Best "Make It Work" instance from you theatre past..

[ucjrdude902]

Posted: 8/12/08 at 7:27pm

I'll share my story. I was doing a big community theatre production of HSM. Here's what happened, I was in the ensemble keep that in mind. The girl who played Gabrielle had to miss the first two performances due to flu. So the girl who played Kelsi (who orginally auditioned for Gabriella) had to step up and do the part. To fill Kelsi they pulled me, changed the lines for Gabrielle to talk to me (instead of Troy) and called me Kelson. Fun!

Anyone got stories?

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 8/12/08 at 7:30pm

Isn't that sort of against policy just to change something like that including who lines are spoken to, etc.? Or are the circumstances different if someone runs into a problem like this?

[BwayBaby18]

Posted: 8/12/08 at 7:43pm

A professor had to go on for me once during the second weekend of our production of "Spinning into Butter" when i came down with the flu. He wore my costume and had a notebook with my lines in them.

[Byron Abens]

Posted: 8/12/08 at 8:06pm

Technically yes, any unauthorized changes violate the royalty agreement with the licensing company. However, in order for them to do anything it needs to be brought to the attention MTI, Samuel French, etc. For something that was for two performances and at a community theatre, odds are that even if they got wind of it, they wouldn't bother pursuing any course of action. Now, if they got wind of it and it was something that was planned by the producing organization and going on for the entire run, there might be a cease and desist letter sent, which is the first step in prosecuting such a violation.

For instance, I know of a summer stock production of 1776 that combined a few of the very minor delegates into fewer characters (not really a smart move on their part), necessitating some minor line changes. However, a friend of Peter Stone's was in attendance early in the run, and a cease and desist letter arrived shortly afterwards. Needless to say there was some scrambling and re-rehearsing as they found the necessary males to fill out the missing delegates.

Cabaret is another one that is watched somewhat closely. Tams Witmark only licenses the original script and the revisions made for the 1980s revival. So when they here about companies using the further revisions made for the Sam Mendes revival, action is often taken on their part.

[mormonophobic]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 12:28am

Mine is embarrassing because it involves myself and followed me throughout my high school years. So we were performing A Midsummer Night's Dream here in Las Vegas. I was Peter Quince, leader of The Rustics, the group putting on the show within the show. Thankfully this meant I was for the most part the straight-faced-guy to our PHENOMENAL Bottom (Saum E.), who just made every scene so over the top Nathan Lane fantastic that I ended up with blood in my mouth because I was biting down so hard on cheek and tongue so not as to laugh and break character (this relates later on, so pay attention!)

So it's Act II I believe (this was my Sophomore year and back in high school, so forgive me if my memory isn't all there). All I know is there was a big break and because of this I was in the back (our theater connected to our theater classroom, which is where most people stayed during performances) talking to another cast member. Some time goes by, we talk, and suddenly madness occurs. Now to top the impaired memory, the rest of this story is pretty much pieced-together hearsay because I was in the back the whole time, while the show, which I was supposed to be a part of, continued. So...

Apparently it was one of the many scenes where The Rustics have to come out and discuss their show (I know, THAT one!), only it either opened the second act or followed that scene. All of The Rustics, minus me of course, went out on the stage only to realize I, Peter Quince, was not there. So for (I quiver with repressed shame) five minutes they had to stay in character and had to look for me. Luckily not only did we have the aforementioned uber-actor as Bottom, but we also had a lavish set with various rock formations, trees, and (best of all in this circumstance) a fountain that blew out dry ice/smoke. So they would look under rocks, around things, through the smoke, in the fountain, all the while shouting "Quince? Peter Quince? Where are you?!"

I still can't for the life of me think of why I wasn't waiting in the wings like I always do, nor do I know why it took a techie or SOMEONE five minutes to find me. It's not like I was in hiding, I was in the back with everyone else. Still though, pretty bad story and throughout high school thereafter anytime I went to class people would start saying "Quince? Peter Quince? Quince where are you?" Ah good times, good times.

[LuPonatic]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 9:45am

I was in a production of City of Angels this past February playing Stine. The girl playing Bobbi/Gabby got really sick and for our second performance she was sent home. They brought in another girl who was not in the production or had even seen it, but was an excellent singer (because she could fit the costumes) and this girl walked around the whole show with a script in her hands. The audience was very understanding and receptive, and she sang great! Thank goodness that the guy playing Stone and I had no problem ad libbing blocking to make the scenes more bearable.

[Patash]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 2:03pm

I was playing the lead in Charley's Aunt many years ago when on the afternoon of opening night I somehow rammed a yardstick into my eye. After hours at the eye doctor I ended up with a full eyepatch that I had to keep on for three days. So both my young male character and the aunt had a black almost pirate looking eye patch. It sort of added to the absurdity that none of the other characters recognized who the "aunt" was -- since they both had an eye patch. One critic who was too smart for his own good wrote a whole blurb on it about the brilliant addition of this bit -- having no idea that it was a result of an accident.

[Burning_Oasis]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 2:37pm

My Director at my old school picked out a murder mystery for our fall show. The title had the word "Shooting" in it, and the principle made us change the title because our school actually HAD a shooting a few years before it was done.

No one found out, thankfully.
But changing the title of a show is never good.

[Robert Taylor]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 2:40pm

I was the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

I was in the big plant and it broke while I was talking, a piece of metal flying into my leg and slicing it open. I had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches and a tetnis shot.

[Byron Abens]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 2:42pm

Yeah, that is pretty ballsy to flat out change the title. Plus it leaves a pretty major paper trail for potential prosecution, as I assume the "corrected" title was used on any advertising and programs. That's something where the licensing company could potentially end up going after an organization even after the fact. Keep your fingers crossed that they continue to never find out.

[winston89]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 2:47pm

I did something in high school that was a pretty bold move. In my sophomore year we did a play called The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild. It is about this woman who's real life is in shambles so she hides in the dream world of classic movies. There are dream sequences that show her in the middle of these old classic movies. And, in a Wizard of Oz way the characters in the dream sequences are people that Mildred Wild knows from her daily life.

In one of the dream sequences I was playing Butterfly McQuee in full out drag. There was no black face involved but it did involve me talking like a southern black woman. I basically could have gone onstage and said whatever I wanted and no one would have heard me because the laughter was so loud.

I realized after doing that that I could do anything onstage.

[Weez]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 3:51pm

Hmmm. My personal best was when I was moving away from my adopted home city back to my original home town. A couple of days before the move, Mum called me and asked if I'd be interested in being in a play when I got back. They'd lost a cast member to illness. I can't say "no" to any opportunity to be onstage, so I had to learn an entire play and pack my life into tiny boxes within the space of a week. That was fun. XD

[TheBoyDownstairs]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 4:08pm

I went to a small middle school, and to do musicals they would need the entire 7th/8th grades to do them. So everyone was forced to be in the show.

When I was in the 7th grade they decided they wanted to do Annie. So the entire two grades auditioned, and they found not a single girl could sing the part.

But one 7th grade boy could, so they changed the part from "Annie" to "Andy". All the orphans were changed to boys, we had "Mommy Warbucks" and Mr. Hannigan.

Ugh, just thinking back on that what a disaster it was.

[Byron Abens]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 4:16pm

Yeah, the whole Annie/Andy thing was mildly amusing the FIRST time I heard that joke at the end of Camp.

[ACL2006]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 6:32pm

Was in a production of La Cage.. and one of the dancers playing a cagelle tore his ACL during the last dress rehearsal. Two hours before opening night we were changing the choreography to balance out any holes.

And during a performance of A Chorus Line, all three cut female dancers(Lois, Vicki & Tricia) all had to cover one of the lead roles(Maggie, Sheila & Judy). Lucky we had a swing to cover one of the parts and we used a crew member(with a dancing background) to cover another.

[dancingthrulife04]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 6:38pm

When I did Annie a long time ago, our Rooster just blatantly decided not to show up. Our (female) drama teacher took his place, with no script. She managed to pull together a costume within minutes and was pretty damn good.

At a performance of A Chorus Line last summer, there were no female cut dancers, so Alisan Porter (Bebe at the time) also read Vicki's line.

[jennyish]

Posted: 8/13/08 at 6:40pm

A couple years ago I was in a community theatre production of "Mmmbeth", a poorly written parody of the Scottish Play. It was mostly teenagers (like myself), and we only had one understudy. During her vacation, one of the witches called out. At half-hour, I was informed by the director that I had to cover her part AS WELL AS my usual roles (Murderer, Doctor, various ensemble). We sat backstage after each scene I was in rewriting the next ones. I have no idea how we pulled it off, but we did.

The year before, at the same theatre, I was playing Miss Scarlet in CLUE. During one fateful performance, I went on as Mr. Boddy (WTF?). At least in that instance, I had a couple days to learn the lines and songs.

[FelineofAvenueB1025]

Posted: 8/14/08 at 12:01pm

In my high school's production of Guys and Dolls last year, we had two awesome guys playing Benny Southstreet and Nicely-Nicely Johnson. Anyway, it was the scene before they sing the Guys and Dolls number, and Benny Southstreet forgets to come onstage. The kid playing Nicely had to improvise this huge monologue, trying to turn the conversation into a one-sided thing, and wondering where Benny was. It took the rest of the cast a while to actually find Benny, while various chorus members ran across the stage (as in Runyonland), to fill time and help Nicely out. I'm not sure how much the audience noticed, but the rest of us principal characters were sitting backstage and just shaking our heads. Needless to say, our director was not very happy.

[SpellingBeeFan4Ever]

Posted: 8/14/08 at 12:10pm

Would it be illegal to pull out songs? My director pulled out Masion De Lunes and How Long Must This Go on from Beauty and The Beast due to little time.

[[e-mail]]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 1:24pm

yes it is illegal to cut/extract/alter/add/modify in anyway the show compared to the original script.

More of a side comment, but it would seem that small modifications to the orchestra music for scene changes and so forth must happen frequently. I would assume those are also technically not allowed, jut probably not noticed as frequently.

[parislover87]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 1:38pm

Byron----

He's right. The script company got wind of a production of "you're a good man, charlie brown" I was in. All we did was give the ensemble Peanut character names (which I guess is technically like us adding copyrighted characters) in the playbill and they cancelled our last two shows.

[truk777]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 1:42pm

I had a dream one time that I was directing Oklahoma! but I only had costumes for Camelot. It was bad enough in the dream to be real.

[ShbrtAlley44]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 1:45pm

There were a couple performances of Curtains where two featured actors were out at the same time with medical problems, so there were some shakeups. Jim Newman unexpectedly had to go on as Johnny, the stage manager, and missed his first entrance, where he brings Jessica Cranshaw (Patty Goble) her robe during the curtain call of "Robbin' Hood," the show-within-the-show. Patty had to do her dialogue while taking her costume off as if she were talking to herself. The exchange with Johnny ends with the hapless Jessica saying "I was distracted all night by some guy in the front row who kept waving his hands at me," to which Johnny replies, "That was the conductor."

As Patty was saying the line about the guy in the front row, Jill Paice, who is really good in situations where things go wrong, ran offstage to get the robe for her, ran back, said, "That was the conductor," and ran center stage to take her bow for the curtain call of "Robbin' Hood."

Let it be said, though, that Jim Newman was spot-on for the rest of the show.

As for my own theatrical experiences, I was on the phone with the editor of Chick's newspaper in "Wonderful Town" when the cord fell out of the phone. The girl playing Eileen quickly plugged it back in and tapped the hangup buttons, and I waited a moment and said, "Oh, there you are, sir! I thought I'd lost you!" Also, during "Bells Are Ringing," I was sitting in the dentist's chair when the flat representing his office wall nearly fell on us. He quickly caught it and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, my office is falling apart."
Updated On: 8/15/08 at 01:45 PM

[Patash]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 1:57pm

It's amazing what the licensing agencies find out. Years ago I was directing Hello, Dolly at a high school in Dayton, Ohio. We invited the 7th graders to the final dress rehearsal in the afternoon for free -- as was always the custom. Somehow Tams found out about it and fined us $600 -- insisting that even though nothing was charged, it still constituted a full performance. We suspected a local man who was the producer for bringing in musical tours notified them. He was upset after a newspaper critic said there were elements of our No, No Nanette than surpassed his touring production the year before.

[winston89]

Posted: 8/15/08 at 2:14pm

My school wanted to do The Elephant Man. They were going to start rehearsals while the revival was finish up performances. This is in NYC so there wasn't going to be an issue of an amature production playing in the same place as a professional. There was a problem with us getting the rights because the people who distributed the rights got confused because they didn't realize that performances were going to be AFTER the revival closed on Broadway. The playwirght got word of this and didn't think that a high school could put it on. So he sent the director a letter telling him that he didn't think a high school could perform his work well but if he wanted to try then he could go right ahead. There was someone in the audience who worked at Lincoln Center ( we rented one of their studio theatres to use) who thought that the show was still playing on Broadway and thus reported us. My director not only contacted the people who gave out the rights for the show to tell them that there was a period of two months between the last performance of the revival and the first performance done by my school. And, that we got a letter from the playwright giving us permission to do it which he faxed over. It was the letter that stopped all discussion and my school went on to do the show.