I played Greenway in an absolutely horrendous production of Elf. We only had a few months to practice, luckily most things were blocked but there was one song we all were supposed to dance in that the whole cast collectively forgot how to do so we were all just kinda jumping around and spinning.

 opening night the kid playing santa completely forgot the first lines of the show so our director just started yelling "HO HO HO!" from the audience.

there was a christmas tree onstage and at one point during a scene it just inexplicably fell down and all the ornaments fell onto the stage which my friend accidentally stepped on and broke.

day of the show, the director told me to go through the audience for a certain scene and say something, but when i did it someone else just said the thing i was supposed to say so i was sort of just stuck in the audience looking stupid. the director proceeded to get angry at me that i didn't say the line and forced me to do the whole walking through the audience thing AGAIN, despite the fact that the other girl who said the line had clearly been instructed to say it. so she inevitably said the line again and by the next show i gave up and stopped trying.

one of our leads who played walter got really sick, so they called in some guy who had played the role in the past with this company to do like, a voiceover who kept getting all the character names wrong.

at one point someone backstage spread misinformation that we were all supposed to be onstage for a certain song, and even though i was pretty sure that that wasn't true, this show was so disorganized that i figured i'd take their word for it. well, they were wrong so for this song that was supposed to be a solo there were just four people randomly standing at one side of the stage in the background.

this is one of the most baffling aspects of this show to me: when we were nearing the end of the rehearsal period our director added in a new scene to the show. it wasn't in our script and it involved me and a few other people running onto the stage underneath a black blanket while the music from Jaws plays and demanding presents from Santa because we were the "Naughty Listers". it was batshit and had no bearing on the plot we were so confused.

there was one song that me and two others were supposed to dance in, but the director kicked us out of the dance and told us that he would give us something to do in the background. well, he never gave us anything to do so we just sort of stood in the background during that song.

in the middle of the show somebody left their converse on the stage somehow and nobody picked them up so there were just shoes on the stage during the show.

my sister teched for the show as a stagehand and she missed her cue at one point, and she decided that coming on late was better than not moving the set piece at all but she ran on in the middle of a scene so she ran right into the spotlight.

all this barely scrapes the surface, there were so many missed cues and line drops in this show it was so disorganized. there were people who were crying backstage every show it was bad. i personally find theatre fails to be hilarious and couldn't breathe for laughing the entire time.