You Know It's Community Theatre When...- Page 14

[snowskittle]

Posted: 1/29/09 at 10:25am

When the seat numbers on the tickets are all hand-written.

[VonTussleGirl]

Posted: 3/7/09 at 11:41pm

... into the woods is expanded to include "other fairy tale characters" including Shrek

I swear to god and all that is holy, I was in that production. (And it gets worse: the kid playing Shrek was wearing a costume recycled from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.)

[ggersten]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 12:25pm

...when you're co-directing Sweet Charity, and your Oscar has to miss the week before techweek because he's speaking at a Physicists Convention. [Luckily, he's really really good and his scenes have been played really really well so far]

[wickedfan11]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 12:49pm

*You practice in a hallway until the day of the performance.
*You bring your own costumes.
*No one wants to wear the make-up that the director wants them to wear.
*You have no understudies.
*An actor forgets all of his lines or forgets to go onstage for a scene and you end up performing a monologue.
*You think that you aren't allowed to go into the dressing room unless you have a costume change.
*You have one stagehand, and he has no clue what he's doing.
*People yell at you because they think you'll be late for your next entrance...when you still have five minutes.

All of these have happened in shows I've been in.

[wicked1492]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 1:08pm

...a whole family of 8 is in "The Music Man;" mom, dad and kids ages 5-18. Not even kidding.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 1:35pm

from hands down the worst production of A Chorus Line I ever saw.

- the girl playing Diana has no accent and doesn't look anything hispanic.
- the girl playing Connie isn't Asian and is about 5'6".
- the girl playing Maggie can't sing and her entire part in "At The Ballet" is turned into a monologue.
- the boy playing Zach is about 15 years old.
- all the costumes were updated for the time period(this was 1996).
- the only dancing consisted of 5 minutes in the opening and about 2 minutes for the finale.
- Cassie's dance solo gets cut.
- if the cast didn't have any lines coming up they would randomly walk off stage.

sadly i had to be honest with my friend who was in it and tell her it was bad, which she agreed with.

[dg22894]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 1:49pm

When the Annie in Annie is just as tall the Grace and she was picked because she could sing vibrato.


In Olivier Bill Sykes dog is a toy dog.

[wizard2joe]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 3:28pm

- when your costume is atrached by glue and when the piece comes on the costume lady brings a glue from backstage and sticks it on while your rehearsing.

-when people are bragging that they are better singers than you but they really suck

-when people think they know everthing about show biz

-when all the people with lead roles has a weird way of singing

-when your monkey costume is just a sweatshirt from the show that is inside-out with furry fabric glue on there

Updated On: 3/8/09 at 03:28 PM

[dg22894]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 5:00pm

When the Wickersham costume is a blue shirt and they are Wickersham sisters who speak monkey around in the blue tee shirts and leggings.

[EganFan2]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 10:02pm

When the guy playing Motel the Tailor in "Fiddler" is well into his 40s.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 10:16pm

When the youngest actress in a production of "Annie" is an eight year old girl... who is playing Miss Hannigan.

(That was me!)

[jonartdesigns]

Posted: 3/8/09 at 11:38pm

...a production of Anything Goes;
-casts a Billy Lawlor that can't dance, or act and barely hits the right notes
- features a total of 3 sets functioning poorly as all the settings of the show
- 2 out of those 3 sets are small platforms which take 7 minutes to be rolled on by no less than 14 crew members
- the title song starts with Reno alone on stage until the chorus literally runs onto the stage to dance

... The Entire Stage crew gets a curtain call
... the director thinks its a good idea to shove the orchestra down as far to the right as possible for the benefit of a single character entrance
... Sandy in Annie has to wear a leash in all scenes because the dog was borrowed and isn't remotely trained
... There are 7 understudies for each lead
... multi-Character roles are spread to as many people as possible
... Little Shop of Horrors is done with an all white cast
... A lighting designer is credited when the lighting design consists only of "Everything, Blue, and Off"
... the mics used are set to cell phone frequencies
... even the simplest set decorations (life preservers) are painted plywood
... dance numbers look like they would be wonderful if they weren't done in quarter tempo for safety

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/9/09 at 12:00pm

I will never forget it, you knoooooow! A community theatre production of West Side Story I attended:

-Setting was updated to modern day for lack of costume budget.

-Tony received a standing ovation for a rendition of "Maria" in which he flips to a thin falsetto after every "Ma-".

-The choreography was eliminated from the prologue and was replaced with intermittent arguments.

-Half the Jets and Sharks were played by women.

-The choreography was apparently staged by a drill team instructor. Every single number with dancing, starting with When You're a Jet, began with endless vamping as the cast assembled their first formation and then proceeded to perform unison movements generally reserved for a halftime show at a high school football game.

-The star of the show was the set, which was the only element that worked.

[Bustornugget]

Posted: 3/9/09 at 9:46pm

When a news team does a story on your theatre company because for their current show they have a cast of 90. But what the news team doesn't know is 90 is pretty small for your theatre company and that they have had a cast of 120 before. And that same show with a cast of 90 was written for six characters and was expanded so that there was four different chorus groups, each with unique names, and about twenty seperate solos. Believe it or not it turned out well!

[Dollypop]

Posted: 3/9/09 at 10:06pm

When you're playing the Rabbi's Son in FIDDLER and the Rabbi doesn't make it on stage to bless the sewing machine so you do it. It turns out the Rabbi was standing out in the rain drinking Johnny Walker from a flask.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 3/9/09 at 11:29pm

...When the overture is just the cast recording being pumped through the sound system. I saw a regional production of West Side Story where they did just that, but the rest of the music was live. The only explanation I could come up with was that maybe they didn't get sheet music for the actual overture?

[Mealz1042]

Posted: 3/10/09 at 1:09am

there arent enogh men so women are cast in male roles

[dihope0914]

Posted: 3/10/09 at 10:43am

In The Music Man, the role of Harold Hill alternates every other night. The first night, he is played by a 75 year old man, and the second night by a 20 year old woman.

[Bustornugget]

Posted: 3/11/09 at 10:17pm

When the term "open auditions" also means anyone can watch and it doesn't matter how small the room is.
When a song is added to a classic show that has nothing to do with the character or show or even scene it is in.
When people have not done any shows outside this one company.
When the audiance can hear cast members speak a made-up language backstage because they forgot their mike was on.
When in West Side Story the Tony shouts "Yes!" backstage after "Something's Coming" because the ladder was violently wabbling during the whole song, and his mike was still on.

[wickedfan11]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 5:50pm

*The director allows people that aren't in the cast or crew to watch rehearsal.
*Most of the cast calls a script a 'play book'.
*You are the only person to exit out the stage door, as everyone else exits by jumping off the stage in costume to go say hello to their parents in the house.
*A cast member doesn't memorize their lines until the last dress rehearsal.

I experienced all of those this past month in a production of a play that I was in.

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 6:07pm

The show's logo is a small low quality image obtained from google and is used for all the marketing materials.

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 6:08pm

You do Annie Get Your Gun and Frank Butler accidentally skips the entire song, "Anything You Can Do."

Wait, never mind. That wasn't community theatre.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 6:13pm

When they cast a Zorba who is an effete college professor without an ounce of machismo in his bones. He admits openly that he got the part only because he had a beard.

[AndAllThatJazz22]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 6:23pm

When for an extra $5 you get to go to a cast party at the KFC down the street and only the techies show up (not a joke)

[Schmerg_The_Impaler]

Posted: 5/22/09 at 6:26pm

(High school theatre)

When you go to see opening night of a show and there is an entire unused orchestra pit all set up, in which there is only a pianist who is looking at the score for the first time. You learn after the show that the entire band and orchestra is on spring trip and forgot to tell the cast of the show.