SHIT EXPECTATIONS: rolling thread of horrible HS/College theater experiences

sponsored by remembering the horror that HI DERE, Sara R-C and I had to endure when performing (well sort of) the play adaptation of Great Expectations brought up on the Dickens thread.

Share your own! Wallow in the misery that is amateur theater!

Aw, my high-school and college theater experiences were nothing but good times.

magnificent thread title

I was in a HS production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (which was horrifying in its own right btw) where the two girls dressed up as a horse fell off the back of the 10' tall set during curtain call to much applause until the audience realized it wasnt a wacky slapstick joek

no one was killed because they were saved from injury by the jesus i think

hahahahahahahaha that was so so great

btw I loved Joseph and made my future-wife watch our production once while we were still dating

wow she must really love you

The set, IIRC, was a gigantic staircase covered with Reynolds Wrap.

Reynolds Wrap and Christmas tree lights, actually!

The month our drama teacher made the drama club study mime was really traumatic. And to top it all off, the drama club had to march in the Homecoming Parade DRESSED AS MIMES. I have never lived it down.

okay you win

I think my sister probably still has a picture from that parade, because it is choice blackmail material.

my hs theater teacher had a thing for strange casting decisions, including, for example, casting ppl who couldn't sing OR dance OR really act at all in the lead roles of singin' in the rain & west side story. in both cases the leading men had no prior drama experience whatsoever. painful results.

My high school did a production of Bye Bye Birdie (I was in the orchestra for this one) and the kid who played Conrad Birdie was, at one point, supposed to chug a beer and then belch magnificently and instead, on opening night, he chugged a near bear and then puked all over the stage.

In another play I was some kind of evil murderous wife or something and I was supposed to fall down either dead or in a faint, I don't remember, and somehow in the process of falling my skirt got all jacked up so I had to lay there on stage with my skirt up around my waist and my pantyhose all showing.

PS I "lettered" in drama in high school.

Uh near beer, not near bear, which would have been awesome.

shit, none of mine were that awful. I was in a community theater production of Oliver when I was 16, and the director re-interpreted the script so that my character was supposed to flirt with this other character, who was this creepy-looking old guy.

" the drama club had to march in the Homecoming Parade DRESSED AS MIMES"

was collective ditching not an option? what hold did they have over you to compel this?

had a 25 minute solo monologue in Brian Friels "Faith Healer" where i was supposed to do a cockney accent (which i SUCKED at) and be a old washed up alcoholic (um). So in the process of drinking through as much of a case of near beer as I could manage (was 19 at the time, stupid laws) on closing night I put about half of the first beer directly into my lungs. So I am literally choking my way through this nightmare, making these horrifying whooping sounds while trying to keep this bullshit cockney accent going "AH SO AWWWWHHS ABAHT THAAT WUN AYEEEE. HYURRRKKRKKKK. INNNNNCREDIBULLL. HWARRRRRRRRHHHGGHH." Manage to make it through barely without passing out, stumble off stage, and notice the shocked looks of everyone in the cast. Realize that maybe I might have dropped a line or two. Maybe even a paragraph.

Final total of brain blurred panicked stage time? 4 minutes. Upon review, had managed to eliminate everything other than the first page, one random anecdote that I only did half of somewhere in the middle, and the last paragraph.

awesome

other questionable decisions were splitting roles up to be played by multiple actors. in man of la mancha, the role of sancho was played by 2 ppl who were both on stage the whole time, splitting up lines (they were dating at the time).

for the show george m! the lead roleof george m cohan was split up chronologically -- someone played young george, i was cast as adult george, and someone else was slated to play old george (but she basically said 'fuck that' and i played the latter 2 parts of the role.

I had a great time in my high school musical career as such, though I am glad the photographic evidence is limited. But not entirely absent.

Here is my high school drama club, courtesy of fucking Facebook:

http://hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net/hs187.snc1/6253_1180730195130_1134427063_30555081_5639651_n.jpg

We had several scenes in "Great Expectations" where the dialogue revolved around passing around a basket full of bread rolls with specific references to what people were doing with their rolls. No one on the stage crew thought to save any rolls for the second performance, which meant that my main monologue, where I tell Pip what's happened to Estela while giving him a crash course in manners, was completely askew and I basically had to make up the entire thing while infodumping the critical plot-advancing information. A family friend of the guy who played Pip, who was also a drama teacher and intimately familiar with the play, almost had a heart attack due to paroxysms of laughter at this scene while everyone else sat there in stony silence, hating everything about their lives that conspired to put them in that particular place at that particular time and forced them to watch this shitty, shitty play.

was collective ditching not an option? what hold did they have over you to compel this?

I don't recall exactly what it was, but I think it was tied to the drama class grade in one way or another.

ps george m! is perhaps the worst musical ever conceived

my hs theater teacher had a thing for strange casting decisions, including, for example, casting ppl who couldn't sing OR dance OR really act at all in the lead roles of singin' in the rain & west side story. in both cases the leading men had no prior drama experience whatsoever. painful results.

This happened a lot at my HS/local community theater ... I think every production I was involved in, there was an inordinate amount of rehearsal time devoted to trying to get the male lead to sing his songs competently. When they did Joseph, they just faced facts, and 1/3 of Joseph's brothers were girls (including me). I think our costumes involved carpet samples, for what reason, I have no idea.

oh dude if the photo of our drama club arrives here we are all sunk xposts

our Joseph costumes consisted of overalls dyed in ALL THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW DO YOU SEE

Not so, Elmo:

http://www.friendsofhercules.org/images/songofnorwaysmwrrr.gif

playing billy flynn in chicago, i mixed my lines up, resulting in three scenes and 45 mins (and a lot of kids parts) being completely skipped. and the audience being left even more confused than usual at a school play. mama morton never forgave me

trying to remember if the drama club photo is the one where HI DERE and I are wearing matching Front Line Assembly shirts. i can be sure that i am wearing a bandana however, in a jaunty manner.

Thanks to our awesome choir program, only the top 2 voices of Joseph's brothers were girls, and that was just to protect against unreliable teenage boy falsettos. Also in addition to our colorful overalls, we all got to buy custom-colored Vans.

I got to be Jacob AND Potiphar in that show.

xp: pretty sure the FLA shirt pic is the knowledge bowl team

i was in a commedia adaptation during the summer either before or after 9th grade.

a picture of me in a deep v-neck frilly shirt and riding boots holding a sword, at age 14, was shown in a slideshow during the 'senior party' before graduation.

xp - we had carpet sample "bibs" with the first letter of our character's name sewn on them, and we also had to wear dumb hats. I think we had another costume - "the caftan" - that was also sourced from some upholstery warehouse.

xp Dan: of the 11 brothers, 3 were girls -- mainly because every competent tenor had a larger role.

xpost -- Was the resultant scene reminiscent of the prom sequence in Carrie?

i played Long John Silver in an all-female production of Treasure Island. i still wince when i think of it.

http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2079/52/123/1219249034/n1219249034_30301926_8014.jpg
South Pacific, just above and to the left of the little shirtless kid

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2079/52/123/1219249034/n1219249034_30301840_9144.jpg
See How They Run, in the jailbird suit

i played Long John Silver in an all-female production of Treasure Island

I have questions.

Me too!

I had a small part in "You Can't Take It With You" senior year because I was also running track; my character was a not-so-subtle imitation of Steve Urkel.

I think I won an award for it.

I was totally type-cast in Oliver -- I was a goth chick and got to play the undertaker's wife.

I recently had the pleasure of watching an old video of two friends of mine playing Dorothy and the Scarecrow in a middle-school all-white production of the the Wiz.

it was a summer teen theatre production. a friend of mine was really into theatre and he made me try out for it. so, i committed to it and then he told me that he was going to do a production of Guys & Dolls instead! so, i was stuck. we were the only boys who auditioned. it was a nightmare. the girls were nice to me though. i just wanted to live through it. i think i was 13 or something.

x-post

Oh man, I wonder if anyone still has the video of the production of "Fiddler on the Roof" we did in 7th grade! That was the worst rendition of "Tradition" you will ever hear.

xpost -- Scott you just need to write that into a screenplay and bingo, indie movie hit of summer 2010.

thankfully i didn't have to wear a parrot on my shoulder.

which is the youngest of joseph's brothers, that gets his own song? i was him

hey guys were the ppl with bird names directing yr plays, or did that happen later?

i was a kickass tevya if i can say so myself

other roles: irish cop in arsenic and old lace, grandFATHER in fiddler on the roof, mad hatter in alice in wonderland

R0b1n G3rg3n St4rk directed "You Can't Take It With You" my senior year; I think that was her first show as director? I saw her as Maria her senior year in "West Side Story".

ah yes. her bro, cr4ne directed a few as well, i seem to recall

It moved from Muncie, IN to Lincoln in 95, I think, and it's been there every since.

I was in a minimalist production of Christmas Carol where there were no sets or props, and we had to mime things, like making dinner ... the motion for "Master Peter mashed the potatoes with vigor" was hard to do/watch with a straight face.

omg

hahaha

i think i must have been there, then! i graduated spring 96. wow. i broke my ankle while there btw.

xp oh lol

I was the girl with purple hair! I graduated in '96, too, and went that summer as well.

xp - the guy who played him was pretty hot -- I think he was a swimmer. I played his sister as well as Scrooge's love interest ... again, the guy who played Scrooge was unattractive and kinda creepy.

I've told this story before (it's hard to do in text), but during "The Sound of Music" we were trying to get the girl playing The Mother Abbess to crack up during a performance, so before the beginning of the show we would write crass, disgusting things on the notepad on her desk that she used to write her note to Captain von Trapp explaining Maria's position. Before one performance, we decided to write something about pus-filled eye warts, only we'd forgotten about the word "pus-filled" and went with the colloquial adjective form "pussy".

So during a dramatic pause, MA goes to her desk, looks down at the note that says "I have pussy eye warts", folds up the paper and hands it to Maria with the line "Here; give this to Captain von Trapp. It will explain everything." Maria takes the note, doesn't bother opening it, and passes it to Captain von Trapp in the next scene, who looks at it, looks at her and says, "I see!"

Backstage roffles abounded.

i was hired to do the music for the HSTNGS HS production of "Rosencrantz and Guilderstern" (post grad btw) but due to the asshole in charge of getting me musicians from the HS band completely dropping the fucking ball none of the instruments i had written for were available, so instead i got a couple of shall go nameless fairly well known MPLS rock dudes i knew to do it as a constant moment to moment improv. it suuuuuuucked, but it was loud.

holy shit you never told me that

loooool

For my school's annual open day a friend, who was an active DramSoc player, decided to put on a troupe performing the Mummer's Play (pretty parochial tackle on which there's plenty here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Play). This would be performed in the school grounds to a mixed audience of parents and pupils.

I turned up with the intention of mooching about and seeing a few mates, at which point this particular friend appeared in a panic-stricken state to tell me that his Saint George had pulled out and could I take the role? Like a chump I agreed, leading to me being the only cast member who read from a script, had no idea what was happening next and getting an immobilising attack of The Chokes half way through the first (of three) performances. Of course this was the performance that the girl I currently had a blazing crush on decided to watch.

Still, probably a better attempt than my primary school turn as King Wenceslas whilst in the throes of raging laryngitis.

In year 9 I was in our high-school pantomime of 'Peter Pan', but too chicken to try for a singing part, so I ended up as one of the Lost Boys. There were about 12 of us, and they had some of the actors' mothers doing the costumes. The other 11 got standard potato-sack-style primitive shift things, but my costume was the last one made, and they had all this stuff left over, so the mothers went a bit mental and I ended up looking like Adam Ant in soft autumn shades. Given that I was a non-speaking minor character, this was something of a mistake, as every time I walked on stage all eyes automatically moved onto the weird-looking guy in the demented outfit who was obviously meant to be a major character, but who only bounced around shame-facedly in the background.

Drama teachers tried for years to indoctrinate me but I was too busy playing D&D to be bothered with theater.

That was kind of a prerequisite in my neck of the woods.

i played in the pit in our HS production of 'sweet charity' (naturally highly edited: arts budget did not allow for any kind of pool of water for charity to fall into, so basically everything before "hey big spender" was cut, and the girls were referred to as "nightclub dancers" and not, yknow, strippers). the pit was a mix of pros and some of the HS band, and i played i think the 3rd clarinet part. during the number "i'm a brass band" which comes near the end of the show, there's supposed to be a kind of graceful little fill after she sings "i'm a clarinet!" but it was pretty tricky and i couldn't quite nail it down on the best of days, so coupled with performance nerves it sounded more like "i'm a clarinet! BLEEP blorp SQUEAK honk doodledoo". doubt anyone noticed or cared, tho

I was also in the show choir, and the ladies did a rather risque rendition of "Big Spender", bordering on BDSM.

My only trauma is that the journalism/newspaper rooms were located next to the theatre room, and every once in a while we'd have to put up with a drama kid who wandered in.

I played Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music in 8th grade at my inner-city public school.

My voice was changing at the time.

In the second half of the show, the Captain has two conversations with Maria. In the first one, he tells her that he isn't going to marry The Baroness. In the second one, about three scenes later, he asks Maria to be his wife. I got the two monologues confused and cut the play by 20 minutes and two songs. The Baroness was pissed.

In another performance, when Maria and The Captain are walking down the aisle to marry (we walked down the center aisle of the school auditorium), the civil defense sirens on the roof, right above the auditorium, blared. Tornado warning. Had to evacuate and stop the show.

awesome thread

I don't remember a horse in Joseph.

It was a camel.

that makes sense. your school was a lot fancier than mine.

I'm surprised more of you didn't turn out homo.

I didn't do theatre in college, but in HS the stage crew was my gateway to drinking, hanging out with gay boys who didn't know they were gay yet, etc. I never got onstage, except our Billis in South Pacific recovered from the flu just in time -- I would've had to go on for him, and who knows what that coconut bra would've done for me.

y'all have convinced me drama club beats out gym class for number one haven for childhood trauma.

horses are just more manageable versions of camels anyway

less spitting

no humps.

lovely camel lumps

Here is me as Elbow in a weirdly totalitarian production of Measure For Measure. Never have comic relief and violent brooding psychopathic bastard been so effortlessly combined.

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v79/122/80/36920416/n36920416_33884728_4922.jpghttp://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v123/122/80/36920416/n36920416_34896128_8585.jpg

My turn as Gratiano the previous year was a little more successful.

Feel the menace. Feel the fear in their eyes. Fear of a hopelessly bumbling and yet inexorably powerful presence, a force that will ransack their very minds even while tripping over its own tongue--

http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v123/122/80/36920416/n36920416_34896119_5736.jpg

UR GONNA GET DETAINED

HS Drama was fun.

I got to play the Dentist from Little Shop of Horrors my Senior year. That was fun.

The cast parties were legendary. Sophomore year, the cast party for Pippin caused two pregnancies, three arrests, and my grounding, just for "being there."

Also, I got to smoke a cigar on stage, which was awesome.

I fell asleep at a college cast party once. Everyone was concerned, but I wasn't drunk, I was just VERY BORED.

HS theatre was what the nerdy kids and the drunken smartasses had in common. i was, obviously, the latter.

the only horrible thing that ever happened was when our teacher came into the dressing room right after all the cast members did a celebratory line of coca1ne. the play was "Endgame."

in college, i was in one play, an adaptation of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury." it was frakn terrible, and though i gave a good performance, it was widely panned by everyone who saw it. i decided then that i hated theatre kids and have never done anything with drama ever again.

I just remembered another awesome "Great Expectations" story:

Because we all hated the play, we were all pranking pretty much as hard as we could, whenever we could, in pretty evil ways. One scene involves Pip talking to a friend of his while the friend's doddering mother eats a "sausage" upstage; due to our fantastic food budget, our "sausage" was actually an uncooked hot dog. This was nasty enough, but one performance dude playing the friend was late getting on stage and was running for the stage with this gross hot dog on a plate when I said "WAIT!" He stopped, and I grabbed the hot dog and licked it. Then JJ licked it. Then FB licked it. The the dude going onstage licked it, went onstage, said his line about serving his dear old mum her meal, then leaned in closely and said "we all licked this".

We watched back in the green room screaming while the poor girl who played the mother actually choked down the hot dog. She later came backstage and tried to murder us all. (A few months later, we started dating. Go figure.)

Dan, we were so earnest compared to you.

still cracking up at my suave high school moves, tbh

"One thing a girl really likes is when you lick her food; that is GUARANTEED to get you a date!"

Haha, I just remembered: in Guys and Dolls my character (Lt. Brannigan) had a line about playing the ponies down in Pimlico, but on the final performance date I changed the city to "Janesville," an inside joke having to do with the fact that our director was rumored to have a lesbian lover named Jane.

For some reason, our production of Joseph had an extra pharaoh costume left over that fit me, so I decided I'd wear it during the scenes when I was singing with the chorus (mostly during the second act, during "Go Go Go Joseph" and the real pharaoh's songs). No one ever told me not to, so during that whole sequence everyone else was in pastel-colored overalls and I was in a full-length brown robe with a snake headpiece. On the video, it looks... special.

This is actually community theater, not HS, but I did sound design for a production of Sideman that some friends of mine put on, and during the closing performance everyone gave each other challenges, like one of the guys had to work "hooooo, boy" into his dialogue in at least 4 separate scenes and one of the actresses had to grab every cast member's ass on stage without the audience catching it (not too easy a feat on such a small stage). Pretty childish stuff, but it made for some great backstage laughs during some of the really intense and emotional scenes.

I did this community theater thing every summer on Fire Island when I was growing up. One year we were doing Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat but the copyright was too expensive so the "director" just changed all the names and locations and we ended up putting on, no joke, Michael and the Multi-colored Raincoat.

Another year we did the musical version of Narnia and I was Tumnus. They made me - a then very awkward and fat 14 year old - wear spandex pants with a tuxedo jacket, cardboard hoofs and a top hat. I was horrified and could hardly get through my song.

You must have a picture of this.

horrible theater experience that happened to someone else and isn't really funny so much as "high school kids are awful, insensitive shitheads":

traditionally our HS would preview the fall and spring plays for the school, usually doing a couple of scenes from early on in the play as a teaser to get you to come to the actual productions. i forget what play this was, but there was a scene where a girl - i think she was a junior at the time, and not a very popular one, mostly ran in a tight-knit cluster of a couple of other not-very-popular kids - flirted with the male characters in a very sort of salacious way. a kid in the audience screamed "EW!" to some scattered laughter. i heard that the girl was in tears for about an hour backstage after the fact. they didn't do a preview the following year for the sweet charity production (thank god, the kid probably would've tried to top himself)

as for myself, i was too nervous to ever try out for plays/musicals (esp. given i can't sing for shit)

hi guys i just remembered tonight about when i had to workshop a production of this during my last semester of college. now they are attempting a broadway transfer! haw.

When they did Joseph, they just faced facts, and 1/3 of Joseph's brothers were girls (including me). I think our costumes involved carpet samples, for what reason, I have no idea.

― free jazz and mumia (sarahel), Wednesday, August 19, 2009 1:22 PM (2 years ago)

the guy who played Joseph in this production is now the mayor of Palo Alto </suzy>

I think our Joseph is now a cop

ah yes. her bro, cr4ne directed a few as well, i seem to recall

― ovum if you got 'em (gbx), Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:41 PM (2 years ago)

fyi gbx this dude is now my plumber

actually thx to 20 year reunion i can tell you that joseph washed out of cop life and now does "private security". he does have an amazing copstache tho

my balls fell out (was in a dressing gown and overly loose underwear) on opening night of a production of Pinter's 'The Homecoming' when I was 18. I played Lenny. Most of the audience didn't really get it anyway and after that moment they thought it was some weird comedy.

omg how did I miss that last post

our Joseph is not seeking relection as Palo Alto mayor - I think he is running for city council though