Seeing that theater disaster improv post again just makes me think of Nightmare, which is all improv and can have a whole lot of potential weirdness happen by nature of how and where it’s built. Apparently one night a whole ass deer walked INTO my hunter’s cabin set building to check things out during the run of the show and the poor confused actors in there radioed for assistance because “WHAT DO WE DO IT’S AN ENTIRE DEER?????”
Casting shot back to them, “Well, you’re a hunter. What do you THINK you should be doing?”
This year I was working in the clown surgery playground set when the power went out. Now, we are built in the literal woods with all the hazards that come with that, so if the lights are out when they shouldn’t be, it’s dangerous for patrons to keep moving through, so as actors we are instructed to grab a flashlight, shine it on the ground, and stop the patrons from moving forward until ops can get the lights back on. All while staying in character, of course. Which can get tough when people think you’re just doing a bit and not actually trying to get them to stay where they are for safety reasons.
The two high schoolers in set with me that night have no idea what to do, one of them won’t stop lifting the flashlight up and keeps shining it in people’s faces. But we’re doctors and clowns so I just yell “I’M GONNA HAVE TO SURGICALLY REMOVE MY EYES PLEASE SHINE THAT ON THE GROUND” several times, bc they kept forgetting and lifting it up again
And while I’m radioing for assistance, I also have to keep telling the patrons to Hold The Fuck Up, insisting that “We do our BEST doctoring when we can see what we’re doing and you REALLY want to wait until the lights are on because we don’t want AAAAAAANY malpractice suits in here.” A couple of them weren’t buying it and shoved past us anyway and we can’t really do anything about that except hope that they don’t fall into a ditch and that the next set is able to stop them. As they ran away into the dark I reassured them that “If you break a leg cause you didn’t listen to us, at least you’re RIGHT BY a CERTIFIED doctor’s office! We’ll patch you riiiiight up! :)”
