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Molli Duckworth:

My freshman year of high school I auditioned for Beauty and the Beast, which was our all-city summer musical. I got a callback and felt prettttty cool about it since it was mostly older kids who got callbacks. I'm sitting in anticipation, waiting for the directors to call my number and for me to wow them with whatever they want me to sing or read. So they call my number and I walk up on stage... with a bunch of guys. I asked them if they really called my number and they said yes, so I get up there... just nine guys and me. The scene we read was between Gaston and Lefou... and I was in the group reading for Lefou. I thought back to the cartoon rendering of Lefou and was horrified. My friends sat in awe, laughing the whole time. My older sister called my mom so she could hear it over the phone. I thankfully did not get the part, but the memory will scar me forever. It also makes for a pretty good story.

--Molli

(785 days ago)

Sara Hutton:

My senior year of high school I was cast as Wendy Jo in Footloose. After being in shows for 8 years, I was finally able to wear a mic on stage. It was the second to last dress rehearsal and we still didn't have a costume picked out for my school outfit. The costume designer put me in this terrible jean jumper. It was a mess, but of course I told the director that I loved it. When I got off stage to change into my gym clothes for the end of Act 1, I said to my friends "Finally I get to get out of this God awful jumper. I mean, seriously?" Then, four cast members who were sitting in the audience came running into the dressing room and told me that my mic was on. Love my life.

(785 days ago)

christopher reifsteck:

As a freshman in High School I was in a local Community College's production of Peter Pan. I played John. One night during our performance, in the scene where Peter is teaching the children to fly for the first time, I suddenly realized that the wire for my flying harness had become un-hooked. We were in the middle of the song and ready to take off. I had just a moment to grab at the wire and get to a position on stage where a stage crew member could re-attach it. Seconds later were were being lifted into the air for flight. Needless to say I was pretty red faced and shaken. The thought of me standing on the ground while everyone else took off was almost too much to bear. Somehow I kept it together. Family members said they never knew anything had been wrong.

(785 days ago)

Sam Leake Ballard:

Hey Andrew, 

I just starting watching your videos...fun stuff! Anyway, you know how people say they have those dreams where they're naked in front of the crowd? Well......I'm in my freshman year of college and my first show here was The Full Monty. Our final strip number had been carefully choreographed with the lights and rehearsed more times than I care to recall. I had become strangely comfortable with standing in the dark naked until a stage hand would find us with our robes. So I felt pretty ready for opening night, But Murphy and his Law were in the audience that night and they struck and struck mercilessly. Right as we uncovered our...well, you know...the lights went out, as planned....and came back up full. There we were, six of us, totally nude, standing before an audience, fully lit. The lights were shot off within about a second...and cam back up AGAIN. We wound up just running offstage using our hands as makeshift censorship. Needless to say, I wasn't really a nameless freshman on campus anymore. 

Sam

(785 days ago)

Sam Leake Ballard:

Hey Andrew, 

I just starting watching your videos...fun stuff! Anyway, you know how people say they have those dreams where they're naked in front of the crowd? Well......I'm in my freshman year of college and my first show here was The Full Monty. Our final strip number had been carefully choreographed with a blackout and rehearsed more times than I care to recall. I had become strangely comfortable with standing in the dark, naked, until a stage hand would find us with our robes. So I felt pretty ready for opening night, But Murphy and his Law were in the audience that night and they struck and struck mercilessly. Right as we uncovered our...well, you know...the lights went out, as planned....and came back up full. There we were, six of us, totally nude, standing before an audience, fully lit. The lights were shut off within about a second...and came back up AGAIN. We wound up just running offstage using our hands as makeshift censorship. Needless to say, I wasn't really a nameless freshman on campus anymore. 

Sam

(785 days ago)

Marisa L:

Once, I was a dancing cactus...

I think that's pretty rich.

(785 days ago)

Rozzie Heeger:

Hey Andrew! Just wanted to start out by saying that your videos are totes entertaining and so much fun to watch over and over again!

So anyway, quite a few years ago, I went to a performing arts summer camp where we did the musical Dear Edwina. There was this one number in the show that I was really upset about not being in, and I watched it from the wings every performance with some of my friends who also weren't in it. On our last performance, my friends and I decided it would be a fabulous idea to do an interpretive dance of the song from the wings. We could see the audience from there, but we were almost sure that they couldn't see us. We were wrong. When I got home from the performance that night, my mom told me that the show was great. She also complimented me on "that dance at the end" that I did. I realized then that pretty much everyone in the audience could have seen my friends and me dancing. Oops!

(785 days ago)

AJ Pola:

Hey Andrew! Love your videos!

Well back in high school, our theatre department did "A Midsummer Night's Dream"  I was cast as Puck, so of course I was very happy since I worked really hard at memorizing monologues during my studyhall haha.  So all the rehearsals went well and our performances were going exceptional and all seemed great for our show until the last night.  There is a scene in that show where I, as Puck, bring together all of the four main character whose lives I have completely screwed up.  In order to make things right again in their lives, I must put them to sleep and lay them down next to the person they are supposed to fall in love with.  An easy task one would think... but then again, they probably have never seen me be crazy on stage before.  I was doing the scene, and everything was fine until my friend who played Helena cam out and started her lines.  I had my prop ready (which incidentally was gold dust we used as fairy dust in "Peter Pan") and I was supposed to blow it in her face and it would be the spell I'm casting to put her to sleep.  Well I wasn't really paying attention so when I blew the dust in her face, the connection between my brain and my hand must have ceased to exist, because I ended up (Accidentally) slapping my poor friend in the face!  We both almost broke character, but we were lucky that we had it in us to move on with the scene and get through the rest of the show.  Backstage after the show, however, I did get what was coming to me :( haha

~AJ

(785 days ago)

Kyle Pickett:

Ok, I have 2! 

One was the show I was in my freshman year of High School. We were doing R & H's Cinderella. It was the Wedding Scene and the Fairy Godmother had just sung "There is Music in You," so it was very serious. We look and see Cinderella in her wedding dress coming up the stairs and then I see a girl start laughing and we are like "What's Happening?" We look and while putting the dress on, her sticky boobs had got stuck to the train of the dress and they were coming up the isle with her! We are doing this in front of 500 people. The audience breaks out in laughter, the preacher picks them up and is wondering what they are. Then, the steward takes them and puts them in his pocket. But overall, it was hysterical. 

Second, we were doing Children of Eden. During "The Expulsion," I had always ran the fog machine but I decided the last performance that I wanted to be on stage. So I go out with my cast mates, and I see they're going to different spots than we planned. I go out and stick out like a sore thumb. They had changed the blocking without my knowing. It was pretty great. 

(785 days ago)

Kelley Sener:

i was in a 1 act called "Desire Desire Desire" which was a parody of "A Streetcar named Desire" and I played blanche.  I had A TON of lines, and a few that were very similar.  Opening night, i accidentally said a line too soon, the lines was "I'm hot Stanley, cool me off!" and the guy who played stanley poured a can of soda water on me, as per usual....but because i had said the line in the wrong place, the guy playing the messenger boy didn't know where to go from there.  so i turned and waited for him to say something....BUT NOTHING CAME OUT!  and I had no idea where i was in the script.  so we stood there, staring at each other for, i kid you not, 2 minuets straight, not saying anything.  The stage manager whose job it was to keep track of where everyone was and to feed lines when slips happened wasn't feeding me my line.  finally i said "Could someone please help us a little, we seem to be a bit lost" in my charachters accent.  after a minuet of waiting, someone finally fed me the right line and we continued on from there....it was the most mortifying experience of my life.

(784 days ago)

Annalee T.:

When I was in middle school, I was involved in this children's theatre program (one of the ones where parents pay a fee and everyone gets in). We were doing Beauty and the Beast, and I was cast as the Wardrobe. My costume was pretty interesting... Basically it was a box made out of foam and covered in some peach colored fabric, with holes for my head, arms, and legs to stick out. Unfortunately, we were a little bit through our first dress rehearsal when the fire alarm in theatre went off, so we all had to shuffle outside in our costumes - oh, and did i mention that it was the middle of winter at the time??? It seemed like it took FOREVER, but eventually the fire department showed up and figured out the problem. Apparently a balloon had been left in the theatre and had floated up into the path of the smoke detector. By this time, we were all freezing cold, and our rehearsal time was almost up, but the worst part was that as we reentered the building and got on stage, one of the firemen, trying to be friendly, was talking to the various characters saying, "Oh, you must be Belle!" or "There goes Cogsworth," and then he got to me. "Oh...are you Toast?" Needless to say, the rest of the cast found it hilarious, and I became known as the piece of toast in Beauty and the Beast!

(784 days ago)

Jason Broussard:

Last year my schools musical was HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. I played Finch and during the song "Rosemarry", I got a nosebleed. Mind you this is at the end of the first act with roughly ten minutes left. Blood is pouring out of my nose and im trying to keep it in. Rosemarry see's Mr. Bigley (the head honcho) entering the office and rushes me to the desk and makes out with me. Where, yes, i got blood on her face. Mr. bigley always had a hankerchief that he whipped his face with and i asked him for it and used it to cover my nose. It was horrible. I had to end the act with one hand in the air and one on my face holding the rag in. Best part is.... IT WAS ALL FILMED! That was one of the nights our schools media department filmed. I remember glancing off stage and seeing the whole cast watching nervously from the wings. It has become a little joke around our theatre department and something people pick on me about. But oh well! That's life! In the end though, I got nominated for Best Leading Actor at the 2009 Tommy Tune awards where i performed in front of a sold-out crowd at the hobby center. There were no nose bleeds there!

(784 days ago)

Kathryn Lewis:

This isn't an acting story, but it is insanely embarrassing!

I was a stagehand for my school's production of Dracula last fall.  It was my first time ever moving sets, and we hadn't had as much practice with it as I would have liked.  There is one scene where a ship's wheel with a skeleton comes on, and then off.  My friend Katie and I were in charge of this change.  Opening night, we realized we didn't exactly know when the wheel had to come off.  So I looked in the script, and found the line that I thought was right before the change.  I neglected to notice another line that occurred in the next set of stage directions in the script.  So we get to that point in the show, and I am still really nervous about the whole moving sets thing, even though the few things I had done earlier had gone well.   The time for the entrance of the wheel comes and goes without a hitch, and my friend and I are waiting nervously to take it off.  We hear the line I had looked up earlier, and then start moving when we see the lights start to change.  I head out first, and I walk right smack dab in the line of a spotlight!!  I stood deer in the headlights for a bit, and then ran back into the wings untill we saw the lights go OFF.  

I was so upset, but the good news is that no one probably remembered my spotlight moment, since we didn't get to the second act, because of a fire in the building where our theater is!!

(784 days ago)

Mary Cusimano:

When i was in fourth grade, i was cast as a policeman in Pirates of Penzance.  In a scene where the pirates and police are fighting, i had to throw another cast member over my shoulder and walk off stage.  However, when we were doing a dress rehearsal, i noticed that the slip on costume boots fit over my giant jazz shoes so i just decided to go on stage in black socks.  HUGE mistake.  I ended up throwing the guy over my shoulder and slipping as if i had just stepped on a banana.  I fell flat on my back, center stage, and the boy fell right on top of me.  By far the most embarrassing, and not to mention awkward, moment of my life.

(783 days ago)

Mary Cusimano:

When i was in fourth grade, i was cast as a policeman in Pirates of Penzance.  In a scene where the pirates and police are fighting, i had to throw another cast member over my shoulder and walk off stage.  However, right before the show, i noticed that the slip on costume boots didn't fit over my giant jazz shoes so i just decided to go on stage in black socks.  HUGE mistake.  I ended up throwing the guy over my shoulder and slipping as if i had just stepped on a banana.  I fell flat on my back, center stage, and the boy fell right on top of me.  By far the most embarrassing, and not to mention awkward, moment of my life.

(783 days ago)

Hannah DeFlumeri:

oh god. So many but probably the most embarassing had to be when I did "Seussical" for the first time in middle school. I was a bird girl and during "Anything's Possible" we would enter in a very show-girl esq. manner. I developed very early and, unfortunately, that day I was wearing a white bra. Little did I know we were using black lights in this number. The lights go down and literally all you can see on stage is my shimmying white bra. Notes were very awkward that night..

(783 days ago)

Madelyn Kontis:

OK.  So, my freshman year of highschool I was in our production of [i]The Music Man[/i].  Now, just to be clear, we [i]were[/i] measured before being assigned costumes.  I even took a nice deep breath into my diaphragm to make sure I had enough room to breath poperly while signing.  But some....person assigned me a skirt that was a few sizs too small.  Someone had to stand behind me and yank it shut, kinda like tightening a corset.  First the hook-and-bar fastening came slowly undone, so it had to be closed with a safety pin.  Th came the fateful performance when the safety pin poped open, onstage, in the middle of "Seventy-six Trombones".  I slammed my hands down on my hips to keep it from sliding down as I marched through the audience, but everyone could see (if they were looking) that I had...well, luckily my blouse was long, because the slit in the skirt went halfway down my hiney.  An to top it all off, my former dance teacher was watching me at the moment it busted, instead of her daughter (who was playing Marian, by the way).

(782 days ago)

Robby Dalton:

WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?!?! I've fallen flat on my bum numerous times and have slammed people (really hard) in the head with my swinging arms while dancing (I'm 6'4'', so I'm a big guy), but I'd have to say my most embarassing moment was when I was playing the Cat in the Hat in Seussical back when I was a junior in high school in 2005. We performed two additional shows at the San Jose Reperetory Theatre in the Bay Area, which was a big deal to us, so everything had to be perfect. As Act 1 was coming to a close, I rode out on stage with a mini bike during one of the "How Lucky You Are" segments, and when I stood up, my pants literally tore from my crotch all the way to the back of my butt. I couldn't really do anything, but I knew the audience got an eye full. I even heard a roar of laughter when it happened! It was definitely so embarassing, so I just tried to laugh it off. Now when I look back I think it's hilarious!!! Ah, live theatre...you gotta love it, right?!?

(780 days ago)