When we did bye bye birdie, our Albert could not seem to remember this one line- the pumpkin falls Iowa one, the last night it came out like this
"Iowa city high school...um pumpkin college iowa falls pumpkin, iowa!"
we all were cracking up, luckily we were able to watch it again and again on film...

The scene in which Ursula, Deborah Sue and Margie are up all night singing the "Conrad Birdie" song takes place in front of the curtain, while the stage crew sets up the set for the Macafee residence. After that set of the girls' lines, Mrs. Merkle is supposed to come out and drag all three of the girls back home, while the curtain comes up, revealing the Macafee home.
HOwever, during our dress rehearsal, the curtain came up a minute late, so, well...this is what happened.
Mrs. Merkle: Ursula, we have to go home now. It's late.
Ursula: No, Mom. I want to sing my song.
Mrs. Merkle: No, Ursula. YOu are coming home. NOW.
Ursula: No! I am singing my song!
Margie: Yeah, Mrs. Merkle! Just leave us alone!
Deborah Sue: WE HATE YOU, MRS. MERKLE!!!!
Mrs. Merkle: It's too late, Ursula! We're going home.
Ursula: LEMME SING MY SONG!!!!

...and then the curtain came up.

OH, and just remembered... yet another one on opening night. I was Mamma Mae, and it was that scene outside Maude's after Mae's long speech, and Albert had just said, "Goodnight, Mama." What did I say? "You're just like your father.....Goodnight, Albert." Kinda odd when Albert's next line was "My name is not Sonnyboy," and Mae's next line was "GOODNIGHT ALBERTTTTTTTTTT..."A case of redundancy here...

In the scene where the mayor presents the key to Birdie, our key was cardboard. On one night it broke in half. Birdie gave the mayor a hilarious facial expression and the audience loved it. During "Ed Sullivan" (the song, not the show) one of the flats fell. It was pretty bad... and loud.

I wasn't in the production, but a company close to me (who I did BATB and Honk! with) recently did BBB.....it was interesting.

They used a really light and flimsy little desk for the opening scene (English Teacher). During the blackout, Rosie had to go offstage and change her costume for her next scene. They guy doing the set change decided to change his path in which he takes the desk offstage and ran RIGHT into Rosie with it. She tumbled.....into the orchestra pit. The orchestra wasn't in the pit because the pit was too small, but it was still quite a big fall. She was unconcious. The make-up designer was there and woke her up with smelling salt. Rosie missed her next cue, but was okay. But for the rest of the run, she had a GIANT GIANT GIANT band-aid on her shin. Yikes.

I must say my FAVOURITE blooper from my production was one we didn't realize until later when we watched the video and all learned a valuable lesson on what NOT to discuss when there is the possibility of a live mic around.

One of our Shriners was backstage discussing God knows what was the jist of the conversation but he was standing too close to our Albert, who's mic was accidentally left on and when watching the scene right before "A Lot of Livin' To Do" we hear Andy say, very low, but clearly, "Look at the size of my shoes. They make me look like a goofy b*st*rd!" To this DAY he has never lived it down. And that was almost 6 years ago!

Also immediately after the Breakfast scene at the Macafees as they were clearing the scene the stage crew managed to break all of the dishes and there was a huge crash backstage. Also lucky enough to be caught on tape.

When I had to do one of my fainting bits during You Gotta Be Sincere, I actually banged my knee incredibly hard when I went down the wrong way, had a huge bruise for like 2 weeks afterwards and was fighting tears the entire scene. It also didn't help that the guys who caught me for one of the faints grabbed too hard under my arms either!

Lastly at the end of the Shriners ballet our Shriners are all standing in a line facing the audience and Rosie jumps into their arms and lays across them all. Well they didn't exactly catch her and their end pose ended up with half of her just dangling.


This isn't really a blooper but our Telephone Booths for the Telephone Hour were rented from some scenery place or another and dirty things were written on the insides and no one had ever bothered to paint over it. Lets just say in a production full of high school boys it was quite amusing.

That's so funny!!! Hahahahaha "BECAUSE IT WAS COLD"?!?!? hahaha who says that?!?!? lol

Hahaha I love moments like that. It really shows who can ad lib and hold their own and who can't. Those are both incredibly hilarious though. My friend Lyndsey had something like that happen to her when she was playing Mame and someone missed an entrance and she didn't even have much of a scene to work with and ad lib off of.

Our Ursula got her hair caught on the duct tape of Conrad's mic, during Honestly Sincere. She didn't want to stop the scene, so she just ripped a chunk of hair out of her head.

Let's see...we had a LOT of phone problems in our show (which ended mid july).

In rehearsal the first scene where I (Albert) has the phone in the beginning and then puts it down, the cord got caught on the edge of the desk and kinda fell down. It was alright for the moment as I was supposed to be freaking out...but the phone had broken in two. Later in the scene Rose uses the phone multiple times. Luckily it was just rehearsal and we fixed that phone.

However....that phone ended up breaking again as it was also used in the Macafee house. When Mrs. Macafee called down Kim because she had a phone call and the whole "Doris" thing happens, Mrs. Macafee dropped the phone while handing it to kim. Sure enough it broke in two again. However, they covered PERFECTLY as the conversation then went:

Kim: MOTHER! That was for me!
Mrs. Macafee: I'm sorry I'm just flustered...I mean...you called me Doris! *storms off* (as she had to reenter later in the scene and they were now missing her exit cue)
then when Kim was talking on the phone which was in held together by this dangling wire between the two halves and she was kinda holding awkwardly up to her head and said "I'm sorry, it's kind of hard to heard you, can you repeat that?" and the audience burst into laughter.

In another scene the phone at that Macafee's wasn't put on for the scene and the phone ring and I had to answer it (the whole bit with talking to the reporter), but it wasn't on stage. So I said "I'll get it" (which was my line) and then walked straight off stage ignoring the 2 lines i had after. Then I reentered later in the scene (when I start talking on the phone with the reporter again) and continued.

Conrad in A Lot of Livin' ended up entering too early during one of the parts and just paused and said "blargh"...twas kinda awkward.

There are more...I'll prolly remember them later.

~The Lone Wanderer

oh man, well i was in a profesanal company of it so nothing to bad when worng, but every night our Mae changed up the lines of it a little, i don't reber it exsacly but it was somthing like, when albert leaves her finaly she would say soming thing drastic , one like she started singing "stop in the name of love before you brack my hart,...think it ooover...." and some nights shed pertend to rip her hart out and stomp on it. it was funny.

Well, I just got cast as Rosie in a local production. At the auditions, I was reading the scene where the whole "Conrad Birdie Kisses Kim Macafee" plot is formed.

In one of the lines, I had to refer to Conrad as a "bongo-playing car thief." Instead, I called him a "car-playing bongo thief." And then I almost started laughing, thinking of Conrad, in his gold-lame glory, running away from the cops carrying a set of bongos.

For every single show I (Kim), mixed up the words of How Lovely to be a Woman. Sometimes it would be lovely to change from boys to men, while wearing lipstick and heels, sometimes i'd be staying out till after ten.... i just couldn't get the words straight! It was all good though, because i totally faked a dance, and our director didn't eben notice... though in retrospect, that could have had more to do with the director than my fab ad lib skills.......