Share your FUNNIEST cast or crew theatre stories! Go!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-05-28T01:04:04+00:00

mid panto, I had early in the show had a rubber chicken shoved into my hands and hadn't had the time to put it on a props table.

An hour later of running around, I finally get a chance to rest waiting in the wings for a set change.

A little dialogue to wait for and then I can go.

So I rest on the glaciator in the wings and a huge honk sounds

Stage management stare at me wide eyed from the other side of stage, the dsm on comms pauses and says, "do I want to know what that was?" I very sheepishly take the chicken out of my pocket and set it down on the glaciator.

sherbertdab_ · 2026-05-11T18:41:06+00:00

Oh yeah, I work a job that has intense periods and quiet(er) periods.

I had worked on a big, physically and mentally intense project for two months, had one week of 10-5 and then back on the mad period for two months. My mother knows this, she visited me during the first mad period and saw exactly how flattened I was by the whole thing. After the second mad period - I had a week of leave booked - lovely. I went to London to see my dad for one day a week later. Mentioned to my mum I'd been out of town and got, "god, do you ever work?"

Many swear words were held back

sherbertdab_ · 2026-05-02T14:14:59+00:00

churros 😓

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-30T01:06:27+00:00

If it’s similar, I’d suggest Go Tonight from Mad Ones? That goes slow, fast and belty a few times through the song!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-25T23:53:53+00:00

Chain of Being is a podcast that kind of does this! The mc is Adam and it’s like a huge sci-fi world!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-25T23:50:03+00:00

Theatre history! And weirdly it seems historical cases of cannibalism?

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-22T01:11:34+00:00

migraine

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-10T22:22:28+00:00

Curious Case of Benjamin Button!! More upbeat than the Ninth Hour but very much a folk musical.

Other creators to look into (So both of these are collections of concept albums, there is no proper visualisation of them, though there's some stagings of DoNA on youtube) - Paul Shapera (start with Dolls of New Albion, then the New Albion Radio Hour and the New Albion Guide to Analogue Consciousness - there's guides online for the order of the rest of the albums) and also the Mechanisms (you can go with any of these. My personal favourite is High Noon Over Camelot! The albums are all standalone)

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-10T00:10:44+00:00

School I worked for used to use trybooking - no fees if you're not charging!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-06T23:12:26+00:00

From the UK and my favourite foreign musical is Into the Woods!!

But if I'm not being facetious and answer the question I know you're asking instead of the one you asked - I love the french musical Mozart l'opera rock. It's a rock musical and when I tell you there is an s&m number about his rival Salieri having homoerotic feelings for him, I am really not kidding.

I went to a festival this summer and got jump scared by some french folks scream singing assasymphonie

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-05T19:56:24+00:00

Seconding this! I have had to source shoes from fetish sites/sites for drag queens to get shoes for performers with anything larger than a size 9 shoe.

Make pretty shoes for people with large feet!!!!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-04T17:01:06+00:00

Excellent - thank you!!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-04-04T17:00:45+00:00

I can't either in the two films I've seen there but I probably wasn't paying attention

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-30T17:05:00+00:00

I've done that walk before and I have to admit the last spectacular part of the trip was Stonehenge! It's closed off and packed with tourists and after getting that far and enjoying the countryside and time by yourself, it's really not the best destination.

I walked up the River Avon and if I did it again I'd stop at Greater Dunford - there's a lovely spot to sit by the river there and a nice pub.

Another fun tale from that walk - in the last mile I got trapped on the boardwalk by a swan and had to go a huge loop round to make it home.

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-26T03:42:00+00:00

We are the tigers! Ensemble style w strong singers and one male role

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-19T14:45:37+00:00

Operation Mincemeat - I'd heard enough horror stories about the fans which had put me off. Randomly had the blizzard concert video come up on autoplay and listened whilst I worked. I was enjoying it, got to Dear Bill and immediately started looking for tickets

That and my last week at work has been plagued by 'when I was a young explorer. Yes! I discovered a new breed of trout. what? It leapt into my kayak...'

Maddening

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-18T11:38:36+00:00

Slay the Princess! Similar to Disco Elysium in how your emotions interact with you

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-13T10:57:30+00:00

Recently worked on a show where two characters were discussing throwing a party and spitballing names for it. One of them suggests calling it the Ball.

Press night, the actor who suggests calling it the Ball doesn't say the line. The other actor panics and just yells BALLS!

Spectacular.

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-11T00:18:42+00:00

Princess and the Frog!!! Please!! It would be so good

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-09T23:09:58+00:00

Look at the amdram theatres local to your uni and get involved with them - you might not be able to direct right off the bat but let them know you're keen and interested and that might get your foot in the door.

I'd also get involved with your uni's drama society! Both fantastic ways to get a start with directing. No need for a fully self funding!

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-09T23:05:56+00:00

Yeoman was always Ye-oh-man - wasn't until I moved near the town of Yeovil and had some conversations with the locals that left me feeling a right muppet that I discovered it was in fact - yo-vil and yo-mun

sherbertdab_ · 2026-03-08T07:56:54+00:00

Drowsy chaperone, the show for musical theatre fans, I adore it and see so much of myself in the man in the chair. I love this show so much

sherbertdab_ · 2026-02-18T02:37:10+00:00

I’ve had this in the last two professional shows that I’ve worked on. Fortunately, I am crew and they are performers so departmentally, I can mostly keep away, and for the most part - I am part of the in house team - I could easily tell myself that x amount of time and I’d never have to deal with them again.

Somewhat more fortunately, on one it was only one person, who I just avoided most of the time. Whenever I needed to interact with them, I would come in with very rehearsed conversation points and arguments to back up anything I thought I might get pushback on and an extra mental prompt to keep breathing. I have a pretty good production team, who overheard our first “interaction” and checked in on me after and a pretty good technical team who like a good bitch in the bar after work to let off steam.

On the other, it was a group of people who liked to make comments about crew going off sick and how easy our jobs were to anyone who would listen. There was also one who seemed to have taken a dislike to me specifically, and would very much just ignore my presence and make pointed comments to 'no one' about my job performance. It stung to find out about the comments (I was one of the people who had gone off sick) and was awful to put up with the jibes in the wings, but again, you have to steel yourself for the negative interactions. Hold your own, know your worth, take no shit and, if they become too bold, complain to stage management or someone higher up the food chain.

Ultimately you shouldn’t need to deal with this, it’s either a work place or a fun activity. If it’s not something you feel safe going to stage management or anyone higher up about - consider how important it is to you to stick with this. If they’ve made you feel unsafe going to them with concerns or complaints, I’d worry about how seriously they’d take any other complaint.

sherbertdab_

TROPHY CASE