High School Theatre Pranks- Page 1

[lostwallflower]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:26pm

I know a lot of people here are or have been involved in high school theatre. Did you have pranks on closing night of shows? What kinds of pranks?

Our school typically did porn where only actors could see it. Some distractions in the wings. And occasionally some really random ones...like a purse full of mayonaise.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:29pm

Putting lip numbing ambasol on glasses that actors use on stage.

[Jwei123]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:29pm

When we did "Fiddler" at my school, the guy playing model had written obsenities and drawn funny pictures in the prayerbook that tzeidal had for their wedding, and she started CRACKING UP during Sunrise, Sunset. It was classic!

[lostwallflower]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:33pm

We resisted the urge to put pepper in the nose our Cyrano wore in this last show

There have been times where some tech kids get daring. Such as the 3 random lighting and sound crew members that made it into Too Darn Hot in Kiss Me, Kate.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:37pm

oh, yes. everything from pictures of naked women in books to pictures of naked men in dressing rooms... also we'd steal underwear from cast members and then put it somewhere on stage where only they would see it... like in a chest or a drawer or something that only they opened during the performance...

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:39pm

Someone tried something during our senior production, and I pushed him into the orchestra pit.

[lostwallflower]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:41pm

In Streetcar, Blanche's trunk had some interesting contents....

[OneBlazeOfGlory]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 9:44pm

At my school we don't dare to pull anything during a show-- people are paying to see us perform, not mess around onstage with eachother...

We pull all our stunts at cast parties or dress rehersals

One time during a girls dance number they all let the tops of their costume's scome off and called it 'a costume malfunction'

Luckily the director had a good sense of humor

There are a few more, I'll just have to think of them...


Edit: while reading a post that quoted me I realized I left out the 'c' in 'cast'... sorry midterm brain overload...

Updated On: 12/15/04 at 09:44 PM

[Taryn]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 11:10pm

One of the crew for Agnes of God enjoyed writing obscenities on my notepad that I wouldn't notice until I went to write down my real Dr. Livingstone notes. :P

Oh, and there was that time sophomore year after one of the Music Man performances when the mayor came into the girls' dressing room stark naked. But that was just disturbing. >_>

Ooh! One last one. For two years I did summer shows with a local Shakespeare in the park company (until finally deciding I'd had enough of the impossible, offensive director). My first year, when we did Henry V, I played Lord Scroop (one of the three traitors) along with doing backstage work. The scrolls we're given--the ones we think are going to be honors that turn out to be Henry's "you're so busted" notes--always had interesting notes written in them. My favorite was the scroll for this one boy who was rather...ah...mellow. His said, "Look scared." Credit-carding abounded during that production, too, but I don't know if that constitutes a "prank." It certainly was amusing, though.

[~FloweryFriend~]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 11:14pm

In a farce, a stage cucumber was incorporated into every scene.

In a comedy, a friend wore large glittery hot pink false eyelashes.

In State Fair, as the men were supposedly looking at pictures of pigs, on closing night they were actually looking at pictures of a few of the female cast members in flirty poses wearing fake pig noses.

Once, the crew members began flashing the actors, and had made happy faces and other designs on their stomachs out of glow tape.

[jacobtsf]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 11:17pm

"At my school we don't dare to pull anything during a show-- people are paying to see us perform, not mess around onstage with eachother...

We pull all our stunts at ast parties or dress rehersals"

As both a high school actor and director I agree and encourage all fellow HS actors to listen to the above statement.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 12/15/04 at 11:25pm

Posted: 12/16/04 at 12:20am

lol these are funny..... ive been involved in some teen theatre shows where porn has been included in a menu or card or something. but this past semester i was the ASM for Die Fledermaus and Ivan the russian aide for Prince Orlovsky had a notepad and would write really funny **** on it that only me and my tech crew would see and sometimes my tech crew would write funny stuff back for him to read while he was onstage....hehe but no pranks kids!!!!!

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 12:45am

THE MUSIC MAN - during a dress rehearsal Mrs. Paroo was supposed to be sort of stern with Harold...I don't remember the exact scene - and instead, they ran towards each other and starting having sex. I peed.

THE WIZARD OF OZ - Final dress rehearsal. During the munchkin land scene a friend and i found a baby doll, attached it to a pole, and draped it over the stage and started screaming "it's blanket! blanket jackson!" IT sounds lame but it was SO fing funny.

[ckeaton]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 8:53am

You know occasionally some funny pranks happen in professional theatre too. Especially when crew members have to serve "onstage roles" moving set pieces in plain view, etc. Their peers like to tease them. If it doesn't impact the show, these things can be quite funny.

[rlbgbc]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 9:16am

I HATE people pulling those tricks. That being said, of course...people have in the shows I've done through the years. Nearly all of the pranks involved porn. Two examples:

THE KING AND I: Before "Hello, Young Lovers", Mrs. Anna pulls out a locket with a picture of her ol' dead husband, Tom esconced in it. She passes it around to Lady Thiang and the royal wives, and they say something like "he very pretty of face". Last performance, the prop people replaced the picture of Tom with a picture of a big ol' penis. They got through the scene without breaking or going up, but the look in their eyes said it all.

DAMN YANKEES: The first number, "Six Months Out of Every Year", is about husbands being glued to baseball on television. Six televisions on stage, with guys grouped around them, watching, while the "wives" are behind them. Yep, you guessed it -- the 'wives' placed big ol' Penthouse centerfolds in the televisions, so all of the guy were singing to Miss January, spread-eagled in all her glory. Again, no one broke -- or even smiled. I guess the fact that all the "husbands" were gayer than Christmas had something to do with that.

[Carl Magnum]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 11:23am

The only people who occasionally pulled pranks at my high school were the outgoing seniors who had already gotten their letters of rec from the director. If you pulled anything as an underclassmen you were blacklisted. It was strongly discouraged and I couldn't agree more. Closing night pranks are unprofessional and just end up making you look like the jerk in the long run.

The only major one I can remember was during H2$ my sophmore year (jesus that was like 7 years ago) one of the outgoing seniors during her solo for "Secretary is not a toy" had the solo verse "Or an erector set" well she changed that to "Erection set" which was a joke from an earlier dress rehearsal. It hapened so fast only the other actors noticed.


But yeah, basically we didn't pull pranks and stopped anyone who was even thinking of doing one. Plus that fact our director was the high school acting teacher as well and we knew we would have to see her in acting the next day. And since she was Phillip Seymore Hoffman's high school acting teacher as well, we tended to take her pretty seriously.

[laactress]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 11:33am

In my old high scholl which was a theater arts school every closing night of a production they put porn everywhere, that was about it, but it still made for a funny closing :)

Posted: 12/16/04 at 11:40am

In a high school production of Into the Woods at the curtain call, Sleeping Beauty came out with the Baker's Wife's fake pregnant stomach. Everyone in the theatre died they were laughing so hard.

[judy_in_disguise]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 12:02pm

I played Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz in grade 12. On closing night I thought the Scarecrow (a typical joker) had arranged a stunt with the band and he danced around like an idiot for about two verses without singing anything. I figured it was a joke and he would come back in, but sure enough, the song ended with no singing. HE FORGOT IF I ONLY HAD A BRAIN! Can we say typecasting?
That night the crew rigged the trees for the tornado scene ( we had a big wooden flat the trees were in front of, but for the tornado we just used CG animation). On closing night, they pulled the trees up and down from behind the flat by ropes. Problem is, they told EVERYONE in the cast they were doing it, except for me, and i was the only one on stage! I nearly got taken out by a few trees!
Ah highschool. There are so many more stories, just can't think of any right now! We all pulled stunts on closing night- actually I wasn't much into it, I thought it took away from the overall performance.

[Fiji]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 3:34pm

Guilty pleasures, huh?

My high school doesn't really do onstage pranks, but I have some good out-of-dchool stories.

At a children's theatre production of Much Ado About Nothing, there were varius letters that needed to be brought onstage. We didn't get the real prop letters until opening night, so just about every rehearsal, someone would write one. most of them were rather... graphic fake love notes between actors in the play.

In my renaissance preforming group, we have a tradition of "Sunday changes" where jokes can be added to the last preformance of our living chessgame (they're approved by the directors first). Last year, one the black King was a guy who would wear a Superman shirt to every practice. On Sunday, the two kings came out to meet and challenge each other, and the white kind pulls back his coat to reveal a codpiece with a giand superman "S" on it. It was AMAZING. I died laughing.

[ckeaton]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 3:39pm

Any thread with the word "codpiece" in it... A+

[BroadwayBaby21]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 5:23pm

I dont rememeber any big pranks for the highschool ones (but i know they are already planning the one for this year's show) but the one that happened during my summer show was hilarious... We did it during the brush up in between the two weekends (because we were too scared of the director if we were to do it during the actual show... lol)
We did Joseph... and during Stone the Crows, when the narrators are singing, Joseph and Pharoah are pantomineing talking... It was the guy who played Pharoah's last year (he was going to college), so he wanted to do a huge prank...
well they started dancing around and doing the macrerana and the YMCA. I was onstage at the time, and basically everyone else who was, cracked up.
Needless to say, the director wasnt happy with us.... but it was well worth the laugh!

[jacobtsf]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 7:05pm

The best prank that we did was AFTER a show.
We had just finnished "The Fantastiks and the audience had left. We ordered some pizzas to have in auditorium and when some of the adults went to go get the pizza a bunch of us climbed to the roof of my school and climbed into the rafters(above the cieling tiles) and crawled from one end of the school to the other. The adults found out when the saw one cieling tile coming out of the roof(it turns out that a couple were making out on top of the tile and were humping a little too hard.

[Liam]

Posted: 12/16/04 at 7:07pm

verry unperfeshinal