There are a lot of plays about bad plays. Noises Off is probably the one most familiar to people. Recently, there is The Play That Goes Wrong, but we can go back farther to The Rehearsal, and of course the Pyramis and Thisbe play within a play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and all the way back to Aristophanes. And there are the numerous examples in film and television (and YouTube) of children’s theatre where kids run into scenery, forget their lines, cry, laugh, and generally destroy the illusion, and generally to great merriment. One of my particular favorites in that vein is a scene from Parenthood, with Steve Martin.
It’s pretty funny, although it’s primarily about Martin’s letting go of his anxiety as a parent. My point is, people enjoy it when things go wrong in the theatre. The savvy actor can take advantage of that, and turn mistakes into opportunities and failures into successes.
As an actor, I’ve been on stage many times when things went wrong. I remembert vividly the feeling of fear and the surge in adrenelin during The Lion in Winter at a community theatre when I was a senior in high school. I played John, and in the scene, Henry II’s sons—John, Geoffrey and Richard—are all plotting when Henry bursts into the room. Well, during that particular performance, Henry did not burst in. He clearly forgot or missed his cue, and the three of us turned toward the door where he was supposed to enter in utter panic. No one said a word and the silence, which probalby only last a few seconds, seemed like an eternity. Then, from what inspiration I cannot say, I made a sharp turn and crossed stage, ad libbing, “we’ve got to figure out what to do!” And then Henry finally entered and the scene continued. Afterward, the actor playing Geoff can up to me with a big grin on his face. “What a pro! You got us out of that jam!” (Or something like that—it was a long time ago.) But what I learned was that if you stay in the reality of the situation, you can usually make it out OK. Every actor I know has many similar stories. (I have a friend who has been touring with a hit musical for nearly 20 years and he is planning a book on all the things that have gone wrong—I can’t wait!).
A second imporant occasion when things went wrong for me on stage occurred in a production of Huck Finn, adapted and directed by Stuart Vaughan. I played “Huck” and spent a lot of time on a raft—a big, heavy wooden platform set on unreliable tracks. This “raft” would move up and down stage 10 feet or so on these tracks, and occasionally during a shift, the raft would fall off the tracks. Not a problem during a scene change, but one performance, the raft got un-tracked during one of Huck’s long monologues. There was nothing to be done—no one could come out and rescue me. But once again, inspiration took hold, I trusted the reality of the situation. I pretended the raft had got stuck (on a sandbar—why not?) and I “leapt” off the raft into the mighty Mississippi, hoisted the raft back onto the track, hopped back on the raft, all the while keeping the monologue going. The audience never knew better. I was very proud of that save! Physical obstacles occur all the time in production, and from this incident I learned that ANYTHING can be incorporated into the action, as long as you honor the reality of the situation.
The third (and final) example I want to share was not exactly where things went wrong, but when accidentally the theatrical illusion was destroyed and had to be repaired as quickly as possible. I was understudying in Olympus on My Mind at the Lamb’s Theatre in New York. It was a cute little musical that got a decent review in the NY Times and featured Lewis J. Stadlen, Jason Graae, Ron Raines, Beth Fowler, and Peggy Hewitt. I understudied Lewis and went on one matinee. It happened to be the same matinee that Tom Wopat was taking over for Ron in the lead role of Zeus/Amphitryon (look it up). Tom’s first entrance as General Amphitryon included throwing his slave, Sosia, to the ground. Beating servants is always good for a laugh, but in this case, Tom was a bit excited—opening show jitters—and when he threw me, he REALLY threw me. I launched into the air and landed on the stage (which happened to be over a large pit) with a tremendous bang! There was a collective gasp in the audience—is the actor OK?! Now, I’m supposed to feign unconsciousness to elicit pity from my master, so I’m laying on the ground motionless. I realize that the audience is worried that I’m actually hurt (I wasn’t). So, inspiration struck again, I lifted my head, opened my eyes, waved to the audience with my left hand (away from Tom) and whispered, “I’m fine, I’m fine!” and immediately resumed playing dead. It killed. I got a great laugh, the illusion was restored and the play went on. What I learned was the delicacy of the theatrical illusion is shattered when the audience stops “seeing” a character and really sees the actor. Stage combat (done well) treds that line between illusion and reality. And THAT is the key to understanding how to handle mistakes and also what constitutes good acting. Meisner said that acting is the reality of doing. We must do—specifically, vividly—but within a pretend. The reality is in the actor’s hands, but the pretend actually resides with the audience. THEY are pretending. The job of the theatre artists—actors, director, designers, technicians, house, marketing— is to establish and maintain the pretend. When mistakes happen, the actor’s job is to deal with the reality of the situation with grace and aplomb. The only real failure is to refuse the reality with anger and fear.
I can think of real life situations—right now— where mistakes have been made, where the reality of a situation is not acknowledged, and it is handled not with grace and aplomb, but with anger and fear. This isn’t pretend, however. We cannot restore the illusion. But we can act with grace and aplomb and try to find opportunities in the mistakes and failures.
I feel like the theatre requires honesty different from truth, which sounds like splitting hairs. However, you describe honesty (especially in your last example with Tom W.) because the truth was that people were worried about you as a person, not as the character. When you were able to let the audience know you were okay (truth), you could all return to an honest agreement of participating in story telling and story watching. I love it! This type of relationship with audience helped me develop my inner witness so that I could be more honest AND truthful with myself in real life. Very cool stuff!!! Thank you for sharing your experiences, Paul.