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Theatre Horrors

The Source

Just when I think I’ve seen it all and experienced my most horrific moment in theatre, something happens to top everything. The time: a few weeks ago. The place: New Salem’s Theatre in the Park. Act II: Ten members of our cast waited in the darkness for their sound cue, ready to jump onto the stage and do the most difficult dance number in the show, Junk Food. The cue. The pause. The longer pause. Then, in the words of Shakespeare upon the opening of his first musical, “All is nothingness.” Nada. Zip. No sound. Our faithful CD player containing the show’s entire orchestra flashed “Disc Read Error.” We were in the middle of a musical and suddenly had no music. My co-writer erupted with a string of language that burnt the bark off several of the park’s original maple trees and I had a very serious and very sudden conversation with God upon such subjects as faithfulness, healing, and CD players made overseas. Then they began. Those idiots…those asylum escapees onstage began the number without the music! A young dancer named Charlie Smerz dropped to his knees and began pounding out the rhythm on the oak boards of the stage, the dancers began dancing, and the poor kid on lights figured that if they were going to try it a capella, then he’d given them some light. The good thing about the outdoor stage at Theatre in the Park is that the back of the audience is a long, long way from the stage. I couldn’t possibly get to the actors, choke every one of them, and throw their lifeless bodies into the nearby woods before someone in our 400-member audience caught on. I was ready to kill every one of them… with the love of God, of course. That is, until the darned number actually worked. Worked? It was fantastic! The audience never knew the difference as each singer somehow found his pitch and Charlie banged away on the stage. They came offstage talking about how much fun it was to do the song that way. God forgive me, I still wanted to slap somebody. Live theatre. Some people purposely attend opening nights for the same reason they go to the stock car races. They secretly hope someone crashes. I’ve been blessed to live a life in theatre where all the crashes happened on the far turn, well away from the crowd’s eyes. My fondest crash came during Act I of Man of La Mancha. I’d hurried offstage for a quick costume change and found one of my cast members who in his 20 seconds offstage chose to run to the dressing room and check his text messages. I’d warned the cast that I would actually eat any cell phone I saw during the run of the show and Andrew was checking his text messages while Don Quixote was singing about his impossible dream onstage. In a gesture reminiscent of Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea while bringing down the wrath of God upon Pharaoh, I grabbed the cell phone and smashed it against the back wall of the Sophie Leschin auditorium. I’m sure I’ve felt that good at some time in my life but I can’t remember when. Andrew said nothing. He knew he’d sinned at that only the grace of God and the need for a muleteer in Act II had spared his life. There’s an old adage: never appear onstage with a dog or a child. Both will steal the audience’s attention because of the sheer naturalness of their performance. Dogs and little tykes can’t act and that’s what makes them such good actors. We needed a dog for our Triopia production of L’il Abner. Bruce Surratt had what appeared to be a 1200-pound beagle named (inappropriately) “Action.” Jay Wessler as Pappy Yokem was to lead Action across the stage. That’s all the blasted dog had to do.. walk across the stage. On opening night Action suddenly got himself an agent I guess and refused to walk across the stage. He saw the 600 folks packed into the Triopia gym and decided to watch the show from there. Although Jay went on to set several state records in carrying the football, his Kemp-trained muscles were sorely tested by Surratt’s dog and Jay had to lean backwards on his rope and drag the corpulent pup across the stage backwards. (Jay was going backwards…Action was simply sitting there being dragged.) Bruce said that he took Action home that night after the show, the dog ran away, and he never saw him again. The dog was no trouper. I was playing Henry II in Lion in Winter when I exited the stage and caught my leg on an errant screw sticking out of a door jamb. Running backstage I found the director and showed him how the King of England’s next entrance would be with a twelve-inch slash in his black tights. Jon Robb, the director, grabbed a can of black spray paint and began attacking the kingdom of my thigh. The good news: it worked. The less-than-good-news: oil based spray paint takes about six weeks to eventually wear off. I vaguely remember Lady MacBeth muttering something about “Out, damned spot!” If my memory serves me, she was less successful than I was.