Awkward Stage Door Moments

[je veux te voir2]

BECAUSE i saw camp first. It was really awkward for me seeing him in In The Heights for some reason...I guess it was the going from VERY campy gay boy, who dressed in drag....to kind of a rough dude. It was odd. lol.

[NarratorNo4]

At the Phantom tour, I bought a poster and really wanted to get it signed by Richard Todd Adams because he was absolutely phenomenal. However, I hadn't planned on buying anything so I didn't come prepared with a metallic Sharpie. I just used a black ball point pen, and the actors had to sign on the very small amount of white that was on the poster, which was, of course, the mask.

Anyways, I was waiting and I got Kim Stengel and John Whitney's autographs, and I was getting scared because I didn't think there would be enough room for Richard Todd Adams to sign. So when Bruce Winart came up to me and saw that I was holding a pen, he held out his hands for my poster and pen, but I didn't give it to him, and I just said, "Thanks." I felt really bad afterward. But, in the end, I got my autograph!

[esparza 333]

bump

[winter_sky]

Why bump if you have nothing to contribute?

[3allthatjazz]

[cicero2]

this isn't so much awkward as it was adorably hilarious but at the SD in chicago's wicked when rondi reed playing madame morrible came out she saw the crowd of 8 year olds and must have though for a moment that no one would be able to recognize her without the make-up.
so she paused for a moment to consider this than stretched out her arms all dramatically and declared "madame morrible!!" with a huge smile as she grabbed the first pen
i of course laughed out loud

[JeaniusIsMe]

cicero- she did the same thing a few years back when I saw the show. Gotta love Rondi.

Few weeks back at Xanadu there were two teenage girls who were literally crying when each cast member came by to sign. When Tony came by, both broke into tears and said they loved him. There aren't words to explain the look of pure horror that was on his face- and I certainly don't blame him for turning and quickly walking away.

[esparza 333]

bump

[Sheldon Devane]

This was the only time I have ever stage-doored. It was after Torch Song Trilogy, at the Huntington Hartford in L.A. I had a copy of the play, and waited nervously for Harvey to come out. When he did, he was very sweet, and we talked for moment. What I wanted to say to him was "your play made me very proud to be gay", but it came out "very proud to be gray". He laughed, and kissed me on the cheek. Awkward, but a fun moment for me. I still have the copy. He signed the "H" in is name as the "I love you" sign-language used in the opening scene.

[taylorPHENOMENON2]

I really love this thread.

I got in a fight with some lady at God of Carnage for "cutting in front of her". She started pushing my friend and I told her that "pushing is not going to get them to come to you any faster." She had no reply. Then, apparently, she missed one of their autographs and got very upset and started yelling to who knows who that "those girls had cut in front of me". No one cared, she left before she could get everyone's.

[Leia947]

Okay, I know I posted this in another thread, but I think it deserves to be here too:

So, my best friend decided to embarrass the sh*t out of me when we sat HAIR on Sunday. She never saw it before and didn't really know who Gavin Creel (or Will Swenson) were. We got dressed up in our hippie dresses and put flowers in our a hair. While we're walking to the theater, as we pass by the stage door, and I see Gavin come out. I turn around to my friend and and said, "Hey look, that's Gavin." She goes, "Why don't you go say hi?" I'm very shy and a coward so I say no. Plus, I knew he was on his way to the Pride March. So, naturally, my bf goes up to him and says, "Hi, Gavin? Would you come say hi to my friend? She's really shy and loves you." There I am, hiding behind a pole counting the ways to kill my best friend LOL (I know HAIR is all about peace and love, but I was mortified LOL) I wanted to die. So he peeks around the pole and is like, "Hey. Hi!" Then he shakes my hand and asks what we're doing, tells us about the lotto and then went on his way. Very sweet and very nice. I was embarrassed as hell, but he was a sweetheart.
Then after the show, we waited outside for autographs and stuff. He remembered us from earlier (Embarrassing me all over again LOL), signed our Playbills, took couple of pictures and gave me a little squeeze in my side after. Sweet, sweet man. A really fun afternoon.

And even more embarrassing.... I totally put my foot in my mouth while we were taking pictures with Will Swenson. I looked over at my bf and was like, "My mom is going to be so jealous." My mom totally has the hots for Will LMAO I don't think he appreciated that.

[practically_perfect]

Not so much awkward as kind of cool:
We went to go see Legally Blonde last summer right before LBB left, and decided to stage door. When Natalie Joy Johnson came out, we told her that we were from MD also (she was the topic of a huge article for the Baltimore Sun). She got really excited to see fellow Marylanders and was asking us all these questions about what part of MD we were from and everything, as she was still signing other people autographs. Long story short, she was ignoring those people and talking to us while signing their playbills. We got quite a few annoyed looks from those people...

[legally_popular]

When I saw and stage-doored Xanadu, the crowd was pretty huge (this was when Whoopi was in it). When Cheyenne came down the line and got to us, I asked him for a quick picture. We were beyond the barricades and just like in the middle of a bunch of people. Cheyenne put his arm around me and I was just like pushed up against his body because we were so squished together with the people surrounding us. I stumbled on something while being squished and ended up stepping on his foot. It was awkward and embarrassing for me. I could tell he just wanted to get away from that crowd. I've heard how friendly he is, but that day he didn't really say anything and seemed like he just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. I felt bad for him and for stepping on his foot, but I'll always cherish those 5 seconds of being that close to him, lol.

[DefyGravity777]

On Sunday after the matinee of Wicked when Nicole Parker was hugging me we forgot that the barricades aren't that strong. We almost knocked them over and I almost fell on her.

[webcomix]

I have a few contributions C:

In the Heights - it was less than a week after LMM had left when I went to see it. I had the souvenir program and was planning to ask every cast member to sign their respective "character" pages. When I opened it to Usnavi's page for Javier Munoz, he was really pleased and said, "Oh! You know who I was in the show!" and I was actually surprised to hear that, and said without thinking, "Other people don't?" But he just laughed a little bit and said "Yeah."

Jersey Boys (Toronto) - This was in May - at the time I was very excited about this show and was really looking forward to seeing Jeremy Kushnier as Tommy. The stage door for the theatre is a bit of a distance from the actual front doors. There's a little park/garden along the way, and we were making our way through that when a guy in a hat walked past us very quickly. He gave us a little nod and a smile which caused me to stare at him, and this ensued:
Me: Wait, uh, wasn't that...
Friend: Yeah, he played Tommy.
Me: WHAT?....WAIT!
There were other people there so I was a bit reluctant at first, but he was walking really fast so I just thought, "Who cares!" and ran off as fast as I could after him. The whole time I could hear my friends laughing and shouting after me - when I caught up to him and gasped out a request for his autograph, he was very kind and gracious about it...especially when completely flustered little me ended up dropping ALL my stuff at his feet by accident.

Also, my friends thought that was hilarious enough to tell the other cast members we spoke to about it. Quinn VanAntwerp actually said to me, "That's okay, sometimes I have to chase Jeremy too" or something to that effect.

[Dazeto12]

Okay. True Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin story.

So, after An Evening with Patti and Mandy in West Palm Beach, I stagedoored with a friend who had to leave before Patti finally came out, but left me her playbill in case either of them were to come out.

So I was sitting there for ,like, twenty minutes, just trying to be patient, tapping my foot, waiting. But then, out of nowhere, I see a crowd coming. And in the middle I can make out Patti's glasses. So I just got completely starstruck (it was weird, I didn't think I was that type of person) and all I could say was, "...oh my God..." My foot tapping turning into, like, spastic knee wobbling and the two playbills in my hand started fluttering from my hands shaking so much. Patti agreed to sign, but not take pictures, as she "had somewhere to go," but whatever. I was going to take what I could get. So I hold out my Playbills to her and she looks at me awkwardly, like a why-do-you-have-two look. So I just gush, "ohmygod--you were so good I'm so sorry my friend had to leave she left me hers for you to sign ohmygod I'm sorry I'm not going to sell it on eBay I swear to God." She looked at me and chuckled. It was pretty embarrassing. I managed to pull myself together and laugh a bit and then, following up the eBay reference to make it less awkward, said, "Like anyone would want it, right?" But I said that because of the fact that it was printed on a crappy Kravis Center seasonal playbill, not because of her! I dunno, my thought process is weird when I'm under pressure. So she finished signing mine, after silently glaring at me, and moved on. I almost threw up.

When Mandy came out, like, five minutes later, he drove off in a red pick-up, that he was driving, and then offered to drive me to get my copy of Sunday in the Park with George which was at a grocery store nearby. I forget why I declined.

[Rudy2]

^ I haven't laughed harder (talking about the final paragraph) since watching a George Carlin DVD last week. :)

[esparza 333]

I had an awkward moment at Shrek. Sutton Foster came out and I told my parents Sutton Foster's out and she was right in front of me and she turned around saying Yes I am and everybody laughed and on top of that my pen dried out and it took like an hour to find a pen. She was still standing there.

[BroadwayBound115]

This is total schadenfreude right now!! Thanks for the stories!!

[pennypingleton1994]

Haha, I have a few....

1. I dropped all of my playbills and stuff at the Hair stagedoor right as I was talking to Bryce Ryness, and he ever so sweetly picked everything up for me. Still a little awkward.

2. At Billy Elliot after Hadyn's final performance, I had a bit of a convo with Thommie Ritter, along with another friend. He finally asked me if I liked the show, and I started gushing about the show really weirdly. I think I said something like, "out of 10, it was 3000", or something stupid like that.

3. At the Xanadu matinee last week, I had a pretty long convo with Max von Essen, who remembered me from Twitter, so after the evening show (yes, I was there twice that day), I asked him to sign his Twitter name on my glowstick. He did, and was really, really nice about it, but I was a little embarrassed after. But I got worried when I was explaining to my new friends there why he did so, considering that everyone at the stagedoor suddenly decided to go completely silent.

Oh! Also, more funny then awkward, but I randomly saw Darren Criss (of A Very Potter Musical) at the Spring Awakening tour stagedoor last month, so when he noticed me and my friend waiting to say hi, I said "Darren Criss you are totally awesome!!!". He found it very funny, and was flattered that we recognized him. Very gracious guy.

[aasjb4ever]

2 Stories from the same day:
First, I went to see Jersey Boys with my mom last summer, and we bought a bus/show ticket combo package. So we got off the bus and walked to the theatre cause we had some time to kill. I was taking a picture in front of Sebastian Arcelus's picture and said "Man, we saw his wife in wicked, were seeing HIM today, i really hope he stage doors." Literally then, he walks by and into the stage door. I run after, unbeknownst to my mom, and open the door and see he was halfway up the stairs with an extremely confused look on his face. I half shout "Hey could my mom and I talk to you for a second? We're big fans..." We talked for 20 minutes, then parted ways. At lunch, my mom said "why didn't you ask him to go backstage?" Freaking out, I bolted back to the stage door 2 blocks away and after waiting 20 minutes, he finally came back and we talked for a while, I asked, and he said ok! So after the show, he stuck to his word.
Second: I was walking past the Gershwin stage door, and I notice Kendra was signing playbills, so I handed her the back of my Jersey Boys playbill, and naturally she flipped it around and the look on her face was priceless. She said "Oh you saw Seb?" and I was so starstruck my mom hit me and said "sebastian!" and I was like "Oh yeah!" and I got a picture with her....really awkward haha

[StephanietheStar]

I have lots, 'cuz I'm apparently awkward naturally, but the most recent one was at the Addams Family stage door in Chicago.

I didn't bring a sharpie because I haven't stage door'd much in the last year or so and most of the actors didn't have their own. So Wesley Taylor comes out and I'm like "HI! umm, are you cool enough to have a pen?" and he did, but then all the people around us started laughing and I think I embarrassed him. But the continuation of the sentence was "are you cool enough...because I'm not!"

It's just one of my phrases (example "I'm not cool enough to own an iPhone", etc) but I kinda forgot that these people don't know me and might take it the wrong way. I'm so awkward.

This story sounds like I'm 10. I swear I'm not.

[invisiblegirl]

I had my first stage door experience a couple of months ago and it was definitely awkward! I was with my friend and she was getting a playbill signed for her sister, so about 20 times in the span of 2 days I heard "This one's for my sister, would you mind?" Not awkward for the performers, but I just got really sick of hearing it after a while.

When Alice Ripley came to sign our stuff at N2N I was kind of expecting her to say something first, but she didn't, so at the last minute I was like "I love you in Side Show and I have all your CDs!" Then later I was like, F*** I didn't even mention the show she's in THAT I JUST SAW. The next night as we were walking back from Hair we saw she was still talking to people, so we went over and she recognized us which was awkward. I did remember to mention the show this time, except I'm pretty sure I was hysterical and making no sense whatsoever.

At the Hair stage door... A woman behind me got into a conversation with Krystal Joy Brown about her clothes, and KJB started describing this outfit she was planning to wear and asked the woman if she thought it would look good, and the woman was like, "Anything would look great on you, you're skinny!" Awkward because the woman wasn't.

[beaemma]

I waited after seeing Ethel Merman in HELLO DOLLY. The rest of the crowd was mostly a large group of teen-aged girls whose chartered bus was waiting nearby. They were very excited, had pens and programs ready, were discussing what they would say to the star. Ethel came out dressed in a lovely, conservative black coat and hat--like your tasteful aunt going to lunch at a really nice restaurant. There was no reaction from the girls. I was too far away to approach her, but I announced "There she is." Several girls looked at me like I was crazy. They all kept staring at the stage door as the star walked through the group, got in her car, and was driven away. Guess they expected her to be wearing a red spangeled dress and yelling at the top of her lungs.

[kristinchenofan570]

I was at Love, Loss and What I Wore stage door and I really wanted to get a picture with Kristin Chenoweth. I opened up my purse looking for my phone and it was nowhere in there. As Kristin is getting closer to me with only one or two people before me I start moving away from her still digging in my purse to find my stupid phone. I finally give up and when there's two people before me again my CD I was going to have her sign slips out of my hands and drops on the ground right next to her feet. I then qucikly grab the CD and try putting the two pieces that split apart back together. Luckily I fixed it just in time for her to sign it.

I did actually manage to get a picture because my friend who went with me hadn't met her yet so I walked over to her and we got a picture with her together.

[GlindatheGood22]

I was at Hair the other day and had a flower on my headband. When I was coming down from the stage at the end Kacie Sheik told me she loved it and asked if she could give me a hug. I was so stunned that I just kind of stood there while she awkwardly tried to hug me around the pregnant belly.

At Next to Normal, Jenn Damiano randomly asked me if I had seen Star Trek. I hadn't, and had absolutely no idea what to say to that.


I have a habit of saying son of a bitch whenever I drop something. After Hair, I dropped my Sharpie when Andrew Kober handed it back to me and I reflexively muttered, "Son of a bitch," to no one in particular. I think he thought I was talking to him, because he apologized. It was AWFUL.