So here's a hypothetical (ok, you caught me, this happened) situation- I want to hear how other SMs would have handled this. What solution can you come up with for this?
You're SMing a staged reading of poems as part of a charity fundraising event. The event begins at 7:30 with speakers and a musician, the reading begins at approximately 8:00 and will last for about 30 minutes.
One of the poems will be read by its author. This particular poem is the final poem to be read.
There is a rehearsal at 5:30- this is the only rehearsal before the event. The author is not there at 5:30, and when you finally get her on the phone at 6:00, she says she will be there in half an hour.
At 6:45 she is still not there and the rehearsal has to end by 7:00 for the house to open, so the director makes the executive decision to reassign this poem to one of the other readers (it cannot be cut from the program entirely, as that would involve rearranging the order of several other poems in order to end on a more positive note). The procedure for bows is walked through with this substitute reader, as the final reader has to signal the others to stand and then lead the bows.
The reading begins at 8:05.
At 8:15, the author arrives. She DEMANDS to be allowed in to the theater and onto the stage with the rest of the readers. She says it is a matter of her reputation, and a grave insult that she is not being allowed to perform. She says that "someone" (clearly not you) told her she didn't have to go to the rehearsal at all and could just show up, so she's here now and why can't she read her poem?!?! It is in this conversation that you learn for the first time that she is in fact one of the members of the board of this large, international charity organization. She is becoming increasingly more angry and does not seem to understand that the program has started already so it can't be changed now, and here's the kicker- she is flat out refusing to allow anyone else to read the poem that she wrote.
The only way to communicate with the rest of the readers now that the show has started is to actually walk up on to the stage in full view of the audience. There is no intermission or breaks between poems and none of the readers leave the stage once the reading has begun.
None of the readers know each other, so you cannot make the assumption that surreptitiously sending some woman none of them have ever seen before out on stage will be some kind of signal to the other 6 readers that "hey, she's here, let's go back to the original plan that we never actually rehearsed!"
There are only about 15 minutes before the end of the reading.
HOW DO YOU HANDLE THIS SITUATION??