Author Topic: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't  (Read 15262 times)

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missliz

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an actor the other day was telling me a story about doing children's theater- peter pan. when peter pan captured captain hook, he would ask the kids in the audience "what should we do with him?" and the response was usuall "throw him overboard!" "feed him to the crocodile!" etc. she said one day it was silent until a little boy yelled "CUT OFF HIS PENIS!" and the cast pretty much lost it. oh, children.

i also worked on a production of they're playing our song where the running joke is the lead female's ex boyfriend, leon, constantly showing up at inopportune times (though he never appears onstage). at the top of the second act, she has a long monologue about going to the hospital, "and you'll never guess who was there." "WHO?" asked the exasperated lead actor (a c-list soap star, not used to being onstage). a tiny old lady in the front row yelled "LEON!" and the actor got so flustered he walked out the front door of the set, took a deep breath, then came BACK on and did the scene again.

my current show is very rocky-horror-like, and we've started to get people singing the choruses of the songs, which we definitely didn't anticipate but has been a lot of fun and (thankfully) not distracting.


any funny audience response stories? how did it effect the show?
I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least. -Ionesco

Tempest

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #1 on: Sep 16, 2009, 01:14 pm »
Great topic!  Gotta love those audiences, sometimes.

I did a performance of The Importance of Being Ernest in high school wherin I was playing Cecily.  Her last line in Act II is, "No, men are so cowardly, aren't they?" (or somthing along those lines, it's been quite some time!).
A woman (adult, not a fellow student) in the back row jumped up, stood on her seat and shouted, "Yeah!!!!  You go, girl!"  I have never been so grateful to get off stage so I could laugh myself stupid in my life.

And the Christmas show I do, every year is Santaland Diaries, which, if you don't know it, is more than a little...inappropriate.  Audience members tend to get quite drunk and wild, and a good time is had by all, until the hangover hits next morning.  It wasn't a call back, but an audience member, male, groped the butt of our lead as he was giving his monologue from the House Left aisle.
Jessica: "Of course I have a metric size 4 dinglehopper in my kit!  Who do you think I am?"

zayit shachor

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #2 on: Sep 16, 2009, 05:49 pm »
Oh gosh.  I worked on Faith Healer recently and we had a few good ones.

There's a part where Frank sings "Lovely, Never Never Change" and one night the audience sang along with him.

At the end of the play, Frank's line is "At long last, I was renouncing chance."  Despite the fact that he said it very clearly inevitably we'd hear someone say, "Renouncing WHAT?"  The best one, though, was when someone called back, "Who's Janis?"

Lizzie

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #3 on: Sep 17, 2009, 01:49 am »
I was in the audience for a touring production of Merry Widow years ago, and (it seemed like) all of them hummed along with the Viljia (sp ?) Song. Each individual was humming quite quietly, but when you've got 500 or so, it was very strange.

LCSM

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #4 on: Sep 20, 2009, 01:20 pm »
On a children's theatre show I worked last year, the director would occasionally bring her children to rehersals and performances. During one of our shows in an extremely intimate space the actors were encouraging an audiance to stand up and learn the secret ninja move. One of the director's children stood up, announced "I ALREADY KNOW THE MOVE, IT'S LAME!" and walked out of the theatre.

Tempest

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #5 on: Sep 20, 2009, 02:27 pm »
We had one just last night!  The last bit of Act I is, of course, quite emotionaly charged, and the female lead is staning on stage, shouting, "I'm Laurie Jamesone, and I still know what I know."  She's echoing a sentiment that her father, who is sufering from alzheimers, said a few scenes earlier. 
Into the silence and soft flutes of the end of act music, as she walks moodily upstage, some woman in the front row with a thick Jersey accent said, tartly, "You sound just like yer faaather."

We were still laughing about it at the end of the night.
Jessica: "Of course I have a metric size 4 dinglehopper in my kit!  Who do you think I am?"

Tigerrr

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #6 on: Sep 21, 2009, 12:50 pm »
I just finished doing an outdoor show in an alley (see the thread about pictures) and we would periodically get homeless wanderers come in and start talking to the actor. The ushers were usually pretty good about guiding these people away gently, but on Friday, one got through and started talking to her. Since I could only hear the play through the actor's mic feed, I have no idea what the homeless woman said to her, but I could tell she was a little thrown. We laughed about it later though.

stancial

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #7 on: Sep 21, 2009, 04:57 pm »
I don't know if this story is apocryphal, but it still makes me laugh.  I worked at the Black Hills Passion Play in South Dakota many years ago, and I'm told that at one peformance, as Christ was being nailed to the cross, a large African-American woman came running down the aisle of the huge amphitheatre, yelling, "I'll save you, Jesus!"  Oh, if only YouTube existed then...

centaura

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #8 on: Oct 02, 2009, 02:55 pm »
Quote
audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't

This falls under the "ones you don't" category:

It was a Bonnie Raitte concert, and suddenly security is calling over the radios that there's someone with their pants down in the third balcony.  That was funny in and of itself - they were having a hard time hearing each other, so the call was repeated over half a dozen times.  So, those of us who could hear, heard it over and over again.  He was standing by the ladder to the spot booth being, um, entertained by his girlfriend.  When the police got up there and asked him why he had his pants down - he said that he was "checking his hemorrhoids"  (you can't make this stuff up).  Bonnie's production manager told her about it, and according to the runner (who was driving them back to their hotel) - she burst out into "Lets give them something to talk about".

-Centaura

babens

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #9 on: Oct 06, 2009, 07:25 pm »
While I was out with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Theatreworks we had one that had me cracking up at the sound board.  After Peter first receives his sword and subsequently kills a wolf a little boy in front of me let out "Damn, Peter f***ed that wolf up."

BayAreaSM

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #10 on: Oct 07, 2009, 12:56 am »
Ok, this wasn't a show I was calling, but I went to see it because I had just worked for 3 months with one of the actors.
It was a show involving autoerotic asphyxia and ghosts..and yes, it sounds strange, but it was a great show.

So, my friend is in the scene with the ghost and one of them reaches into the other's pants and begins to manipulate the other ... and this elderly couple is sitting next to my husband. The wife turns to her husband and says "NOT AGAIN!"

My husband and I wanted to burst out laughing, but we held it together. I'm just so happy the actors didn't hear it.

Bwoodbury

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #11 on: Oct 07, 2009, 02:42 am »
BayArea, what show was that?

BayAreaSM

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #12 on: Oct 07, 2009, 02:46 am »
Bwoodbury: Finn in the Underworld at Berkeley Rep - several years back

loebtmc

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #13 on: Oct 07, 2009, 12:38 pm »
OK - old story from my acting days - doing West Side Story, it's the blue-hair matinee, and during the rumble (as we all know) Bernardo kills Riff - as Tony crosses into the circle, in shock and pain, one of the old women in the first few rows hollers "Get him Tony!"

It took everything we had to keep the play going....

NomieRae

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Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't
« Reply #14 on: Oct 07, 2009, 12:56 pm »
Quote
While I was out with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with Theatreworks we had one that had me cracking up at the sound board.  After Peter first receives his sword and subsequently kills a wolf a little boy in front of me let out "Damn, Peter f***ed that wolf up."

Gotta love kids. I have similar stories from many performances of a children's nutrition show (by a company...very similar to theatreworks) that I did last fall. Here are my top 3 faves:

Kid in the first row waiting for show to start: "You know what? I already have this game on Xbox"

A pre-K little guy got scared at our 'monster' in the show and started crying. His teacher calmed him down by telling him that it's not real, it's all pretend. The rest of the show any time anyone came on stage "That's not real! That's pretend! You're not really Okra!"

And by far my fave--as the SM I was in charge of the sound setup/running/strike so as I'm wrestling with cables at one cafe-gym-atorium some kids walk by and see the speakers and cables and scream: "AWESOME! THEY BROUGHT A DJ!"


--Naomi
"First, I honor life, and with it my life in theatre." -- Jacques Burdick

 

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