I wouldn't put her in a "truly terrible" category but I feel like it's worth sharing here - I was in a production of Aladdin Jr. where the girl playing Jasmine was cliquey and standoffish towards the younger actors in the show. Like, come on, you're literally playing a Disney princess, you're like a hero to these younger girls so shape up.
Absolutely been there- except it was almost all the high schoolers in a cast where we had people as young as 8 years old. Unfortunately, some of them were my friends, and I had to hear my friends try to defend themselves on why they kept hanging out in their dressing rooms (when they were not supposed to) because they “didn’t want to hang out with the kids. We’re high schoolers! We’re above that!” No you aren’t. You’re going to have to be civil to children. And they barely wanted to be in the same room as them in a Jr. show!
YESSSS this was exactly what it was like!!! Most of the high schoolers in the show wanted to stay away from the 10 and under kids...I was one of the only older actors who hung out with them :( it's not like they weren't theater enthusiasts too, several of them knew all the lyrics to Wicked!
I HAD ALMOST THE EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE! I also was one of the only other older actors who hung out with them! It really sucks. They were my friends doing that too so it really made me view them in a not-so-nice light. If you’re going to audition for a show, especially a jr. show where you know you’re going to have to be with younger actors, you shouldn’t have that kind of complex.
I feel you. My musical director and the shows we did made my high school and college years so good. It sucks that it makes me feel like I wasted so much time being with them. But oh well, life goes on and they’re just memories now. I’m sorry that this happened to you and hoping you’ll find peace!
One of my youth theatre directors also, but it got worse because it turns out he wasn’t the only one over different generations, and the artistic director covered it up.
In a way, I consider him an even worse person for protecting multiple sexual abusers when multiple victims went to him hoping for help.
I was looking for this answer, lol Our music director (F) and her boyfriend of the same age hangs out with people half their age (my age). The boyfriend was hanging out with some of us when we were 16 that time and kept hanging out with us until we found out he harassed one of my friends (we are now in our mid/late 20s) by cat calling her and other gross suggestive things. Sadly one of the other friends of my age still hangs out with him and calls him her “best friend” (e.g. she gives him cake for his birthday, [and he posts about it on social media and doesnt post abt his music director girlfriend ever lol], she’s always beside him and invites him to hang out, etc)
On the other side of this, our music director hangs out with younger people to love bomb and groom so that we do whatever she says. I (F) was a victim of this for around 4 years, she called me her “right hand man” at some point to groom me to work for her forever or something. Well thankfully i’m out of that now. Especially since i was “replaced” by a guy she finds handsome. Of course the guy is like 15 years younger than her. lol disgusting
Nothing beats some one who thinks the part they got is ‘beneath’ them or that they should have gotten the main part so put no effort in whatsoever- so annoying
Yes! I was a stage manager for Beauty and the Beast at my high school and the amount of salt and snide comments from two of the castmembers in particular over not getting to play Belle or Beast was horrendous. They made tech week a nightmare for everyone.
It’s happened in so many shows I’ve been in - I’ve literally had completely silent parts and threw myself into it and had people tell me they loved it when in the same show the guy who had the third biggest part doesn’t know lines or choreo because it’s too small for him to bother learning and he should have been the lead - spoiled an amazing show
Yea they treat it like they thought thered be a secret recruiting agent in the audience that could see them in the big role and take them under their wing into the glitz and glamour of the fast lane
The man who played the lead in a show I did a while back - all smiles to your face and badmouthed almost everyone behind their backs. Added everyone on social media and then removed those whose profiles didn’t indicate they could help his career (bear in mind this was an amateur show). Looked down his nose at me right up until he found out that I had contacts at the BBC and then tried to brown nose. Too late!
They were like 110 pounds. They also both were cast in Oklahoma as the lead senior year. I was cast as Aunt Eller, because you know, I was still 125. She had originally began work on The King and I. I was cast as Anna. But 2 weeks into rehearsal, it was changed to Oklahoma. I figured one girl had her parents complain that she wasn’t the lead.
I did backstage for Annie (god I HATE that musical) and my most important job was to catch the dog after the girl playing Annie would leave stage and practically throw the poor creature at whoever was nearest. She was a proper little primadonna and noone could say anything to her because her parents were in charge of the committee. Although apparently she grew up into a far nicer person than anyone expected, so that was lovely to hear.
GOD IVE WORKED WITH SO MANY TERRIBLE PEOPLE.
Probably not the very worst, but I remember back in school there was a community theatre program doing a production of High School Musical. We all knew each other and would be at the theater for various reasons regardless, so we would talk about the upcoming show weeks before auditions even happened.
Well….there was this one girl. We’ll name her Lexi. Lexi took voice lessons at the theater twice a week.
Whenever I even opened my mouth, she would but in and say ‘I’m gonna get Sharpay,’ or ‘I’m Sharpay,’ or ‘I’m going to be Sharpay.’
I think she has the passion, but I say this in the nicest way possible: She is completely tone deaf. This girl needs to get a refund on her voice lessons, because she should simply stick to acting and dancing (which she does quite the decent job doing.)
She would get so pretentious and up your butt about it. Like she wouldn’t even anticipate the possibility of someone saying ‘it would be cool to play Sharpay because of-‘ she would cut you off and insist that that is who she is going to play.
Idk if it were just around me or not. She might’ve had an incentive to be insecure about because people would talk sometimes and say I’d be a good candidate for the role. I didn’t let her faze me because one role is one role, and we can both leave that up to the director, whatever.
This is the point where I should mention that the person she was getting voice lessons from was also going to be the director, but there were lots of kids auditioning for the show (and it was kind of a paid theatre camp thing, so I knew it would be very unlikely that she’d bias a student over everyone else). Or that’s what I thought.
Well we auditioned. And she hit maybe three notes in her song. There were some pretty talented other girls there too.
A few days later and the cast list comes out and I was speechless. A lot of people were. She got the part. Whatever, good for her; I’d be an asshole to gatekeep anyone’s success. I hope she has fun and does an amazing job.
I was cast as Cyndra (the girl at the audition who sings opera) and the Math teacher, Miss Tenny. I suppose maybe because I was older and I was also the only one who could give a really overdone vibrato. I was excited.
But we start rehearsals…… and it’s not pretty. Maybe the director typecast her because she is really snotty. Too young to method act or anything but she is NASTY to everyone. Her diva behavior was so bad that she wouldn’t talk to anybody but the people in her scene and the director. And if she did talk, she was talking shit.
Lots of people were fed up with her. Again, I’m not jealous or anything, I believe I was appropriately cast, but people would come up to me and say ‘I really wish that were you.’ I’d smile and give them a nice thank you, but brush them off, because that simply isn’t my part right now, even if she is being a bitch.
TECH WEEK: What the HELL?! She didn’t have any of her lines memorized. But she would have plenty of time to show off. She would gloat at everyone saying look at my ladder!! Look at my dress!!!
Someone would call her dress pretty or something and she’d roar at you by saying ‘IT’S MY DRESS!!” angrily.
She couldn’t sing, figures. She’d given up singing the harmonies that come with being in the role (leaving her and the guy singing Ryan to sing the same notes). She tried it a few times but can’t figure out if she’s singing in tune or not. After she’d given up on harmony, she couldn’t even sing it in the right range. She’d sing EVERYTHING down the octave. There’s nothing fine with a few notes, but if you can’t sing the role you’ve been trusted, you shouldn’t be playing it.
It infuriates me.
I’ve dealt with so many terrible people but that one really grinds my gears. My parents weren’t the most well off, and that camp was expensive. Never again!
I still don’t even know if this is the worst. But it’s up there!!!!
During the summer production of High School Musical 2 Jr. the girls who played Sharpay and Gabriella were the WORST. Gabriella said the n-word, tried to give my friend an allergic reaction bc my friend told her to stop flirting with other guys when she has a bf, then tried to get the same friend kicked out of the show, and kept making fun of her bf in front of everyone. Sharpay tried to break up my other friend's friendship with this guy by making it seem like the friend was calling him ugly and was just overall a huge diva. This one girl in the show would be nice to ppl until they got a better role or more scenes than her, in which case she would find someone else and badmouth the person who got more scenes than her. The show itself was really fun but it was exhausting dealing with these ppl.
An entire cast one time! I was on the mic crew for an amateur dramatics company, and for this one show it seemed that every single actor refused to be honest about their waist size for their mic pack belts. So whatever anyone asked for, you'd have to go up a size and then lie to them and say it was what they asked for, or else they'd miss their cue trying to put on mic pack that just didn't fit. It was bizarre and it happened like clockwork!
This is why we ask everyone to supply their own mic pack holder... cheap to make from material, and then changing mics is about getting the battery pack out of the holder, which if the clip is set correctly, is easy.
First of all, we had to call her the costume queen. I was playing Tsarina Alexandra in Anastasia, and I'm very tiny. The fabric she used to make my dress bodice didn't fit me very well and she had to keep taking it in. One day, she snapped at me and told me that "if you can't keep your weight up, you're gonna have to stuff your bra". Really messed with me as a 16 year old
My love interest in the show was new to this company. I also work for the company. Organizing or whatever needs to be done. And he schmoozed his was into being best friends with everyone while making my life a living nightmare. Took my job on props. My grandfather is also the producer. He said he wanted to paint on our antique donated suitcases to put whatever his name was on it. I said you will absolutely not do that. Anyway it got to the point where I called my grandfather and he talked to the director and put me on props. The guy ended up stealing some of our props after “loosing” it he’s got until next month before I charge him a hearty fee. I have to pretend to be his friend because we need men for our shows. Everyone thinks he’s so great but he’s incredibly selfish and self centered. He lived with me for 2 months so he could do the show. He lived about an hour away. I’ve got so many more stories.
Back in my youth theatre days I was elected as the person to tell the classic 'thinks he is billy big balls because he got the lead a few times' teenage boy to wind his neck in (I was 19 and back for an anniversary retrospective show for the theatre after having gone off to Uni, he was probably 16?). The kid had his head so far up his own arse that literally noone in his peer group wanted to interact with him off stage, but he hadn't even noticed because all the 11 year old newbie girls were absolutely in love with him so he thought he was God's gift and that everyone else must obviously worship him too. He was catty, demanding and just generally unpleasant to everyone. I remember nicely telling him that he might want to calm down and remember that this was am dram and we were all here to have fun, and he sneered at me like I was nothing. Then that night he forgot to turn his microphone off after leaving stage and the whole audience heard him having a piss. The fact the techie could have cut the mic implies he thought he was a little snot too. He calmed down a little after that embarrassment, but he was still an unpleasant oik to be around.
Did a local community theater production last summer as stage manager while my mother was in the hospital. I was running a bit later than usual for rehearsal one day (I was usually there an hour before anyone else). I let the director know beforehand that my mom was dealing with severe issues (she had stage four colon cancer). He seemed chill about it, and I thought no big deal.
Fast forward to me getting to rehearsal that night. He proceeds to ask me how my mom's colon cancer and her being in the hospital have anything to do with the show. I tell him that as of now, it doesn't, but if she got worse, I would be focusing more on her and less on the show. He then tells me he was roughly my age when he lost his father and that it sucks, but theater is important. I think he was trying to sympthasize (maybe?), but he came off as a massive jerk saying that as I was trying to hold out hope.
tl;dr: Director thought I should prioritize a low-stakes community theater production over dying mother.
Im currently doing choreo for a production of Snoopy, and we had to replace our Sally because the original person (who I will emphasize is older and more experienced) kept on picking fights, up to and including insulting my choreo to my face.
I was in a show with a girl who talked all through the auditions (I'm pretty confident she only got in because she was the only person who looked the part, I certainly wouldn't cast someone who was rude during auditions). She ended up with a secondary role and phoned it in super hard, basically talk-sang her solo and sat and watched dance rehearsals instead of participating, and just generally had a bad attitude the whole time.
She came back for the next show, with a different director who didn't have time for her shit. Bad attitude again. Chatted through dance rehearsals until the director told her to leave.
This prompted her to send a big long email to the director about how she was out of line (no), sucked at directing (subjective but I disagree), and ruined her voice (read: wanted her to actually sing), and now she's going around telling the other theatre majors at her college how awful the community theatre is, even though all of her issues with them were her own fault.
Good riddance though. I got 2 of her solos when she quit.
I played Corrie in “Barefoot in the Park,” in a community theater in the 1980s and the guy playing Paul did not like me. He was constantly telling me I didn’t deserve the part and that I was terrible, etc.
Turns out he had hoped his girlfriend would get the part.
He was a good enough actor to be convincing while we were onstage
But he made every backstage moment awful for me.
By the end of the run I was SO ready for the show to end
We were doing a community theatre show and hired a director who lived out of town, about an hour away. Two of the female cast members, a 15-year-old and the sweetest lady ever lived around in a very small 'holiday' town 2 hours away. Because there are no productions where they live, we were the closest option. Now, the director knew that these two lived so far away and assured them that the latest rehearsal would ever run to would be 7pm, so they could get home and have a good nights rest. This was definitely not what happened.
To put things into perspective, the show we were doing required a childrens cast of 14, ages 10-15, plus one outlying 18-year-old, as well as an adult cast. As we got closer and closer to the show, rehearsals started running from 5pm to around 9.30pm every single night after school. And it only got later and later. The latest I remember having rehearsal on a weekday was maybe 10:30pm. Whenever we complained, which was frequently considering we all had exams and tests and assessments the next day because it was that time during the year, the director would say "You think you're tired? I have to drive an hour home!", completely disregarding the girl that has to travel two hours home with an internal due the next day.
The same young cast member also had brightly coloured hair upon audition, which the director said was perfectly fine for the show. But she changed her mind and tried and tried to get this girl to dye it brown. Eventually they settled on using temporary root-touch up to cover up the neon hair, but it was a massive drama that could have been avoided.
I did a show recently where one of the male leads would blame everyone but himself for his own mistakes. He tried to get me to change what I was doing because I was upstaging him, which put him off. I overheard him discussing the dry ice machine with a tech because it was drying his throat out. He had words with various other people in the production for putting him off. I found that I was concentrating more on not doing anything which might put him off than on my own performance.
Excellent tenor, but not fun to be with onstage.
There is a kid in my cast currently who is unfortunate my Understudy. I was looking for a prop I needed and could not locate it so I went to get ready to rehearse without it. When I look over at him seeing him and all his awful friends passing it around. I walk over and say give it to me and he says, "Well, it's my prop too I'm your understudy."
I can't even remember what show but there was this one guy in the ensemble who was disrespectful. He was constantly on his phone with his earbuds in whenever an actor was on stage singing or making disrespectful comments. But the worst of all was when he thought one girl had an ugly hair cut and straight up asked me if I wanted to go make fun of it with him. Like wtf. Pretty sure he got kicked out because I don't remember dealing with him for long.
Ugh this guy thought he was a big shot by getting a roll in his first and only musical. He just happened to be one of 2 guys who were basses, and there were 2 bass parts, so both of them got rolls. He thought he was so important when really his character is only in like, 3 scenes.
One show I was in had a girl playing one of the minor named characters and thought it made her a star and gave her directorial powers. Literally every time the actual director gave anyone in the chorus something to do, she would immediately pop up with “Shouldn’t a *lead* do that?” We were all fed up with her by the end of the show.
I call it “Drama Club Drama’. One directed I did 10 shows with as a musical director. She was really good but I lasted much longer than most of her partnerships.
Not a full on musical, but a review show: 2 x 1 hour long shows a day for 2 weeks over the summer, performed by 95% children with a few 18-25yo in singing roles. Between shows, dressing room was off limits, but someone was propping open a side door to dressing rooms, coming back and stealing personal stuff. Mostly trinkets like necklaces dancers took off for performances. Parents initially put it down to kids losing stuff until one of the parents who volunteered as a dresser had something stolen from a handbag she had left in her kids' costume bag (assuming the dressing rooms were secure because patents took it in turns to moniter access. Turned out it was one of the principles.
My elementary school bully and I were in a show together. That was *fun.* Not. Girl, what's it to you what I'm doing? If the director wants me to do something different, that's totally on him. AND NOT YOU.
Not especially terrible, but annoying. When I was playing in Cinderella as a middle schooler we had not just one drama teacher, but a drama teacher, a singing teacher and two directors.
One of directors was a really cool woman from our local Arts college and she suggested beautiful solutions and made our acting way more interesting.
And then our drama teacher came and destroyed it all every time, asked us to play those scenes as she wanted, get back to this awkward positioning on stage we had before, etc.
She wasn't particularly AWFUL to work with but a bit difficult. A little girl in a production of Into The Woods who constantly showed up with a sugar rush, running around like crazy. My best story about this girl is when she called 911 and the police showed up and then got the most experienced actor in the show blamed for it. Dude was a champ and took the blame for it
Edit: By the way, the reason we let her get away with so much was because her dad had cancer and he passed away while we were working on the show. She had a twin sister and an older sister so we tried to be very understanding
I have a few. I was mostly acting in community theaters, but I did crew for school productions. Our main cue-caller was known to have a petty and vindictive streak. One of our fly operators got on their bad side and they would purposefully skip calling their cues, causing them to get screamed at by the director. I was Wendy Jo in a production of Footloose and most of the men in the cast hated each other/had past relationship histories with each other which made for a lot of drama backstage.
A castmate in a summer theater camp I was in last year falsely accused me of harassment and accused my friend of an assault which supposedly happened the night he was at my house watching *The Wrath of Khan*. The execs didn’t care about his rock solid alibi and he was fired from the show three days before performance. When did it become acceptable to use that as a weapon against people you don’t like?
I was music director on a production with a director who bullied me and others the entire time. He was ageist, sexist, and rude, and it was an extremely difficult show because of him.
I was going out with the director (same age) and I was dumped right before the start of rehearsals. They were just generally pretty awful to me and treated me worse than anyone else on the cast and I’ve never felt more insecure about my abilities.
The director for a production of Wozard of Oz I was assistant choreographer and a backstage hand for.
She was just so entitled. She got mad when the scene changes she directed didn’t work, yelled at the cast all the time because her shitty direction went badly, only liked working with the leads and left the ensemble to the wayside, did not know the name of a guy who she gave multiple speaking parts too and verbally abused me, my fellow crew members, my stage manager the most and refused to listen to tlher producers about anything and got her boyfriend, who was the president of the local thesyrr company, to back her up on everything.
Safe to say I'm gald that's over and never have to work with her again.
Ohhh here’s some TEA tea. Sophomore year. Oklahoma. Double casted all girls school. So we have C and K who played Laurey and T and M who played Curley. So one thing about K is she had really bad anxiety and on one of the days we were supposed to be performing for the school, K was having a panic attack. I ran to go find a teacher and came back with one who had us all go back to our own things while she texted the stage manager teacher (SM) to come down to the backstage bathrooms. This next part I got from my friend who was in the main changing and costume storage areas
T and M find C and tell her she needs to be ready to cover for K in case she can’t go on. C immediately goes into tantrum mode screaming that she can’t and she’s not warmed up properly and she’s gonna go and force K on if she has to. To which T tells her it’s not that big a deal and that she has to be ready to do it and that she needs to be more compassionate. C’s response was to slap T across the face just as SM walks in. She got a telling off and was told that as the SM she had final authority and she would be going on if K couldn’t.
C was a bit of a diva the whole time. She tried demanding we clear areas so she can warm up. Argued with the director. Would flip out at us for ruining her show if someone messed up. Screamed at me for being off book before her despite me only having a few lines as Ike Skidmore. It was wild
I was SMing a production of Beauty and the Beast. Ended up getting stalked by a young ensemble member. He would show up at my house with soup when I was sick on day (didn’t touch it) and other small gifts. He followed me home one night and I drive straight to the police department.
One night . I told him if he spoke to me again I’ll get a RO against him. He started focusing on girls in the ensemble.
One night during the show (small theatre where I had to run across the lobby and up a stairs. Same path every show which was known) and he and 2 girls sat on the stairs completely blocking it. I could not see them as I rounded a corner. Saw them at the last minute and sort of hurled my self over to make a costume change for Belle into the yellow dress. Tore my ACL completely.
I got a RO after the show that night and we replaced him.
I have a crap ton:
-In my last middle school play, there was this girl who constantly got understudies (6th: Matilda, 7th: Justice, 8th: Katherine) and she complained 24/7. She was overall a brat shame bc she’s pretty talented.
-I did a theatre camp and was partnered up with a girl who not only sucked ass (she couldn’t hold a note or put energy into ANYTHING), but was convinced she was better than everyone, giving us “tips”, throwing a tantrum when she didn’t get the part she wanted, etc. And she was just weird and creepy overall. She talked about doing drugs loud and proud. Like ok, but why announce it?
-I was in a production of Matilda (see above) and for one of the ending scenes when it shows the chias of all the kids having fun finally, my director had a couple of us do a kick line. The girl next to me was super full of herself, unable to have a conversation not about her, and thought she was the best. Maybe she was the best alone, but not in a group bc since she wasn’t a “team player” she dragged everyone down, using us to hoist herself up. I got tired of it and asked to stop during tech week, which she agreed to. But then, during one of the actual preformances, she shoved me away and I fell down hard, in front of EVERYONE.
But yeah overall most ppl in theatre are lovely, except for the few ones just in there for fame.
I directed a production of Carrie the Musical and my Margaret turned out to be a lowkey alcoholic. She would show up to rehearsals drunk and she could never remember her blocking or lines. I would have to go over them with her multiple times and she would act like we were going over it for the first time, every single time. When we were going over notes at the end of rehearsals, she would completely zone out. And sometimes she would just fall asleep… on the floor… Thankfully she got her act together after being given an ultimatum, and the show went on.
My high school director was pretty bad. He throw a chair at a student because they set the prop wrong. Took a couple of females in the woods to take"sexy" photos for Juds wall for Oklahoma. Told everyone they had to get period appropriate glass or contacts. My mom did report the last one to the school, and he confronted us on our way in to my best friend's funeral. I know there is more. But over all, he told us he treated us like professionals. This was a small school in the Midwest.
I’ve had a lot. I think the worst one happened this year though. An old friend who hates my guts now cuz of drama would be open and friendly with literally the whole cast but when I came to me they were snappish and cold. They would glare at me and ignore me when I was talking along with other things. I’m a senior this year and it made my last show really awkward.
Not a musical but we had a freshman my senior year get cast in the lead role. It (and the fact his family was the wealthiest in the town) made the experience a living hell.
For one thing, he was chronically 20-30 minutes late to every single rehearsal. This got really bad during Tech Week (when we needed him).
The worst was that he was just an unpleasant bully. Joffrey if Joffrey didn’t have a crown on his head and a killing streak. He would speak over the director and tell us what we were doing wrong. It was BAD.
Our director tried to get him kicked out because of his bratty behavior but was told by not only the family (who were big time donors to the school) but the principal told her that if he was kicked out, it would’ve been the end of the drama club. So we were stuck with him.
I did get even with him though on behalf of the whole drama club. He was in a cemetery scene and I managed to grab his ankle while croaking out his character’s name in a voice reminiscent of the Evil Hag’s voice from Snow White.
Did I mention this was on opening night?
He screamed such a high pitched, undignified girlish squeal that it got the biggest and loudest laugh and applause from the audience. I found out years later that he had peed his pants.
I was in one musical in middle school (7th grade) and it sadly put me off from doing any musicals. Our director was seriously so serious and rude! He threatened to cut me out cause I stopped holding the door for a moment to help out one of the actresses (which was my job as the stage hand). I never worked for another play or musical again, which is so sad cause I LOVE musicals!
I was in a production of Fiddler where the Tevye was an absolute nightmare. Any time something didn’t go his way he would start ranting about how “I’ve waited fifteen years to play this part.”
But at least he was terrible in the part. He was basically just doing Topol, but with the bonus that this guy also had some toxic masculinity issues, so when Tevye was supposed to be looking pleadingly up to the heavens, he just looked kinda irritated.
The director of a production I was in, when I was a teenager. I was initially cast as the understudy for the lead role. The leads were adult actors, and none of the other understudies they cast actually took the parts, so they decided to drop the notion of understudies for this show. So the director assigned me as the "rehearsal stand in". This meant that I had to come to 5 cast rehearsals a week, plus a chorus rehearsal on weekends (none of the rest of the cast, nor the director, would come to Chorus rehearsals, as in this show, the chorus was completely partitioned off from the main cast). I went ahead and filled in all the lines for tiny parts they didn't want to have to call to rehearse, and occasionally real parts, if someone was sick. I learned the lines and blocking for every character. A thankless job, but whatever, I was young.
And then one of the leads wasn't going to be able to make it to a rehearsal, when we were going to be doing a TV spot. The director decided to get someone else to fill in the part for TV, who knew none of the part, and would have his face buried in the script. They told me it was because he had a louder voice than me, but anyone who knew me cracked up laughing at that excuse, so I have no idea why they wanted to get him to cold read it, after having me learn parts for two months.
They also got super mad at me in a tech rehearsal, because they had suddenly decided that I would be a good person to bring this bench off stage after a scene, but didn't know where to find me to tell me that. I didn't have a queue for ages, so I was hanging out with some of my friends amongst the dancers. The director told me "actors DON'T associate with dancers!", and then instructed to me to wait back stage right, at all times, for the rest of the show, "in case they needed me for something". I'd go on for the chorus parts, say my couple of "yes sir" lines, and then just sit on a bench, in case the director decided I could fill in another stage hand part. Yes, this was unpaid community theater.
I was not even IN the musical, but when I was in high school, there was this girl I had gym with who would not shut the hell up about not getting the role she wanted. She’d complain about it to her friends every single day in the locker room for the entirety of the semester. I felt like I was losing my mind and I can’t imagine what she was like during rehearsals
I’m doing a production of Pippin and the actor playing Pippin has been a complete ass wipe to everyone in the cast and constantly talks down about most of the people in the cast.
Insecurity is a really sad thing.
in a production of elf where i was walter, there was this one kid in the ensemble who never washed his hands. like ever. they where crusty and had boogers on them 24/7, and i had to hold his left hand during bows. it was sticky. there are some worse personalitys ive met in theater but i can not get over those hands to this day
Sadly, it was little 10 year old me who ruined a little readers theatre at my summer camp. I hated that camp and I wanted everyone there to be just as miserable as me. We were doing a scene from Moana and the director lady asked if anyone wanted to be the grandma. Being the little prick that I was, I yelled out “Why would anyone want to be the grandma? She dies in the end.” The director took me to the side and had a talk with me. For the rest of the drama classes, I sat on the side silently. That was the worst weekend of my life.
Mine is tame compared to everyone else's, but I only ever did a couple of plays. I was in the chorus for Little Shop, we didn't have a huge amount to do and there were huge gaps between our numbers. During a rehearsal I was sat back stage reading my book, as opposed to sitting bored out of my mind. Along comes....oh, let's call him Sgt. Douche, and he scolds me (I was 13 he was 15, like he has the right to scold me 🙄) for reading, I apparently shouldn't be doing that backstage 🙄.
Sgt. Douche fancied himself King of the backstage. His job was dealing with the props and operating the Audrey 2 puppets, NOT stage manager and not babysitter of the younger kids.
Basically I ignored him and kept reading, I later found out he went and told on me to the drama teacher who did not give a fuck what I was doing, as long as I was quiet backstage.
Well when I was a teenager I was in the costume department for a musical and one night we were taking measurements when the director comes in to check on us and "borrows" our measuring tape. It's fine though, we have a few of them anyway. Measurements are done, everyone gets ready to go, but my head of dept tells me I need to get the measuring tape back from him before I leave for the night. I go looking for the director and realise he's in another room rehearsing with the main leads. I didn't want to interrupt them, so I sat outside the room waiting for him to come out. Almost an hour passes, he doesn't come out and it's past midnight, so when I hear him call for a 15 min break, I knock on the door and apologise for interrupting, telling him I need the measuring tape back. He proceeds to blow up at me, yelling how dare you interrupt an important rehearsal with my leads, what do you think you're doing, don't you know who I am, etc, and finally he says has no idea who I am and has never seen me before in his life so why would he even have any of my stuff? Door gets shut in my face, I leave thinking I would probably have to replace the measuring tape on my own. As I'm walking home, one of the lead actors calls out. He's running after me with the measuring tape in his hand. Turns out the director really did have the measuring tape in his pocket the whole time, he had just forgotten about it.
It's not a big deal like some of these other stories and maybe I really was in the wrong for interrupting, but I love musicals and it was my first time working on one so it did leave me a little bit put out.
We where playing As It Is In Heaven at our Opera and we had a Eeyore stuffed animal that one of the kids in the show played with. But the Leif who fixed the light ques and all of that always hit Eeyore and he was very mean to our little Eeyore😥 but at his birthday we got him his own Eeyore so he could hit his own Eeyore.
Worked with a dude who was high all the time, even hitting his THC pen backstage during intermission. He would also randomly change blocking during a performance without warning anyone and without any consideration for how his choice affected or changed another actor's track.
Oliver Twist. I was playing Widow Corney. The girl playing Nancy had no chemistry with Bill so she walked up to me and said that the guy playing Mr Bumble didnt like me so it would mess up our chemistry onstage and make herself look better.
I wouldn't put her in a "truly terrible" category but I feel like it's worth sharing here - I was in a production of Aladdin Jr. where the girl playing Jasmine was cliquey and standoffish towards the younger actors in the show. Like, come on, you're literally playing a Disney princess, you're like a hero to these younger girls so shape up.
Ohhhh been there with a gal in my drama class sooo full of herself (she was also the teacher's favorite)
Absolutely been there- except it was almost all the high schoolers in a cast where we had people as young as 8 years old. Unfortunately, some of them were my friends, and I had to hear my friends try to defend themselves on why they kept hanging out in their dressing rooms (when they were not supposed to) because they “didn’t want to hang out with the kids. We’re high schoolers! We’re above that!” No you aren’t. You’re going to have to be civil to children. And they barely wanted to be in the same room as them in a Jr. show!
YESSSS this was exactly what it was like!!! Most of the high schoolers in the show wanted to stay away from the 10 and under kids...I was one of the only older actors who hung out with them :( it's not like they weren't theater enthusiasts too, several of them knew all the lyrics to Wicked!
I HAD ALMOST THE EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE! I also was one of the only other older actors who hung out with them! It really sucks. They were my friends doing that too so it really made me view them in a not-so-nice light. If you’re going to audition for a show, especially a jr. show where you know you’re going to have to be with younger actors, you shouldn’t have that kind of complex.
it’s giving "We’re seniors man! We’re too cool for this shit" (Heathers reference)
Well, my HS director turned out to be a ped*phile, so…
My HS drama teacher did too. Shame because he's the guy I credit with making my final year's of school bearable 🫤
I feel you. My musical director and the shows we did made my high school and college years so good. It sucks that it makes me feel like I wasted so much time being with them. But oh well, life goes on and they’re just memories now. I’m sorry that this happened to you and hoping you’ll find peace!
Same to you too!
Ooh, in a similar vein, I was in a theatre group with a serial killer! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_murders
One of my youth theatre directors also, but it got worse because it turns out he wasn’t the only one over different generations, and the artistic director covered it up. In a way, I consider him an even worse person for protecting multiple sexual abusers when multiple victims went to him hoping for help.
I was looking for this answer, lol Our music director (F) and her boyfriend of the same age hangs out with people half their age (my age). The boyfriend was hanging out with some of us when we were 16 that time and kept hanging out with us until we found out he harassed one of my friends (we are now in our mid/late 20s) by cat calling her and other gross suggestive things. Sadly one of the other friends of my age still hangs out with him and calls him her “best friend” (e.g. she gives him cake for his birthday, [and he posts about it on social media and doesnt post abt his music director girlfriend ever lol], she’s always beside him and invites him to hang out, etc) On the other side of this, our music director hangs out with younger people to love bomb and groom so that we do whatever she says. I (F) was a victim of this for around 4 years, she called me her “right hand man” at some point to groom me to work for her forever or something. Well thankfully i’m out of that now. Especially since i was “replaced” by a guy she finds handsome. Of course the guy is like 15 years younger than her. lol disgusting
Nothing beats some one who thinks the part they got is ‘beneath’ them or that they should have gotten the main part so put no effort in whatsoever- so annoying
Yes! I was a stage manager for Beauty and the Beast at my high school and the amount of salt and snide comments from two of the castmembers in particular over not getting to play Belle or Beast was horrendous. They made tech week a nightmare for everyone.
It’s happened in so many shows I’ve been in - I’ve literally had completely silent parts and threw myself into it and had people tell me they loved it when in the same show the guy who had the third biggest part doesn’t know lines or choreo because it’s too small for him to bother learning and he should have been the lead - spoiled an amazing show
Yea they treat it like they thought thered be a secret recruiting agent in the audience that could see them in the big role and take them under their wing into the glitz and glamour of the fast lane
Bit cheesy to say, but ‘there are no small parts, only small actors’ is a good rule of thumb.
Or they don't even turn up to rehearsals because they hate the role 💔
Have had a couple of those 🤦🏻♂️
The man who played the lead in a show I did a while back - all smiles to your face and badmouthed almost everyone behind their backs. Added everyone on social media and then removed those whose profiles didn’t indicate they could help his career (bear in mind this was an amateur show). Looked down his nose at me right up until he found out that I had contacts at the BBC and then tried to brown nose. Too late!
My HS director. She said I was too “big to be an ingenue” when she casted me as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. Too big at 125 pounds.
I’d be concerned for the person who got Maria in that case. Such an awful director to make a comment like that about a teen. Jeez
They were like 110 pounds. They also both were cast in Oklahoma as the lead senior year. I was cast as Aunt Eller, because you know, I was still 125. She had originally began work on The King and I. I was cast as Anna. But 2 weeks into rehearsal, it was changed to Oklahoma. I figured one girl had her parents complain that she wasn’t the lead.
Anorexic bitch
I was 5’1” then. I was always small up until I was 23. I grew 3” and gained 25 pounds.
Probably the scenic designer I watched throw a running power saw at the director.
Woah what the hell???
I did backstage for Annie (god I HATE that musical) and my most important job was to catch the dog after the girl playing Annie would leave stage and practically throw the poor creature at whoever was nearest. She was a proper little primadonna and noone could say anything to her because her parents were in charge of the committee. Although apparently she grew up into a far nicer person than anyone expected, so that was lovely to hear.
GOD IVE WORKED WITH SO MANY TERRIBLE PEOPLE. Probably not the very worst, but I remember back in school there was a community theatre program doing a production of High School Musical. We all knew each other and would be at the theater for various reasons regardless, so we would talk about the upcoming show weeks before auditions even happened. Well….there was this one girl. We’ll name her Lexi. Lexi took voice lessons at the theater twice a week. Whenever I even opened my mouth, she would but in and say ‘I’m gonna get Sharpay,’ or ‘I’m Sharpay,’ or ‘I’m going to be Sharpay.’ I think she has the passion, but I say this in the nicest way possible: She is completely tone deaf. This girl needs to get a refund on her voice lessons, because she should simply stick to acting and dancing (which she does quite the decent job doing.) She would get so pretentious and up your butt about it. Like she wouldn’t even anticipate the possibility of someone saying ‘it would be cool to play Sharpay because of-‘ she would cut you off and insist that that is who she is going to play. Idk if it were just around me or not. She might’ve had an incentive to be insecure about because people would talk sometimes and say I’d be a good candidate for the role. I didn’t let her faze me because one role is one role, and we can both leave that up to the director, whatever. This is the point where I should mention that the person she was getting voice lessons from was also going to be the director, but there were lots of kids auditioning for the show (and it was kind of a paid theatre camp thing, so I knew it would be very unlikely that she’d bias a student over everyone else). Or that’s what I thought. Well we auditioned. And she hit maybe three notes in her song. There were some pretty talented other girls there too. A few days later and the cast list comes out and I was speechless. A lot of people were. She got the part. Whatever, good for her; I’d be an asshole to gatekeep anyone’s success. I hope she has fun and does an amazing job. I was cast as Cyndra (the girl at the audition who sings opera) and the Math teacher, Miss Tenny. I suppose maybe because I was older and I was also the only one who could give a really overdone vibrato. I was excited. But we start rehearsals…… and it’s not pretty. Maybe the director typecast her because she is really snotty. Too young to method act or anything but she is NASTY to everyone. Her diva behavior was so bad that she wouldn’t talk to anybody but the people in her scene and the director. And if she did talk, she was talking shit. Lots of people were fed up with her. Again, I’m not jealous or anything, I believe I was appropriately cast, but people would come up to me and say ‘I really wish that were you.’ I’d smile and give them a nice thank you, but brush them off, because that simply isn’t my part right now, even if she is being a bitch. TECH WEEK: What the HELL?! She didn’t have any of her lines memorized. But she would have plenty of time to show off. She would gloat at everyone saying look at my ladder!! Look at my dress!!! Someone would call her dress pretty or something and she’d roar at you by saying ‘IT’S MY DRESS!!” angrily. She couldn’t sing, figures. She’d given up singing the harmonies that come with being in the role (leaving her and the guy singing Ryan to sing the same notes). She tried it a few times but can’t figure out if she’s singing in tune or not. After she’d given up on harmony, she couldn’t even sing it in the right range. She’d sing EVERYTHING down the octave. There’s nothing fine with a few notes, but if you can’t sing the role you’ve been trusted, you shouldn’t be playing it. It infuriates me. I’ve dealt with so many terrible people but that one really grinds my gears. My parents weren’t the most well off, and that camp was expensive. Never again! I still don’t even know if this is the worst. But it’s up there!!!!
Casting issue rather than anything else...
During the summer production of High School Musical 2 Jr. the girls who played Sharpay and Gabriella were the WORST. Gabriella said the n-word, tried to give my friend an allergic reaction bc my friend told her to stop flirting with other guys when she has a bf, then tried to get the same friend kicked out of the show, and kept making fun of her bf in front of everyone. Sharpay tried to break up my other friend's friendship with this guy by making it seem like the friend was calling him ugly and was just overall a huge diva. This one girl in the show would be nice to ppl until they got a better role or more scenes than her, in which case she would find someone else and badmouth the person who got more scenes than her. The show itself was really fun but it was exhausting dealing with these ppl.
An entire cast one time! I was on the mic crew for an amateur dramatics company, and for this one show it seemed that every single actor refused to be honest about their waist size for their mic pack belts. So whatever anyone asked for, you'd have to go up a size and then lie to them and say it was what they asked for, or else they'd miss their cue trying to put on mic pack that just didn't fit. It was bizarre and it happened like clockwork!
This is why we ask everyone to supply their own mic pack holder... cheap to make from material, and then changing mics is about getting the battery pack out of the holder, which if the clip is set correctly, is easy.
First of all, we had to call her the costume queen. I was playing Tsarina Alexandra in Anastasia, and I'm very tiny. The fabric she used to make my dress bodice didn't fit me very well and she had to keep taking it in. One day, she snapped at me and told me that "if you can't keep your weight up, you're gonna have to stuff your bra". Really messed with me as a 16 year old
My love interest in the show was new to this company. I also work for the company. Organizing or whatever needs to be done. And he schmoozed his was into being best friends with everyone while making my life a living nightmare. Took my job on props. My grandfather is also the producer. He said he wanted to paint on our antique donated suitcases to put whatever his name was on it. I said you will absolutely not do that. Anyway it got to the point where I called my grandfather and he talked to the director and put me on props. The guy ended up stealing some of our props after “loosing” it he’s got until next month before I charge him a hearty fee. I have to pretend to be his friend because we need men for our shows. Everyone thinks he’s so great but he’s incredibly selfish and self centered. He lived with me for 2 months so he could do the show. He lived about an hour away. I’ve got so many more stories.
Back in my youth theatre days I was elected as the person to tell the classic 'thinks he is billy big balls because he got the lead a few times' teenage boy to wind his neck in (I was 19 and back for an anniversary retrospective show for the theatre after having gone off to Uni, he was probably 16?). The kid had his head so far up his own arse that literally noone in his peer group wanted to interact with him off stage, but he hadn't even noticed because all the 11 year old newbie girls were absolutely in love with him so he thought he was God's gift and that everyone else must obviously worship him too. He was catty, demanding and just generally unpleasant to everyone. I remember nicely telling him that he might want to calm down and remember that this was am dram and we were all here to have fun, and he sneered at me like I was nothing. Then that night he forgot to turn his microphone off after leaving stage and the whole audience heard him having a piss. The fact the techie could have cut the mic implies he thought he was a little snot too. He calmed down a little after that embarrassment, but he was still an unpleasant oik to be around.
Did a local community theater production last summer as stage manager while my mother was in the hospital. I was running a bit later than usual for rehearsal one day (I was usually there an hour before anyone else). I let the director know beforehand that my mom was dealing with severe issues (she had stage four colon cancer). He seemed chill about it, and I thought no big deal. Fast forward to me getting to rehearsal that night. He proceeds to ask me how my mom's colon cancer and her being in the hospital have anything to do with the show. I tell him that as of now, it doesn't, but if she got worse, I would be focusing more on her and less on the show. He then tells me he was roughly my age when he lost his father and that it sucks, but theater is important. I think he was trying to sympthasize (maybe?), but he came off as a massive jerk saying that as I was trying to hold out hope. tl;dr: Director thought I should prioritize a low-stakes community theater production over dying mother.
Im currently doing choreo for a production of Snoopy, and we had to replace our Sally because the original person (who I will emphasize is older and more experienced) kept on picking fights, up to and including insulting my choreo to my face.
I was in a show with a girl who talked all through the auditions (I'm pretty confident she only got in because she was the only person who looked the part, I certainly wouldn't cast someone who was rude during auditions). She ended up with a secondary role and phoned it in super hard, basically talk-sang her solo and sat and watched dance rehearsals instead of participating, and just generally had a bad attitude the whole time. She came back for the next show, with a different director who didn't have time for her shit. Bad attitude again. Chatted through dance rehearsals until the director told her to leave. This prompted her to send a big long email to the director about how she was out of line (no), sucked at directing (subjective but I disagree), and ruined her voice (read: wanted her to actually sing), and now she's going around telling the other theatre majors at her college how awful the community theatre is, even though all of her issues with them were her own fault. Good riddance though. I got 2 of her solos when she quit.
I played Corrie in “Barefoot in the Park,” in a community theater in the 1980s and the guy playing Paul did not like me. He was constantly telling me I didn’t deserve the part and that I was terrible, etc. Turns out he had hoped his girlfriend would get the part. He was a good enough actor to be convincing while we were onstage But he made every backstage moment awful for me. By the end of the run I was SO ready for the show to end
We were doing a community theatre show and hired a director who lived out of town, about an hour away. Two of the female cast members, a 15-year-old and the sweetest lady ever lived around in a very small 'holiday' town 2 hours away. Because there are no productions where they live, we were the closest option. Now, the director knew that these two lived so far away and assured them that the latest rehearsal would ever run to would be 7pm, so they could get home and have a good nights rest. This was definitely not what happened. To put things into perspective, the show we were doing required a childrens cast of 14, ages 10-15, plus one outlying 18-year-old, as well as an adult cast. As we got closer and closer to the show, rehearsals started running from 5pm to around 9.30pm every single night after school. And it only got later and later. The latest I remember having rehearsal on a weekday was maybe 10:30pm. Whenever we complained, which was frequently considering we all had exams and tests and assessments the next day because it was that time during the year, the director would say "You think you're tired? I have to drive an hour home!", completely disregarding the girl that has to travel two hours home with an internal due the next day. The same young cast member also had brightly coloured hair upon audition, which the director said was perfectly fine for the show. But she changed her mind and tried and tried to get this girl to dye it brown. Eventually they settled on using temporary root-touch up to cover up the neon hair, but it was a massive drama that could have been avoided.
I did a show recently where one of the male leads would blame everyone but himself for his own mistakes. He tried to get me to change what I was doing because I was upstaging him, which put him off. I overheard him discussing the dry ice machine with a tech because it was drying his throat out. He had words with various other people in the production for putting him off. I found that I was concentrating more on not doing anything which might put him off than on my own performance. Excellent tenor, but not fun to be with onstage.
There is a kid in my cast currently who is unfortunate my Understudy. I was looking for a prop I needed and could not locate it so I went to get ready to rehearse without it. When I look over at him seeing him and all his awful friends passing it around. I walk over and say give it to me and he says, "Well, it's my prop too I'm your understudy."
Person who tries to direct during rehearsal- stfu!
I can't even remember what show but there was this one guy in the ensemble who was disrespectful. He was constantly on his phone with his earbuds in whenever an actor was on stage singing or making disrespectful comments. But the worst of all was when he thought one girl had an ugly hair cut and straight up asked me if I wanted to go make fun of it with him. Like wtf. Pretty sure he got kicked out because I don't remember dealing with him for long.
Ugh this guy thought he was a big shot by getting a roll in his first and only musical. He just happened to be one of 2 guys who were basses, and there were 2 bass parts, so both of them got rolls. He thought he was so important when really his character is only in like, 3 scenes.
One show I was in had a girl playing one of the minor named characters and thought it made her a star and gave her directorial powers. Literally every time the actual director gave anyone in the chorus something to do, she would immediately pop up with “Shouldn’t a *lead* do that?” We were all fed up with her by the end of the show.
I call it “Drama Club Drama’. One directed I did 10 shows with as a musical director. She was really good but I lasted much longer than most of her partnerships.
Not a full on musical, but a review show: 2 x 1 hour long shows a day for 2 weeks over the summer, performed by 95% children with a few 18-25yo in singing roles. Between shows, dressing room was off limits, but someone was propping open a side door to dressing rooms, coming back and stealing personal stuff. Mostly trinkets like necklaces dancers took off for performances. Parents initially put it down to kids losing stuff until one of the parents who volunteered as a dresser had something stolen from a handbag she had left in her kids' costume bag (assuming the dressing rooms were secure because patents took it in turns to moniter access. Turned out it was one of the principles.
My elementary school bully and I were in a show together. That was *fun.* Not. Girl, what's it to you what I'm doing? If the director wants me to do something different, that's totally on him. AND NOT YOU.
Not especially terrible, but annoying. When I was playing in Cinderella as a middle schooler we had not just one drama teacher, but a drama teacher, a singing teacher and two directors. One of directors was a really cool woman from our local Arts college and she suggested beautiful solutions and made our acting way more interesting. And then our drama teacher came and destroyed it all every time, asked us to play those scenes as she wanted, get back to this awkward positioning on stage we had before, etc.
She wasn't particularly AWFUL to work with but a bit difficult. A little girl in a production of Into The Woods who constantly showed up with a sugar rush, running around like crazy. My best story about this girl is when she called 911 and the police showed up and then got the most experienced actor in the show blamed for it. Dude was a champ and took the blame for it Edit: By the way, the reason we let her get away with so much was because her dad had cancer and he passed away while we were working on the show. She had a twin sister and an older sister so we tried to be very understanding
School bully was in high school musical at school so i quit
I have a few. I was mostly acting in community theaters, but I did crew for school productions. Our main cue-caller was known to have a petty and vindictive streak. One of our fly operators got on their bad side and they would purposefully skip calling their cues, causing them to get screamed at by the director. I was Wendy Jo in a production of Footloose and most of the men in the cast hated each other/had past relationship histories with each other which made for a lot of drama backstage.
A castmate in a summer theater camp I was in last year falsely accused me of harassment and accused my friend of an assault which supposedly happened the night he was at my house watching *The Wrath of Khan*. The execs didn’t care about his rock solid alibi and he was fired from the show three days before performance. When did it become acceptable to use that as a weapon against people you don’t like?
Almost every musical, there's someone in the ensemble who thinks she should have gotten the lead. Ugh.
The Prima Donna type. Can't help others to run lines, shows up late, snaps at child actors, etc.
I was music director on a production with a director who bullied me and others the entire time. He was ageist, sexist, and rude, and it was an extremely difficult show because of him.
Cueboard operator who I allowed to take over my job for a night. She sat and smoked, and got angry at me when I fixed a mistake she made. Never again.
I was going out with the director (same age) and I was dumped right before the start of rehearsals. They were just generally pretty awful to me and treated me worse than anyone else on the cast and I’ve never felt more insecure about my abilities.
My friend is in a show right now and the leading actress just microwaved fish in the green room for the third time this week…
The director for a production of Wozard of Oz I was assistant choreographer and a backstage hand for. She was just so entitled. She got mad when the scene changes she directed didn’t work, yelled at the cast all the time because her shitty direction went badly, only liked working with the leads and left the ensemble to the wayside, did not know the name of a guy who she gave multiple speaking parts too and verbally abused me, my fellow crew members, my stage manager the most and refused to listen to tlher producers about anything and got her boyfriend, who was the president of the local thesyrr company, to back her up on everything. Safe to say I'm gald that's over and never have to work with her again.
Ohhh here’s some TEA tea. Sophomore year. Oklahoma. Double casted all girls school. So we have C and K who played Laurey and T and M who played Curley. So one thing about K is she had really bad anxiety and on one of the days we were supposed to be performing for the school, K was having a panic attack. I ran to go find a teacher and came back with one who had us all go back to our own things while she texted the stage manager teacher (SM) to come down to the backstage bathrooms. This next part I got from my friend who was in the main changing and costume storage areas T and M find C and tell her she needs to be ready to cover for K in case she can’t go on. C immediately goes into tantrum mode screaming that she can’t and she’s not warmed up properly and she’s gonna go and force K on if she has to. To which T tells her it’s not that big a deal and that she has to be ready to do it and that she needs to be more compassionate. C’s response was to slap T across the face just as SM walks in. She got a telling off and was told that as the SM she had final authority and she would be going on if K couldn’t. C was a bit of a diva the whole time. She tried demanding we clear areas so she can warm up. Argued with the director. Would flip out at us for ruining her show if someone messed up. Screamed at me for being off book before her despite me only having a few lines as Ike Skidmore. It was wild
I was SMing a production of Beauty and the Beast. Ended up getting stalked by a young ensemble member. He would show up at my house with soup when I was sick on day (didn’t touch it) and other small gifts. He followed me home one night and I drive straight to the police department. One night . I told him if he spoke to me again I’ll get a RO against him. He started focusing on girls in the ensemble. One night during the show (small theatre where I had to run across the lobby and up a stairs. Same path every show which was known) and he and 2 girls sat on the stairs completely blocking it. I could not see them as I rounded a corner. Saw them at the last minute and sort of hurled my self over to make a costume change for Belle into the yellow dress. Tore my ACL completely. I got a RO after the show that night and we replaced him.
I have a crap ton: -In my last middle school play, there was this girl who constantly got understudies (6th: Matilda, 7th: Justice, 8th: Katherine) and she complained 24/7. She was overall a brat shame bc she’s pretty talented. -I did a theatre camp and was partnered up with a girl who not only sucked ass (she couldn’t hold a note or put energy into ANYTHING), but was convinced she was better than everyone, giving us “tips”, throwing a tantrum when she didn’t get the part she wanted, etc. And she was just weird and creepy overall. She talked about doing drugs loud and proud. Like ok, but why announce it? -I was in a production of Matilda (see above) and for one of the ending scenes when it shows the chias of all the kids having fun finally, my director had a couple of us do a kick line. The girl next to me was super full of herself, unable to have a conversation not about her, and thought she was the best. Maybe she was the best alone, but not in a group bc since she wasn’t a “team player” she dragged everyone down, using us to hoist herself up. I got tired of it and asked to stop during tech week, which she agreed to. But then, during one of the actual preformances, she shoved me away and I fell down hard, in front of EVERYONE. But yeah overall most ppl in theatre are lovely, except for the few ones just in there for fame.
Choas* sorry
I directed a production of Carrie the Musical and my Margaret turned out to be a lowkey alcoholic. She would show up to rehearsals drunk and she could never remember her blocking or lines. I would have to go over them with her multiple times and she would act like we were going over it for the first time, every single time. When we were going over notes at the end of rehearsals, she would completely zone out. And sometimes she would just fall asleep… on the floor… Thankfully she got her act together after being given an ultimatum, and the show went on.
My high school director was pretty bad. He throw a chair at a student because they set the prop wrong. Took a couple of females in the woods to take"sexy" photos for Juds wall for Oklahoma. Told everyone they had to get period appropriate glass or contacts. My mom did report the last one to the school, and he confronted us on our way in to my best friend's funeral. I know there is more. But over all, he told us he treated us like professionals. This was a small school in the Midwest.
I’ve had a lot. I think the worst one happened this year though. An old friend who hates my guts now cuz of drama would be open and friendly with literally the whole cast but when I came to me they were snappish and cold. They would glare at me and ignore me when I was talking along with other things. I’m a senior this year and it made my last show really awkward.
Not a musical but we had a freshman my senior year get cast in the lead role. It (and the fact his family was the wealthiest in the town) made the experience a living hell. For one thing, he was chronically 20-30 minutes late to every single rehearsal. This got really bad during Tech Week (when we needed him). The worst was that he was just an unpleasant bully. Joffrey if Joffrey didn’t have a crown on his head and a killing streak. He would speak over the director and tell us what we were doing wrong. It was BAD. Our director tried to get him kicked out because of his bratty behavior but was told by not only the family (who were big time donors to the school) but the principal told her that if he was kicked out, it would’ve been the end of the drama club. So we were stuck with him. I did get even with him though on behalf of the whole drama club. He was in a cemetery scene and I managed to grab his ankle while croaking out his character’s name in a voice reminiscent of the Evil Hag’s voice from Snow White. Did I mention this was on opening night? He screamed such a high pitched, undignified girlish squeal that it got the biggest and loudest laugh and applause from the audience. I found out years later that he had peed his pants.
I was in one musical in middle school (7th grade) and it sadly put me off from doing any musicals. Our director was seriously so serious and rude! He threatened to cut me out cause I stopped holding the door for a moment to help out one of the actresses (which was my job as the stage hand). I never worked for another play or musical again, which is so sad cause I LOVE musicals!
A lot of stage-y school kids and amateur dramatic performers tend to be hard work. 😂
I was in a production of Fiddler where the Tevye was an absolute nightmare. Any time something didn’t go his way he would start ranting about how “I’ve waited fifteen years to play this part.” But at least he was terrible in the part. He was basically just doing Topol, but with the bonus that this guy also had some toxic masculinity issues, so when Tevye was supposed to be looking pleadingly up to the heavens, he just looked kinda irritated.
The director of a production I was in, when I was a teenager. I was initially cast as the understudy for the lead role. The leads were adult actors, and none of the other understudies they cast actually took the parts, so they decided to drop the notion of understudies for this show. So the director assigned me as the "rehearsal stand in". This meant that I had to come to 5 cast rehearsals a week, plus a chorus rehearsal on weekends (none of the rest of the cast, nor the director, would come to Chorus rehearsals, as in this show, the chorus was completely partitioned off from the main cast). I went ahead and filled in all the lines for tiny parts they didn't want to have to call to rehearse, and occasionally real parts, if someone was sick. I learned the lines and blocking for every character. A thankless job, but whatever, I was young. And then one of the leads wasn't going to be able to make it to a rehearsal, when we were going to be doing a TV spot. The director decided to get someone else to fill in the part for TV, who knew none of the part, and would have his face buried in the script. They told me it was because he had a louder voice than me, but anyone who knew me cracked up laughing at that excuse, so I have no idea why they wanted to get him to cold read it, after having me learn parts for two months. They also got super mad at me in a tech rehearsal, because they had suddenly decided that I would be a good person to bring this bench off stage after a scene, but didn't know where to find me to tell me that. I didn't have a queue for ages, so I was hanging out with some of my friends amongst the dancers. The director told me "actors DON'T associate with dancers!", and then instructed to me to wait back stage right, at all times, for the rest of the show, "in case they needed me for something". I'd go on for the chorus parts, say my couple of "yes sir" lines, and then just sit on a bench, in case the director decided I could fill in another stage hand part. Yes, this was unpaid community theater.
I haven't had much time to do musicals since starting college but high school theatre girls are so goddamn cliquey...
Four words, flying monkey third graders. Never again NEVER AGAIN
I was not even IN the musical, but when I was in high school, there was this girl I had gym with who would not shut the hell up about not getting the role she wanted. She’d complain about it to her friends every single day in the locker room for the entirety of the semester. I felt like I was losing my mind and I can’t imagine what she was like during rehearsals
I’m doing a production of Pippin and the actor playing Pippin has been a complete ass wipe to everyone in the cast and constantly talks down about most of the people in the cast. Insecurity is a really sad thing.
in a production of elf where i was walter, there was this one kid in the ensemble who never washed his hands. like ever. they where crusty and had boogers on them 24/7, and i had to hold his left hand during bows. it was sticky. there are some worse personalitys ive met in theater but i can not get over those hands to this day
Sadly, it was little 10 year old me who ruined a little readers theatre at my summer camp. I hated that camp and I wanted everyone there to be just as miserable as me. We were doing a scene from Moana and the director lady asked if anyone wanted to be the grandma. Being the little prick that I was, I yelled out “Why would anyone want to be the grandma? She dies in the end.” The director took me to the side and had a talk with me. For the rest of the drama classes, I sat on the side silently. That was the worst weekend of my life.
Mine is tame compared to everyone else's, but I only ever did a couple of plays. I was in the chorus for Little Shop, we didn't have a huge amount to do and there were huge gaps between our numbers. During a rehearsal I was sat back stage reading my book, as opposed to sitting bored out of my mind. Along comes....oh, let's call him Sgt. Douche, and he scolds me (I was 13 he was 15, like he has the right to scold me 🙄) for reading, I apparently shouldn't be doing that backstage 🙄. Sgt. Douche fancied himself King of the backstage. His job was dealing with the props and operating the Audrey 2 puppets, NOT stage manager and not babysitter of the younger kids. Basically I ignored him and kept reading, I later found out he went and told on me to the drama teacher who did not give a fuck what I was doing, as long as I was quiet backstage.
Well when I was a teenager I was in the costume department for a musical and one night we were taking measurements when the director comes in to check on us and "borrows" our measuring tape. It's fine though, we have a few of them anyway. Measurements are done, everyone gets ready to go, but my head of dept tells me I need to get the measuring tape back from him before I leave for the night. I go looking for the director and realise he's in another room rehearsing with the main leads. I didn't want to interrupt them, so I sat outside the room waiting for him to come out. Almost an hour passes, he doesn't come out and it's past midnight, so when I hear him call for a 15 min break, I knock on the door and apologise for interrupting, telling him I need the measuring tape back. He proceeds to blow up at me, yelling how dare you interrupt an important rehearsal with my leads, what do you think you're doing, don't you know who I am, etc, and finally he says has no idea who I am and has never seen me before in his life so why would he even have any of my stuff? Door gets shut in my face, I leave thinking I would probably have to replace the measuring tape on my own. As I'm walking home, one of the lead actors calls out. He's running after me with the measuring tape in his hand. Turns out the director really did have the measuring tape in his pocket the whole time, he had just forgotten about it. It's not a big deal like some of these other stories and maybe I really was in the wrong for interrupting, but I love musicals and it was my first time working on one so it did leave me a little bit put out.
We where playing As It Is In Heaven at our Opera and we had a Eeyore stuffed animal that one of the kids in the show played with. But the Leif who fixed the light ques and all of that always hit Eeyore and he was very mean to our little Eeyore😥 but at his birthday we got him his own Eeyore so he could hit his own Eeyore.
The lighting director I was the assistant of for my college's performance of 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee constantly misgendered me
Worked with a dude who was high all the time, even hitting his THC pen backstage during intermission. He would also randomly change blocking during a performance without warning anyone and without any consideration for how his choice affected or changed another actor's track.
Oliver Twist. I was playing Widow Corney. The girl playing Nancy had no chemistry with Bill so she walked up to me and said that the guy playing Mr Bumble didnt like me so it would mess up our chemistry onstage and make herself look better.