Yes, We Have No Propmasters

Another from Zoe:

Imagine a serious drama. The tension mounts as we reach the conclusion. There's been deception, betrayal, murder. The audience is gripped by the final confrontation. Protagonist against Family Enemy. There's no going back.

The Protagonist yanks open the desk drawer to reach for the gun. The next line is:

"I'll kill you. I'll kill you with my father's gun."

The drawer is empty.

On top of the desk is a bowl of fake fruit. The Family Enemy registers the flush of panic on the Protagonist's face and sees him reach for the bowl of fruit.

"I'll kill you!" He screams as he advances. "I'll kill you with my father's banana!"

It's in My Fake Blood

From Rachel:

For my first job out of college, I worked at the haunted house at Navy Pier. The casting process was awkward enough because they behaved as though you'd just won the acting gig of your life, when in reality they'd cast you if you could act like a cartoon and pass a drug test.

I remember them holding my headshot and saying, "Why haven't we seen YOU before?" and I sort of mumbled, "Oh, I just got out of the acting program at Northwestern," wanting to say, ". . . where I took a special class in haunting."

The house had many Disney-esque rooms full of moving parts, flashing lights, and special effects all cued to a soundtrack. Every day, you'd be assigned to one of your potential roles (Real Estate Agent with Knife through Head, Scared Librarian, Evil French Chef, etc.), and you would do your lines in tandem with the house's track. That meant doing a ninety-second scene followed by a thirty-second break that allowed "guests" to move into the next room.

Overall, a silly but often fun job – until the week before Halloween. As the weather got colder, the staff got sicker, and anyone who could work got overtime. We couldn't count on breaks at the end of the night since the house had to keep running until everyone in line got through, and the hours of repetition started to feel like a bright and shiny purgatory. As the crowds grew, it would take the entire thirty-second break for them to clear the room, and then you'd be bombarded again. Even with microphones, most of us lost our voices – one duo of French Chefs resorted to miming and smearing fake blood on each other's faces instead of saying their lines. 

On Halloween weekend, I played a chef – with no partner, since we were so short-staffed – and took to hiding behind a door during the thirty-second break so I could suck on a Halls that I kept in my pocket. After days of heavy crowds, my whole body, but especially my voice, killed, and I was more than a little slaphappy. At one point I lay down on the floor just to get off my feet for a second and did some zombie sit-up action when the crowd came in. The tech guys who watched us on monitors thought I'd passed out and almost stopped the house.

I hadn't, but I was so out of it, going on impulse, that when a little kid held a plastic spider ring up to me and yelled, "Cook my spider!" which sounded more like, "Cook mah spahdow," because he was just that adorable, I snatched it out of his hand and stuck it in my mouth, making a big show of gnawing on it. When I spit it out and looked back at him, he looked not so much scared or upset as stunned. 

I went on autopilot until he left the room, thinking both that he might at any second start crying and that he might have some terrible child disease that I'd happily put in my mouth. Gross. 

Free Is Never Free

From Zoe:

I was playing Blanche in a production of “The Glass Mendacity” at a small theater. This is a spoof that combines all the major works of Tennessee Williams into one play. It's what one might call a “romp,” although not in regular conversation, because who talks like that?

Things were going well. The cast got along, for the most part everyone was talented and enthusiastic (in spite of the toxic swamp breath of Big Mama) and for once the box office was pre-selling -- a cheerful indication that we wouldn't be showing up for a call and repeatedly asking the stage manager how many were on the books now as we delayed putting on our make-up in case the show got cancelled.

During tech rehearsal, everything seemed fine until we started doing full runs of the show. We would happily be mid-romp when suddenly: total darkness. The director would yell, "Hold!" We'd freeze, lights would pop back on again after about ten seconds and we'd continue.

The first few times? “Hey, it's dress rehearsal; these things happen.” The next ten times pushing into final dress, we started to ask questions. (For a “romp” with lots of physical comedy, darkness was a real issue.)

"Oh," the director shrugged. "That's just John." As an afterthought: "He works for free."

My friend Dave, who was on the soundboard, reported that John was a Vietnam vet still suffering from the effects of his combat time. If he was late for a cue, or god forbid missed one, he would panic, slam the main power button on the board and then sit frozen with his hands trembling over the board. Dave would gently say "John… JOHN." Turning the board back on, he’d place John's hands on the sliders for the next cue. Once back in position, John could continue. John loved theatre and loved running lights.

We played for sold-out houses night after night. And almost every night, we would be plunged into darkness, freeze... and wait.