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. 

Oh, Henrik!

From Lacy:

A friend attended a production of "Hedda Gabler" in college.  It was what you'd expect of a college production of "Hedda Gabler," more or less.  Until the last moment.

In the script, as you may know, Hedda goes upstage to a semi-concealed anteroom, shoots herself abruptly, interrupting the conversation onstage, and her husband dashes back to find her, upon which:

TESMAN: (shrieks to Brack).
Shot herself! Shot herself in the temple! Fancy that!

Well. In this staging, Hedda was supposed to go offstage, then a running crew would fire a prop gun for the sound cue.

So one night, she exited as planned, and … no gunshot.  

The actors stranded on stage … waited. Dragged out their lines, repeated the cue. Finally, Tesman muttered something along the lines of, "well…. You know, I think I'll just go check on Hedda," and awkwardly went offstage where the frantic running crew member could not get the gun to fire.

So Tesman covered the only way he could.

TESMAN: (shrieks to Brack).
Stabbed herself! Stabbed herself in the temple! Fancy that!

Less Toil, More Trouble

From one who wishes to remain anonymous anon:

I was in a company that performed 4 or 5 Shakespearean shows in rep. Among them, MacBeth. I played Third Witch/Gentlewoman.

Since the shows were on an infrequent schedule, it was common for a few weeks to pass between bookings for any one show. We had a Mac at a high school in the burbs once, and we were well into the production when I realized that I hadn't gone over my lines recently - and the Cauldron Speech scene was coming up. In fact, the Cauldron Speech was happening.

The director had split the speech up among the three witches... and my part was coming up.

I was completely blank. One hundred percent, Had. Gone. Up. Breathe, said the voices of all my acting teachers. Breathe, be in the moment. It will come to you.

So I started off with a not-too-conspicuous, very witchy "Ahhhhh.... " Just enough to stall the high schoolers, and make my fellow witches a little nervous.

Then, Huzzah! Sure enough, it came! Yes! Lines! from the play! Yes! There was something about a "fillet"! Which some actors pronounce as /FILL-it/, but I stubbornly call /fill-AY/, because it's less offputting! YES! There is a fillet! Just say 'fillet,' and the rest will come! Trust sense memory!

So it sounded something like this.

"Ahhhhhhh........" [PAUSE] "Filllllllaaayy....." [PAUSE] "Of fish......" [LONGER PAUSE] "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh..." "In the cauldron, boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog..."

And so on. As scripted? "Fillet of a fenny snake." Oh Lord. I'll never forget it again.

I exited as quickly as I possibly could and crouched with my face in my hands backstage. Hecuba walked past me and hissed, "... fillet of FISH?"

It's Not Easy Being Blue

Courtesy of Lacy:

Brandon was in a touring production of "Frog and Toad Are Friends" which went around to various libraries and school cafeterias, geared towards a very young audience. He played Frog, a fastidious ... um, frog, who at one point in the story loses his button.

Frog then searches for his button everywhere, including out in the audience among the children, who would explode into gigglefits as he would look behind their ears, under their bookbags, etc. As the show developed, he discovered that the kids loved it if he named them silly names like those of the other characters in the play: Maybe Mister Dragonfly has my button! No? Well, maybe Miss Butterflywings has it! Maybe Mister Squirrelpaws has it!

One fateful day, exhausted and kicking into autopilot for his seven-millionth performance, he went through the sea of giggling 6-year-olds, singled out one little girl, and called out, "Maybe Miss Cameltoe has it!"

Turned upstage in horror at what he had just said. Snail and Toad's jaws were wide open. Apparently Snail punched him, hard, as soon as they were "offstage." No amount of apologizing could convince her it was a complete accident.

Amazingly, no one caught it except for one teacher, who told them that she thought it was very funny but warned them that maybe others wouldn't think it was as funny as she did.