Finding comedy in tragedy.

My school did a production of Beauty and the Beast. Since I was one of five stage crew members and we were in charge of setting the scenery for each act and scene. One girl was in charge of a couple of heavy plants near stage left. For the most part it went pretty well, but the dress change for Belle was a bit of a problem. In the minute that the lights were down, we had to switch form the Courtyard to the ballroom and we barely had the time. Unfortunately one night, plant girl was trying to move the last one off when the lights came back on and was standing there while Belle and Beast waltz around. Panicking, she slowly inched her way off the stage but was definitely scene for most of the dance. Our teacher gave her (and us) a big lecture after the show about what to do if it ever happens again.

I went to an all-girls school. Our brother school, an all-boys school, did productions and allowed us to audition when they needed girls, but there was a secondary girls school that always snatched the good parts. I auditioned anyway, and was chosen to be the doctor in Act 2 that tells the boys that Johnny is dying. My lines were few and my part was simple, it was something like “His condition…well, he isn’t progressing. We fear that he…he’s…dying, sir.” (it’s been literally over five years, I don’t remember the exact lines) and then I kind of look between the kids and walk away to give them time alone.

The thing was, there was a lot of … bias at this school, and while I wore scrubs, the other two nurses that flanked me were in Halloween costume nurse outfits, with heels and everything. It looked ridiculous, but this was a huge school of thirsty Catholic boys with an equally thirsty student director, so I wasn’t surprised.

Unfortunately, every time the nurses walked onto stage, there was a lot of gross noise from the audience to cat-call and whistle. This, combined with their clunking heels on the hollow portable stage, made for an awful racket when we were crossing from one end to the other (as we had to do twice total). I couldn’t start talking till they stood still in place. One night, however, one of the girls’ gel insoles was slipping out, and she was actually daring to fix it ON STAGE. She kept lifting her foot, adjusting the insole, setting it back down, over and over. I had to keep restarting my lines and finding new ways to say Johnny was dead so that the audience- and the actor two feet in front of me- could hear.

“He’s dying, sir…” turned into “His condition is fatal,” to “He’s…dying, he’s in the PROCESS OF DYING,” to “HE IS NOT WELL,” and then when I realized this just wasn’t working, I turned around and grabbed Johnny’s hand, lifted it up, and pressed it into (I think it was) Dallas’ hand. 

“HE’S /DEAD/, SIR." 

He didn’t like it, for either one of us, so he asked to stage kiss.

The girl in return got upset and started bawling backstage.

BECAUSE MY BOYFRIEND DID NOT WANT TO KISS HER.

I met my current boyfriend during a show called The Nifty Fifties that the community theatre put on.

He had to kiss another girl during this show.

Naturally, being his girlfriend, I was none too pleased.

After the kiss I tended to not talk to him, we only had one scene left so it wasn’t too long.

During a performance night I got exceptionally mad for some odd reason and while trying to get away from him back stage someone tripped me and I fell on him.

We all busted out laughing, which I’m sure the audience heard.

In high school, I was in a production of Twelve Angry Men. The challenge of staging the play is that there are few to no scene changes, the dialogue is all interdependent, and nobody ever leaves the stage. 

So, when someone forgot a key line of dialogue, the play screeched to a halt. 

All twelve of us sat around for what felt like an eternity on a dead silent stage, wracking our brains, trying to figure out who dropped their line, and where we could pick it up again without dropping any important plot points. Some of us tried to improvise simply to fill the increasingly awkward silence or spark something in another actor, but to no avail.

And so we sat, silent, the tension between us and the audience mounting by the second, seconds bloating into painful minutes.

Our stage manager, who was offstage, was desperately trying to whisper the next line to us; one of the jurors was supposed to cough, which was the cue for an actor to offer a cough drop, and they hadn’t done it. Nobody could hear her or read what she was attempting to write on her notebook for us to see.

Blessedly, some poor, uncomfortable soul in the audience coughed, and the color drained from our lead actor’s face as they whispered under their breath - 

“Cough drops… 

…

holy shit cough drops.

ohmygod - DOES ANYONE NEED A COUGH DROP??”

And we all finally breathed a sigh of revelation and relief as we picked it up again and trudged our way through the rest of the play, utterly shaken.

When I played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, there was that scene at the end where {SPOILER} I got splashed with water and died. I have two stories about that scene going horribly wrong.

1) Alternate Ending: the witch rises from the dead!  After I said the whole “Oh, what a world!” spiel, the lights went down for about two seconds, and I was supposed to sort of roll off the front of the stage and into a door that went backstage… in like a quick, fluid motion. However, one time, I rolled off the stage and found that the door was locked. So I was just there, on the floor of the theater, in front of all the audience, knocking on the door when the lights came up. I had no choice but to get back up and run through the aisle of the audience and out the door. It was mortifying.