On the stageToo shy to ever appear on stage myself, I still hung around theatres like a bad smell when I was younger - lighting and set design were what I was good at.
Backstage we'd attempt to sabotage every production - us lighting geeks would wind up the sound man by putting the remote "pause" button for his reel-to-reel tape machine on his chair, so when he sat down it'd start running, ruining his cues. Actors would do scenes out of order to make our lives hell. It was great and I don't know why I don't still do it.
Tell us your stories of life on the stage.
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chthonic, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 11:02)
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He's a sinner, candy coated...As a pre and teen-ager at boarding school I suffered through various mandatory stage productions until I realised I could take control and produce (also write, direct, construct props, etc.) the things myself. Many happy memories, with the RoboCop costume (working gun leg) being a particular highlight.
useful_idiot's mention of Bugsy reminded me of the time when our school chose that as the annual full-school xmas production. It was memorable for a few good reasons.
1. Cast. The actors playing the principal roles (Fat Sam and Dandy Dan especially) resembled the kids from the film, could really act and also hold a tune.
2. Splurge guns. Designed and built by yours truly.
To put on a production of Bugsy, you had to buy the script in book form, which featured the collected wisdom and experience (or lack of) of those responsible for staging previous amateur productions. Imagine my reaction on reading that a fair few schools had such a complete lack of technical talent amongst staff that they opted to replace splurge guns with cream pies or ping-pong ball launchers. The challenge was on.
The hero gun was a modular (broke apart as per the film prop, into carrying case) pump-action precision shaving-foam-shooting work of art. Background props were hollow shells over cans of 'ultra blizzard'*. Fat Sam's exploding monstrosity was built by a friend of similar talent - Dan's foam cannon shot shaving foam** in all directions. For final scene on the last night (all-out foam war) he increased the capacity of the firing chambers*** to about 5 litres. Not a good thing. The chaos derived from 30+ cast with guns and pies was increased by liberal quantities of foam sprayed on from backstage by certain helpful crew members. I recall most of the front rows of audience getting plastered with the stuff. Great fun.
That was fifteen years ago. Still have the hero splurge gun. It still works. :)
*non-slippy water-based foam.
**very slippy. Important, that.
***multiple 2-litre soda bottles.
[mod edit: We want a web page with instructions for this. For, erm, well, no reason...]
(, Fri 2 Dec 2005, 16:05, Reply)
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