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Article Listing:

Those Unforgettable Performances

The Art Of The Ad Lib

Tagging

Missing the Magic

Just Getting Warmed Up

The Trump Cards

The Touchy Stuff:
How to Handle Edgy Scenes

The Unspoken Contract: How to Keep Your Audience Satisfied

Method Acting and the Church Drama Team

Incorporating Drama into Your Church’s Ministry Program

Don' Call Us...We'll Call You!

You're Fired!

Cross Where and
Don't Break What?

Let Me Check...
I'm Only the Assistant Director

Auditions Tonight!

Seven Deadly Sins of Directing

Finding Your Character from the Inside Out

Invitation to Intimacy

Your Kids Are Doing What?

Why Some Christmas Dramas are Doomed for Disaster

Networking

A Stones Throw Away

How to Take it From the Page to the Stage

What to do When the Unexpected Happens on Stage

Do You Know Where You're Coming From?

What Your Kids Get From Drama Ministry

What to do When Your Drama Team Doesn't Care Anymore!

What Else Can I Do?

Clearly Your Intention…

Moving Past the Red

Time for a Creative Boost

What Makes Dialogue Good?

Alone on Stage

The Physical Actor

10 Things to do Before Your Performance

Background Acting

Extraordinary Lessons from Peculiar People

The Drama Retreat

Tech Talk: Costumes
Jeni Fabian's costume book recommendations

Telling A Great Tale

Lights, Camera, Worship?

Drama Ministry for the Masses

Don't Panic

Tech Booth

featured article from the April/May 2006 issue

“Those Unforgettable Performances”
by John Cosper

One of my fondest memories in my years of drama ministry came at a boarding school in central Ohio. One of the drama students acted as our escort for the day as we taught workshops and gave a performance. Following the play, he pulled me aside to tell me that a skit I had written, “Wicked Ruler,” was the reason he accepted Christ. It’s moments like those that we who use drama as a ministry pray we will experience.

But what of the others?

Anyone who knows live theater knows that for every poignant moment when a life is changed, there’s an equally memorable disaster, a story you tell and retell at drama conferences, Christmas parties, and workshops. Live theater is both fun and frightening because absolutely anything can happen. There are no retakes, and when the unexpected occurs, it bonds audience and performers in a moment they all remember forever.

There’s no way to guard against mistakes and pratfalls, but you can learn from them. I’d like to share with you some of the classic blunders from my years in drama ministry, and the lessons that came from each one.

SPEECHLESS

It was a high school outreach program, and the Dramamaniacs were performing a Seinfeld spoof. George, Elaine, and Jerry all found that their greatest dreams were coming true, but then Kramer entered the scene to tell them the reason for their good fortune: “We’re TV characters in a sitcom, and this is the last episode!”

That’s how the scene should have gone. Unfortunately for us, Kramer (played by a girl; we were short on guys, okay?) got her first line out, then froze. The pivotal character in the skit was speechless, and the rest of us were left hanging. Thankfully, we spent hours improvising in rehearsal, so the rest of us who had our wits about us found a way through the scene. I can’t even begin to recall how we got out. I just know we did, and that actress was much better prepared before her next performance.

Lessons learned: Know your lines by heart. Know everyone else’s lines by heart. And practice improvisation constantly.

NO PAUSE BUTTON

We were performing the aforementioned skit “Wicked Ruler,” which shows three people playing Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. One of my best actresses, as Satan number two, told Jesus to turn a stone into a rock. Thankfully, none of the cast members laughed, and the audience seemed to miss it. The skit continued, and ended as powerfully as it had in rehearsal. And the video of that performance was played for the actress at our annual Christmas party for years!

Of course this slip of the tongue paled in comparison to what happened during a production of a play about school shootings. The play ended with Michael W. Smith’s “This Is Your Time,” and a dancer setting some crosses (representing the dead students in the play) on the stage. For some reason I let my girlfriend fill in one night. Halfway through the dance, the music stopped—and so did her dancing. She began simply walking on and off stage with crosses. As if that wasn’t enough, she was down to the last cross when she decided to tell the audience, “Oh, I’m not the dancer. She’s sick, so I filled in. But I don’t know what happened to the music.” Backstage, thirteen hands hit thirteen foreheads; none of us could believe she’d destroyed such a powerful moment.

Lesson learned: Don’t pause to react to mistakes. If you act like it never happened, the audience, nine times out of ten, never knows the difference.

TECHIES NEED PRACTICE TOO

We were at a youth rally in Louisville, Kentucky, performing a series of three skits called “See You at the Pole.” Scene two played out in front of the stage, and ended with all the actors running off stage, left and right. The way you reached backstage was by going to the side of the auditorium, rounding a brick wall, and descending a few steps to the choir room. It went well in rehearsal. Then we got to performance. Someone in the light booth cut the lights too soon, and the lead actor turned the corner too fast, busting his lip open. It took the entire ten minutes between scenes to stop the bleeding so he could go back on stage.

Lesson learned: Rehearse with your techies, and get your timing perfect.

WATCH YOUR STEP

I taught a workshop at a Christ in Youth conference one summer. On the last night, the drama students performed a skit for worship. Because of the tight schedule, the actors had to share the stage with the worship band’s equipment. That meant monitors, amps, guitars, and miles of cords. The scene began with Richard Simmons being sat upon by a fat lady, then carried off by two EMTs. Richard took his fall, and the EMTs came out to carry him offstage. As they started their exit, the EMT going backwards tripped over a guitar cord and fell. Eleven hundred teens and youth workers laughed as a seventeen-year-old kid broke his arm.

A year later at church, the Dramamaniacs did Monty Python’s “Spanish Inquisition” sketch. None of the actors had sandals, so they went on stage barefoot, following one of the youth pastor’s gross games. I was nervous the crowd would not get Monty Python, but they were howling with laughter. I turned to a fellow youth worker and said, “I don’t believe it! They love it!”

My friend laughed. “Didn’t you see it? Some kid threw up after the game, and they didn’t mop the stage.”

Lesson learned: Clear the stage before you act! A clear, clean stage will spare you injury…and vomit-soaked feet.

STAY FOCUSED

Theater offers the audience a view into another world. Except in rare instances, the characters within that world are not aware that they are being watched. Therefore, there is no reason why any actor should ever respond to noises or distractions in the audience. Which brings me to one of my former tourmates. For some reason, any tiny distraction from the audience would bring her out of character. She was in the middle of a monologue one night when some inconsiderate viewer’s cell phone went off. Rather than going on, my friend stopped, waited politely for the call to be over, then asked the viewer’s permission to go on. Another night in the middle of a scene with me, someone in the audience sneezed. She turned to the audience and said, “Bless you.”

Contrast that story with my long-time acting partner Jamie. We toured a play about Christian dating for a year, and one of the gags in the play was that Jamie’s character drank an entire two-liter of Dr. Pepper during the play. It was her character’s stress relief, as a stupid boy kept denying her his heart. Anyway, we had not performed the play in a good while, when one night in North Carolina she felt an uncomfortable rumble in the belly. She stopped talking. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I started ad libbing, making sure she was okay. Then I patted her on the back. Jamie’s eyes got real big. Then, in character, she said she was going to check on another character who had just left the scene. In truth Jamie ran off stage, threw up, and returned, never breaking character for a moment.

Sounds like the perfect cover, but the other actress (the same one who paused for the cell phone) decided to announce to the entire audience, in Jamie’s absence, that she was in fact throwing up.

Lesson learned: ignore the audience; stay focused; and never, ever break character.

You can check the facts, ask my sources, look at the videos. Every story I’ve shared with you is true. As a creative writer, it always amazes me how real life always surpasses the imagination in giving us unbelievable moments in time. Maybe you’ve got worse stories to share. Maybe I’ve scared you off from ever doing drama again. The important thing is to learn from the past, and never make the same mistakes twice.

And don’t worry that a little preventative medicine will prevent you from gaining such “precious memories.” Live theater is always unpredictable, and you’ll never run short of amazing stories to tell.