once they realized what was going on. Also had my favorite black light scene totally fall apart and discovered that my hybrid black light/regular light underwater scene doesn't have sufficient black lights to make it work the way I wanted. To add insult to injury- I've got my head buried in the score because not only am I trying to direct the band, I'm also playing bass and occasional strings on the keyboard... so I can't even do my job as director or MD or choreographer or tech director or costumer or set designer or director of the director's many hats... Anyway, I don't yet have confidence that it will be GOOD, but I'm starting to believe that it won't fall flat on its face... Once it's all over, I'll post a thread about the things I've learned from this production and what I plan to to differently for our spring play. |
Posted By: Scott B
Date Posted: 11/08/11 at 11:35am
| I so look forward to hearing how it turned out. Almost every post here brings back memories. And yet ... we continue to do it show after show. ;-) |
Posted By: JoeMc
Date Posted: 11/08/11 at 9:05pm
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I believe this is why we are in this game - To reproduce memories! ------------- [western] Gondawandaland "Hear the light & see the sound! TOI TOI CHOOKAS {may you always play to a full house!} |