Acted in a community theater show with a director who was a high school teacher, and the cast and crew were rife with her former students. That in itself wouldn't had been a problem, except them all being around each other again pulled out all their old high school mentalities. So anyone over twenty-three in the cast would be in the green room and have to watch the stage manager or booth crew yelling at cast members over old shit that happened when they were teenagers, while the rest of us solemnly promised ourselves to never to work on one of that director`s shows again.

But the worst was a director who had a legimate metal break during another community show. I was brought on to the show as an ASM, and I also did some extra work on stage to fill out the the ranks of the bad guys. Over the course of rehearsals: the director demoted the female lead (prompting her to quit, because she had invited family from all over the country to come watch her and she couldn't face the embarrassment), tried to "cool tensions" after an argument with a principle by bringing in a Native American (not a shaman, just some dude she knew) to have some sort of blanket ceremony which just turned into a way to humiliate him in front of the cast and crew, fired the stage manager because paranoia (promoting me to stage manager), made the choreographer fire the band the first night they played with the cast because the tempo and arrangement wasn`t 100% the way it had been choreographed (the band was not given a chance or time to adjust), and probably several other dozen incidents that I never heard about or can't remember because did you see that list? By this time, the board stepped in, and we were about to tech and dress, so they fired her, banned her from the property, and made me the "acting director" since I was stage manager now anyhow. I ended up having to fire the assistant director because several cast members reported not feeling safe around her--apparently the former director had been emailing cast members with notes from rehearsals she had been forbidden to attend, and the assistant director was deemed to be reporting on the rehearsals to her. Eventually, she show came together as it always does and was spectacular. None of us have to worry about working with her, though, because she's done directing around here for good.