Long John Silver's Reference Website

Forum Archives - Bloopers

In March 2000, the Forum was asked to submit horror stories from the different theatrical productions that they had seen or been in. The following are parts of actual posts submitted by Forum regulars -- and not-so-regulars.

"I went and saw Little Me and there was a guy who played four men who are all husbands (or were -- most of them get killed) of this one woman, so he had to change costumes really fast. At one point he played a frenchman with a mustache. He left to change into another character that does not have a mustache, got into his costume, and came on stage, but he forgot to take his mustache off! The other actor on stage started cracking up, so the guy just played with the audience and made jokes about it. They finished their scene, and then he went back on later as the frenchman again. But no one could stop laughing, so it took a while for him to get back into character.

"One time during 'Hard-Knock Life', Pepper's bucket rolled off the stage, and a woman from the audience threw it back up. It rolled right past Pepper and went all the way back to the curtain. I had to go get it. I handed it to Molly and she gave it to Pepper.

"During A Tree Grows In Brooklyn theres a Halloween scene where we had to carry these huge ghost things on a broom stick handle and run around a man in the middle of the stage. They were really heavy! On opening night, I ran around him, and the second time around I droped the ghost on him. His line before that happened was, 'O evil ghost, don't come any closer!'

"During a talent show I sang a duet with my friend Chris. We sang 'Anything You Can Do' [from Annie Get Your Gun], and we got mixed up on our lyrics. I sang 'I can jump a hurdle!' and he sang 'I can wear a girdle!'

"In Annie, when I really started belting out 'TOMORROW, TOMORROW, I LOVE YA TOMORROW!' I guess it got to loud for Sandy. He just got up and went off stage like it was nothing.

"I did a talent show recently, and I was doing a scene and two songs. I did a scene from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, where I was leaning on a piano and talking to Schroder. The piano was on wheels, and I leaned on it too much (fortunately this was at a rehearsal!), and it rolled right off the stage! The stage was not a very high one, only about two inches off the floor. Then I sang 'Memory' from Cats, and I was wearing a leotard, and my body mike went down into it. I kept singing and trying to get my mike out!" - Jessie

"During my junior year of high school (I've been out of school for about 5 years), I was in Drama. We did two shows that year. In the fall, we did "Robin Hood" (the show was actually done just two weeks before Christmas). Early on, there is supposed to be a scene where Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham are fighting (the Sheriff has a sword and Robin Hood has a wooden staff). During our first performance, for the high school students, the Sheriff's sword broke in half during the fight scene, and someone just tossed the Sheriff another sword, and the fight scene continued. Later, I think that they used masking tape on the broken sword, and it was ready for the end of the play when the next fight scene took place." - Rachel W.

"Bloopers? I've seen so many community theater productions of Annie over the years while covering them for Annie People that I've seen a whole lot of bloopers!

"I once saw the batten (the long pole the length of the stage to hold up a piece of scenery) fall during 'Fully Dressed' just as the radio show people were leaving and the Orphans were starting. One end came loose and conked one of the Boylan Sisters on the head (she was OK and did the next performance). The show had to be stopped for 5 minutes while the other end of the batten was untied and lowered to the stage and removed.

"I've seen any number of Sandys drag Annie all over the stage during 'Tomorrow'. Some community theater Annie directors underestimate the importance of finding a trained (or at least docile) Sandy and wait until three days before opening night and say to the cast during tech week, 'Oh, by the way, anybody got a dog?'

"I once saw Molly somersault into the laundry cart, and then the other Orphans closed the top and sat on it to conceal Molly from Miss Hannigan. The top caved in with the Orphans on it, trapping Molly inside. The Orphans and Miss Hannigan continued their lines as usual while struggling to loosen the top and extricate Molly. When they finally did, and an unhurt Molly jumped out of the cart, the audience broke into applause.

"When I saw Aileen Quinn do Annie on the stage in North Carolina in 1986, when she came down the stairs in the red dress for the first time, her body mike slipped out of the inside pocket of her dress and swung back and forth around her legs during her little dance with Harve Presnell who was playing Warbucks. For her subsequent performances, Aileen wore white tights with the mike safely secured inside.

"In another show at the same scene, the buttons up the back of Annie's dress came loose making the back go flapping all over the place during the dance. During the rest of the scene the Servants tried to refasten her dress.

"I've never seen this myself, but several people have reported seeing a Sandy doing his business on the stage during the show. Sandys have been known to toss their cookies on the stage too.

"When a theater group performed Annie in 1991 right in front of the marble stairs in the Mansion building where the movie was filmed 10 years earlier, I was in the front row with Toni Ann Gisondi, whom I invited for the event (she and her family had not been in the building since the filming when she was 6), the Sandy got a little confused at the curtain call, ran to the edge of the stage, slipped off, and ended up in my lap. I had to lift him back onto the stage to complete the curtain call, and the audience loved it.

"There may be more bloopers I can't remember now, but I'll look through our back issues of Annie People. We often reported the bloopers and funny things we have seen in community theater productions of Annie.

"I once saw an Annie wear a green dress instead of the red one, but that's another story." - Jon Merrill

"Reading that little story about Annie's body mike falling off sent waves of nostalgia over me. Body mikes are necessary, I understand, but they're such a pain to wear, and I've seen SO many incidents in which something goes wrong and they end up totally disrupting a show, not to mention the fact that I've been in so many of those situations myself.

"First of all, they're constricting to wear, and you're constantly worrying about damaging them when you're onstage, or feedback, or something like that. The more professional the production and the higher the technology, the less that's a problem, but it's always there. My worst nightmare is that I'll be involved in some sort of really intimate scene in which I'm very close to another actor, and our mikes will start giving off feed back like crazy. That's a mood-wrecker if there ever was one.

"Once, I was onstage in a production of Pippin and as soon as I entered, even before my first
line, the apparatus of the microphone which was clipped to my waist fell off. My heart jumped about six inches in my chest, and all I could think about for the rest of the scene was, 'How in heaven's name am I gonna keep from tripping over this wire?' Luckily I was wearing a really long dress, so I just grabbed the cord through the material of the dress and hung on for dear life. Hopefully the audience thought my character's left arm's strange attatchment to her dress was some sort of acting choice.

"Bloopers are fun! They give us stories to tell -- painful dreams, but fun stories. And God bless body mikes." - Anna

"I was involved in a drama production in a school theatre which supposodly was built in a hurry. Throughout Act Two there was a sudden heavy rainfall which battered on the roof so loud that it was difficult for the audience to hear the show. By the end of the Act the rain had turned into a major storm and began to flood the building. Fortunately the theatre was fine, but after appearing on stage for about 10 minutes, going back to the dressing room I had to jump over huge puddles in the corridor, and found water dripping from the light bulbs. It was actually raining in the canteen, next to the theatre, and some of the ceilings in the building were beginning to cave in. But the show did go on. It was one of the biggest rainfalls in years!

"In a performance of Cyrano De Bergerac I was in, we had to stop the show for about 45 mins on three nights of a five-night run. This was because a smoke machine would set off the fire alarms. We had to stop the show always at a really emotional part and traipse outside with the audience, which ruined everything. It made me so mad.

"My friend saw a production of Annie in Glasgow last year where there was a big problem with the sound at the beginning of the show. All of the orphans' voices were changing and going fuzzy. The actor who was playing Warbucks stepped put onto the stage in the middle of the opening scene and made an announcement and an apology that the show would stop and restart once the technical hitch had been corrected. She said that the girls who were playing Annie and Molly looked at him as he walked on with a scared look of 'What are you doing here?'

"But this one is my favourite. My mum and her friend went to see a Stevie Wonder concert about 20
years ago and he walked off the stage and into the pit. He was OK, they put him back on stage and
he carried on perfectly, so he probably does it often." - Helen

A favorite muffed Annie line: "Anybody want to buy an orphan for the apple's picnic?" -- 1986 National Tour

"In the amateur production of Annie that I was in, Annie's red wig fell off while I was singing 'A New Deal For Christmas'. It landed on my foot, and I almost burst out laughing. As the curtain went down the wig was lying center stage." - Mark

"First of all, it is no secret that Brittny Kissinger, for whatever reason, always had a problem with her shoes. When I first saw her live on stage, Brittny lost her left Mary Jane in the last scene of the play. She was running, I think, and suddenly her shoe flew halfway across the stage! Poor Brittny hobbled around on one shoe for a full three minutes while Drake picked up the shoe, handed it off to Grace a moment later, and finally, while Brittny was sitting with her orphan buddies at the Christmas tree, Grace gave the shoe to Brittny, who struggled to put it on.

"When I saw the Third National Company in 1981, they must have just made a lot of casting changes, because four different cast members forgot their lines during the performance! On most of those occasions, the other adults were looking at each other and wondering what was supposed to come next. Guess who gave the four adults (and one of the orphans) their lines at the proper time? Yup, you guessed it. Bridget Walsh, playing the title role, knew the lines of every single person, and invariably bailed these people out.

"Sandy has always been good for a laugh, but I have never seen the dog in the play do his business on stage or toss his cookies. In a local production, however, the dog playing Sandy did NOT want to be on stage in front of all those people in the audience. Or was it the perfume that our Annie, Betsy Malone, was wearing? Regardless, the dog kept struggling to get off the stage, and Betsy was trying to girlhandle the dog and keep it on the stage. It was hilarious, and the audience laughed uproariously, which didn't help matters any. I think the laughter scared the dog even more, and he struggled all the harder. When the policeman came on stage and started questioning Annie about the dog, he ran off the stage. He finally returned when the trainer demanded the dog's presence on the stage, but even then it took Betsy a full minute to get the dog to come to her when she called.

"In a very recent production of "Annie", Sandy was played by a very rambunctious Golden Retriever.
What was the director thinking? When Annie called the dog over, she hardly got the first "Here, Sandy" out of her mouth when the dog, who was probably as big as the girl playing the title role, bounded over to Annie and jumped up on her, knocking her down.

"In another local production, the actress playing Molly was attempting to do her tap dance during "Dressed Orphans". In stocking feet. On a highly polished wooden floor on the stage. Needless to say, Molly couldn't keep her feet very well, and she stumbled two or three times during the tap dance part of the scene alone. This was very entertaining to the crowd, but very embarrassing to the actress. Her face flushed noticeably for the rest of that scene.

"As if that weren't embarrassing enough, this Molly had another problem later. She was sitting down with the rest of the orphans in her orphan dress, and she was a bit careless and immodest when she sat, as many six-year-olds tend to be. When she sat down, however, the entire audience heard the first several rows gasp in embarrassment. For whatever reason, this little girl wasn't wearing anything underneath her dress, and the audience got more than an eyefull." - Long John Silver

"We have some problems with body mikes in our school. (Or is it the lazy people in the booths who forget to turn them off after the actors leave the stage?) Last fall, during a production of Fools, the actor who was playing Dr. Zubritsky walked offstage and announced to the cast in the wings, 'I need a smoke.' And the whole audience heard. Kinda ruins his innocent image, huh?

"Last spring, during our production of Joseph, the actor playing Joseph walked offstage and started coughing and clearing his throat. His mike was still on, and his lovely coughing and throat-clearing is on the video.

"During our production of Pippin two years ago, the Leading Player (the guy who 'needed a smoke') and Pippin were just starting 'On the Right Track', when the smoke machine set the fire alarm off. (There is a door backstage that leads to the bathroom, and the actors were told not to open it when the smoke machine was on, but they did anyway.) The two men were standing there, and they had no clue what to do! Finally, the Leading Player started the song over again." - Tara

"During Annie Warbucks you can imagine we had a zillion 'bloopers' or little happenings all the time. I will give you a few funny ones.

"We had an ongoing joke backstage. Alene Robertson (Commissioner Doyle) had this little stuffed hot dog with arms and legs named Weenie Man. Every once in a while she would hide it somewhere on the stage. Everyone spent a lot of time looking for that thing. Once it was on the Christmas Tree, another time on the railing of the Staten Island Ferry, on Cindy Lou's collar, but the funniest was when it was hanging underneath FDR's wheelchair!

"Another funny thing with the dog, during the Washington scene, the song 'Somebody's Gotta Do Something', Sandy has a cued bark. If she got it right she got a big treat. One night it was a chunk of turkey. Well, Kathryn [Zaremba] dropped the turkey, and it fell down the cracks in the stage. Of course, Cindy started rooting around for it and spent the rest of the scene with her hind end facing the audience. Also, on Halloween Bill Berloni, the dog trainer, dressed Cindy up as Annie for the curtain call!

"The last one I will tell you about is kinda cute. Not really a blooper though, just a story. Kathryn used to wear bloomers/dance pants under her Pilgrim dress, and she would put a sticker on her rear (on the dance pants of course), and before the curtain would go up she would 'moon' the crew members. They had a big game to see how close she would cut it. There were several times when she didn't have her dress all the way down before the curtain went up! For Halloween and Thanksgiving she would put on pumpkins or turkey. The saddest was on closing night though. She wrote 'The End' on them and mooned the cast during her bow. It was really discreet so the audience didn't see it, but it was pretty sad!" - Elisabeth Zaremba

"I was in the pit for The Sound of Music last year, and there was only one set for inside and outside the house because of a limited budget. The only way to tell if the people were inside or outside was whether or not there were paintings on the walls. In the second act, on the last night, someone had put the painting on the wall upside down! I noticed it and told the person next to me. Then the audience started to notice. Soon the audience was cracking up, and this was the scene where the general comes in.

"I was also in the pit for Crazy for You. One night during 'Slap That Bass', during the pre-dance scene, the men were supposed to improvise bad dancing. One of the men pretended to fall on the ground, and
he kept dancing there. It was the funniest sight.

"During Brigadoon, when Archie brings Harry's dead body out, Archie, Harry and Maggie were laughing. Not too loud, thank goodness. One of the crew said something really funny right before the three did the procession. When Maggie started dancing, her back was to the audience, and she was laughing!

"The best of all: The last night of Brigadoon, the man playing MacGregor had painted half his face blue during the intermission (like in Braveheart) and came out on stage during the 'chase' like that. Rumor also has it that he was wearing his kilt in 'warlike fashion', as in nothing underneath." - Em

"I've been in some musicals in a local theatre in my hometown in Norway, and on the last performance of each new show, we used to do something funny.

"When we did Scrooge, the man who played Ebenezer Scrooge came on stage in the final scene only wearing his underwear! (Long underwear, as was worn in olden days.) The audience thought this was very funny, and laughed for a long time. (He had hidden his trousers himself, just to make everyone laugh.)

"When we did a Norwegian show, one of the other girls had put an orange button on my wig. I understood that something was wrong when they couldn't stop laughing when they looked at me, and I got it off before I went on stage. (Puhh...!)

"My sister was in a Norwegian musical show called 'Putti Plutti Pott' (A Christmas show). She was playing a tap-dancing reindeer. One of the main persons in the show, a six-year-old boy, should in one scene climb down a staircase and into a cave together with 'Uncle Per', but suddenly he changed his mind and started crying, because he was afraid of going down into the cave. (Poor little boy.) He ran backstage, and suddenly another boy appeared, in jeans and college sweater! It was the son of one of the adults in the cast, who had to step in for the boy. (The six-year-old boy continued for the rest of the show.) And in every show one of the tap-dancing reindeer lost one of her bells that were supposed to hang on her foot
during the tap-dance!" - Katarina in Norway

"During the Tornado Ballet (no ballet involoved in reality), we had five girls with rhythmic gymnastics ribbons, one in each corner of the stage, and the main dancer in the middle. In the Saturday matinee, while doing their moves, two of the girls got their ribbons tangled. At the end of the dance, each pair has to run around the main dancer in the middle and then offstage. But when it got to doing this, one girl dropped both the ribbons and just ran, whereas the other held onto them. The ribbons got round the main dancer's neck, so when the ribbon girl ran off, the main dancer got dragged off with her. Not the best ending to the opening dance routine!

"The next performance in the Tornado, Aunt Em and The Farmers got in my way, so I got tangled in the washing line Aunt Em brings in, and was two bars late on stage.

"When I died as the Wicked Witch of the West once, I staggered a little too far back and was standing on the trap door, so it couldn't be opened. One of the Winkies had to pull me off it!

"While dancing to the Scarecrow's song (as a crow) I discovered my flies were wide open, and my bright red underwear was clearly visible. Oops!" - Hannah J.

"I stage managed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory about two years ago. Right before the Mike Teevee scene in the Wonka factory (where he puts the candy bar in the machine), most of the assistants were pushing all the machines onstage. I don't know what in the world the Assistant Stage Manager was thinking. She opened the curtains before all the machines were onstage! And worst of all, the most important machine (the one that Mike Teevee uses) WAS NOT ON! I panicked because we certainly couldn't close the curtains, and the actors had already started with the scene. I don't know how I came up with this idea, but I decided to have a couple of Oompa Loompas push the machine on. There was only one problem: The place where the Oompa Loompas stayed when they weren't onstage was in front of the audience, under a big platform. I went anyway and pulled out the two closest Oompa Loompas. They pushed the machine on, and saved the day." - Mallory

"We were rehearsing for Oliver!, the part between 'Food, Glorious Food' and right before Oliver and friends eat fast. Everyone pretends to grab food out of other people's bowls. (There is no actual food in the bowls). The boy playing Oliver went to grab food out of my bowl, so I grabbed some out of his. I guess he didn't have a grip on the bowl, because it went flying into oblivion! He had to deliver the line 'Please sir, I want some more' without a bowl. This is why it's good I'm in the pit for most of the show." - Steph

"The Sound of Music was my very first show. I was 12 and I played Freidrich. Our Maria sang part of the opening of 'The hills are alive ...' in the audience. On opening night she went around to the side door entrance, and it was LOCKED. The orchestra didn't know what to do, so they quieted and the piano played softly, and then they played the opening again, but still no Maria. She had to run all the way back to the stage door, so she was all out of breath. Then I didn't come on for one of my scenes because I forgot my tie, and rather than leave it out I went back to get it and missed a part.

"During A Chorus Line I had my fly unzipped. That happens a lot. During Gypsy I slipped on a blanket during the birthday scene and almost fell. During The Wizard of Oz I almost missed my entrance as the Scarecrow on opening night (of all nights) because my microphone was falling out of my hat, so I did the whole song with a dangling mic.

"One night, in a dress rehersal of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, I snapped the wire that holds the kite up. And in Annie, I thought I was gonna die when I referred to Annie as Grace!" - Dan

"Let me set the stage, so to speak. My daughter is 9 and in a production for one show, and in rehearsal for another. Her school is doing their standardized testing this week, and she also had a swimming lesson tonight. So we are talking about a kid running on steam.

"Anyway, her part in The Crucible (Betty) starts out Act I in a dramatic way, trying to jump out windows and getting smacked around by Abigail Williams. Then she falls into sort of a comatose state, presumably from shock. She then spends the next 45 minutes lying in a bed on stage, completely still. At the very end of the Act, she joins Abigail in a climatic scene, where they start naming the folks in the village who are "witches".

"Tonight, Abigail started the scene and waited for my daughter to rise from the bed and join in ... and waited ... and waited ...

"Yes, Olivia fell asleep on stage. The cast thought this was hysterical. It has been a rough week for the cast, and I guess they all needed a laugh.

"And, yes, I took her right home, and she is slumbering as I write this!" - Siobhan

"Two years ago, I was in a play called Steal Away Home. SAH is about two slave boys who run away and journey north to freedom. I am caucasian, and I played a very mean, prejudiced woman. In the play, my character locked up the two boys in our shed.

"I first came on at the very beginning of Act Two. We were called backstage at intermission, but at one of the performances, the stage manager forgot to come and get me and my 'husband'. I discovered this when a stagehand wandered in the room. I grabbed my 'husband' and we ran onstage to find that two of the stagehands were playing our roles! Not only that, but the stagehand that ad-libbed my role was wearing Pooh overalls! And it gets even worse. The stagehand that performed my 'husband's' role was black! And the husband was the one that locked up the slave! Needless to say, I still went on for curtain call." - Mallory

"Our school is doing My Favorite Year as their spring musical. In one scene, the two main characters, Benjy Stone and Alan Swann, are preparing for the TV show. Swann is trying to teach Benjy how to fence, and a girl is supposed to bring out two fencing foils for them to use.

"On opening night, the girl forgot to bring the foils out. So Swann and Benjy were fencing with their fingers. That was okay for the time being, but Swann has the following line: 'Think of the weapon as an extension of your arm.' The poor guy didn't know what to say, so he changed it to 'Think of your finger as an extension of your arm.'

"In another scene, one of the characters (Alice) is trying to teach another character (K.C.) a joke. Alice is supposed to tell it to K.C. and K.C. is supposed to repeat it, but in a totally different way so as to not be funny. Alice told the joke to K.C., but in the way K.C. is supposed to tell Alice. Then K.C. said, 'I don't get it. Can you tell it again?' So Alice tried again ... and again she messes it up. K.C. said, 'Um ...', and Alice tried a third time. Once again she messed it up. So K.C. said, 'One more time!' Finally Alice told the joke correctly, and everyone started clapping." - Rebecca

"I play Mrs. Bucket in a community theatre production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's loads of fun, but we had a couple of bloopers on opening night.

"For Veruca's 'I want it now', the music did not go on at its cue, so Veruca and Mr. Salt had to improvise for about 10 minutes! It was great, because they improvised so well that no one knew that anything had gone wrong, and the audience loved it! At one point, Veruca grabbed one of the Oompa Loompas and said 'Daddy, I want this Oompa Loompa!' The Oompa Loompas are played by children about 6-8 years old (adorable!), and the Oompa Loompa she grabbed acted scared and shook her head No. Poor Veruca didn't even get to sing her song!

"During the Mike Teevee scene where he gets 'killed off' in the TV room, the two Oompa Loompas that
work the camera weren't onstage, so WIlly Wonka improvised by saying 'Oh, I'm sorry, the Oompa
Loompas are on their potty break, so I'll be handling the machines today!'" - Kimberly

"[I played Tessie] at a community theater 3 or 4 years ago. I was on the top bunk, and was supposed to be lying on my side. When it came time for the first 'Oh my goodness!', I was to roll over and sit up. It was opening night, and I was feeling really good. I was really excited, and waiting for my line. I rolled over and ... CLUNK! OWWW! I rolled off the edge of the bed! In the audience, some gasped, some laughed, thinking it was part of the show. Good thing the girl who played Annie was good at improvisation. She walked over to me, helped me up and said, 'Tessie, are you all right?' Fortunately, most people couldn't tell how embarrassed I was.

"In another show, during 'Hard Knock Life', our Annie set a small bench right off the front of the
stage, in the middle of the front row of the audience, where there was supposed to be an empty
chair. However, one day there was someone sitting in it! She had to have the man move his feet around
so she could put the bench under his feet to get it to stay!

"In another show, during 'I Don't Need Anything But You', when Warbucks dances with
Annie, he dipped her back, and her wig fell off on the floor! Warbucks dipped her again (NOT in
the choreography!), swooped down, picked up the wig, and PLOPPED it right back on her head
crooked! Annie spent the rest of the scene trying to discretely fix it.

"Also, in my schools production of Annie, we had 'The Bucket Wars'. Some of the buckets were new
and shiny, while others were old and rusted. Of course, no one wanted the old ones. So when it was time
to get the buckets on stage for 'Hard Knock Life', we'd all fight over them! We didn't practice with the real buckets until opening night, because they didn't want them to get dinged up. So we used the real buckets on opening night. I got a dusty, rusted bucket. In part of it, we held our buckets in front of us and slammed them twice. I slammed mine, and a HUGE puff of dust wafted into my face. I had to try and lip-sync as I coughed! And my eyes were blurry and teary from all the dust! AGGH." - Amanda

"When I was in Annie in July 1999 I was a swing orphan. One day the girl who played Kate did not show up. I was only used to the older roles, but they had me play Kate because Kate didn't have an understudy due to her small part. I only knew the dialogue from watching the regular Kate rehearse it. I completely messed up the show! I said one of Duffy's lines, I didn't know when to sing, and it was especially bad in the HKL Reprise because the line that Kate and Tessie usually sing was given only to Kate, since she had so few lines, and I didn't even sing it! It was something like 'Gonna get our faces slapped', but I didn't even remember it.

"I also do the Annie Medley with Friends of Broadway, and at our last show for our first season we were all excited, and the show was going very well. In the medley, when Hannigan yells at us, we get up and get our buckets, and get into our line. When I looked down the line to scowl at Tessie (I'm Pepper), I noticed she didn't have a brush and she was looking really nervous! I looked in my bucket, and I had an extra brush! At the beginning of the song I had to slide my brush across the stage down to her ... and we have five girls between us! Hannigan saw this and started yelling about how we were always doing something wrong.

"In another show with FOB I was playing July in the fight scene with Pepper. Pepper 'slept' with a big blanket, and when she got up for the fight, she tossed the blanket on the ground in front of her, acting tough. Well, this time she stood on the blanket when she tossed it, and she went flying down with it! She started cracking up, which of course got everyone else on stage laughing hysterically. So we tried to fight, and Tessie grabs the blanket during the 'Oh my goodness' lines. She picked it up and slipped backwards! Pepper was trying to keep a mean face, but she couldn't do it and was just dying laughing. The audience was cracking up as well. It was so pathetic, but it got a lot of cheers when it was over.

"At another time we were making a tape of our dress rehearsal so each child could have a video. The girl who played Molly was a little restless, I think, and during 'Maybe' the camera zooms in on her a lot (her mom was one of the two videographers). I was previewing the tape, and Annie was singing a sweet ballad and Molly was rolling around on the floor. She pulled a feather off her shirt and blew it into Annie's face. Then she started kicking Duffy, who was next to her. It was hilarious. Then, when Annie finished the song, she pretended to fall asleep, and started laughing.

"When I played Dorothy in Wizard of Oz on opening night, and the show was going well until the last scene. When Dorothy got back to Oz, Uncle Henry forgot to go on. Our stage manager was awful and never called him for his cue, and he was still downstairs in the green room messing with his make-up! So Professor Marvel went out and ad-libbed for a while, and got Auntie Em to go on. Finally I went on, but I was shaking so badly I nearly dropped the dog, and I stammered, 'Um...I was at this place...and I missed you!' It was the worst thing ever! By the way, Uncle Henry has a lot of lines in that scene. When the show was over and it was time for bows, I was psyched because of the great show, and we had saved the ending without looking like complete idiots. On my turn I went on for my bow with the dog on a leash. For the company bow, I grabbed the hand of the player next to me (the Lion) and we whipped our hands up in preparation. Suddenly I heard the cast and the audience explode with laughter. The Lion and I looked at each other, then I looked down and noticed that the dog was hanging from the leash! The dog didn't bark or anything. It just hung by its neck, swinging around. The trainer immediately flew onstage to rescue the dog. It wasn't hurt, but it was so funny." - Lauren

"Once, when Molly was supposed to fall in the laundry basket near the end of the song, the lid wasn't open! So she sort of walked once in a circle on the stage, and two of the other orphans quickly opened the lid, and she fell in. I think the pianist had to repeat a couple of bars of that song, so they could get it right, but it didn't look like anything had gone wrong, so that was good!" - Serena

"I have done two plays, and there were many bloopers in each one. The first was The Best Christmas Pagent Ever. I played a small part but when there was a fire in the kitchen, the Herdmans were supposed to go wild and wreak havoc. Since I was small, someone would pick me up, swing me over his back and run out. I guess he swung a little too hard and I nearly fell off his shoulders. I had a dress on and the audience could see my frilly white underpants. Everyone was laughing.

"Then, one child player was sick, so we had to say his lines. But we all wanted to say them, so when the
time came for his line, five different people said it together. It was so funny!

"The second play I did was Alice in Wonderland: Follow That Rabbit. I played the Mock Turtle. In one part, I bent down to tie my shoe and missed my cue. I started to cry, and my green face paint was dripping down my face. One of the girls on stage looked over and started to crack up when she saw me. They had to take her off the stage because she was laughing so hard. Then, when the Mad Hatter and March Hare pick up the Dormouse and shove her into the teapot, they were leaning on the table, and it collapsed. It was brand new. It was awful!

"We have to do class plays every year, and the first years always do Clown Plays. One was called The Bathtub, where one girl is in a paper bath tub in red long johns. She had to get out, and when she did, the trap door on the long johns popped open and she mooned the whole audience, and she didn't even realize it. We had a baby in my play, The Flagpole, and in the middle of the performance, its head rolled off." - Kelly

"I saw the Non-Equity tour of Annie when Meridith Anne Bull was playing Annie. The curtain was coming down at the end of one scene, and one cast member didn't make it under the curtain in time. The curtain hit him in the head." - Anniefan02

Sandy has been coming to rehearsals for a while and she loves the kids. The only problem I have now is that she whines while Annie sings "Tomorrow". She is a rescue dog (it was a total coincidence that she is called Sandy) and loves attention. Just she wants it when Annie is singing. Hopefully the orchestra and Annie's singing will drown it out! - Trish

When we did Annie, we had to change a line in the show to allow Sandy to run away, because every time Annie sang "Tomorrow" she would leave. The first time [this happened] Annie said on impulse, "Hurry! Run as fast as you can!" When the policeman said, "But the next time you take him out I wanna see him on a leash and with a license." So we finally changed it to allow her to concentrate on her singing.

At another time the children were feeding Sandy too many snacks, and he threw up during dress rehearsal. But Annie kept right on singing. - Shari

Our Sandy used to burp. You could hear it on Annie's body mike. One night, instead of walking off the stage, she wandered into Miss Hannigan's office and sat down . The audience laughed so Sandy barked. Finally Sandy walked out of the office. - Torie

My first story is from my third production of Annie that I was in. (I have been in it five times). Sandy used to always stare into the wings at the trainer and would NEVER face the audience. On the night we filmed it he barked LOUDLY all the way throught the second half of "Tomorrow." We were behind the curtain waiting to go on for the Hooverville scene, laughing. It was really funny, but the girl playing Annie didn't think so.

Another is a story from Shelley Bruce's autobiography. (She was the second Annie on Broadway replacing Andrea McArdle). She talked about Allison Smith, the fourth Broadway Annie, and the one I saw. She said that six months into Allison's run she was singing "Tomorrow" when Sandy started throwing up in these three big piles all around her. She continued on with the scene, and when she came on for the Hooverville scene and they asked her, "Hey kid, ya hungry?" She replied, "No. But my dog is." Apparantly that brought the house right down. Even on Broadway, Sandy had his moments. Just thought I'd share these with you. - Scott Lynch