i got nothin'
December 18, 2007
What with all the exams and shopping and cleaning and list-making and such, I didn't have as much time to sit around and fart about on the web today. Instead, a list (since I'm in that mode), which I'm calling "Actors I Have Known."*
-- The show was called Talking Bones. One night, an actress, who had been a pain in the ass since day one, informed me that she'd forgotten her underpants and that someone would have to go buy some for her.
-- The show was a bus-and-truck of Ain't Misbehavin'. One of the singers put a fist-sized hole in the crotch of her stockings. The show's Stage Manager called over the headset for someone to go get her another pair from the store, which is how I found myself wandering the aisles of a Meadville, PA, drugstore buying every last pair of Queen XXX-sized L'eggs pantyhose I could get my hands on.
-- The show was a community theatre production of The Miracle Worker. The actress in question was the little girl who was playing Helen Keller. And, really, the problem wasn't the kid but her mom, who one night during a tech rehearsal, before which it was announced that folks might want to be careful because we still building the set and there might be nails that didn't all get swept up and that everyone should keep their shoes on so as not to get tetanus, came up to the show's director and said "My kid could have stepped on this nail." She brandished the nail in question. "She has to be barefoot to really become Helen Keller, you know."
This isn't turning out to be as interesting as I'd hoped. Sorry about that. Um. Feel free to add your own.
* I don't mean Biblically. One of the few truisms I picked up during my many years in the theatre is Don't Get Involved with Someone Who Spends His (or her, natch) Time Pretending To Be Someone Else. Road to heartbreak, it is.
I tend to use the shorter version: "Never Date a Sociopath" but really, any time a person's version of reality is cattywumpus from the one known and loved (and lived in) by the rest of us, then run far, far away.
I mostly deal with engineers. They tend to be pretty rooted in reality, although I keep running into engineers who are creationists, which confuses me mightily.
Posted by: Melanie | December 18, 2007 at 05:44 PM
I tutored a girl in the USC Writing Center who was on Beverly Hills 90210 (a minor character's sister for 4 episodes). She made more money in a day than I made the 8 years I spent teaching the likes of her.
I also dated The Rick (http://imdb.com/name/nm0005282/) when we were in high school.
That and the time I sat next to and chatted with Robert Downey, Jr. at an AIDS walk without knowing who he was are all my brushes with "fame."
Posted by: Anna | December 18, 2007 at 09:00 PM
I was ASM for a production of "Big River" while the touring company of "JC Superstar" was in town, and they sent over a few comps. Jim and Huck were going to go, and I was offered the third seat. I felt like a post-modern chaperone. We did get to meet Judas, the guy from the movie, which was neat.
Posted by: matthew | December 18, 2007 at 11:42 PM
Did I ever tell you about the actor who, while operating the curtain in front of a winch, managed to get his costume and then his winky caught in said winch? (He came away with a bad cut, but intact, but it did require an ER visit. I was ASM, heard the winch jump on the other side of the stage, chased the actor down to the bathroom and tried to figure out what was happening. Kind of a surreal thing to announce over the headset.)
Production was the musical "Baby," and the designer had done a crap job with sightlines, hence the curtains in front of the winches that were used to get platforms on and offstage, and non-Equity actors pulled the curtains.
Posted by: Shelley | December 19, 2007 at 10:35 AM