My Worst Theatre Disasters

    Sometimes, onstage disasters get a little help from mischievous types. In a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," I wore tight-fitting, orange suede cloth pants, which ripped out in the crotch two nights in a row during a sword-fighting scene. "Don't lunge so far," the costumer, who was tired of making the repairs warned. I asked him to sew it extra well and he scowled at me. The next night I felt a prickling sensation and had to modify the fight scene, scaling my swashbuckling back dramatically. Checking my trousers at intermission, I found a row of straight pins, which the costumer claimed he must have "accidentally" left there after making the repairs!

    Even as a professional actor, accidents happen. After more than 50 performances in a dinner theater production of "Fiddler on the Roof," in which I played one of the "bottle dancers" during the wedding scene, I had still never dropped the bottle balanced on my head. But I must have been off that night because down the bottle went. I caught it in mid-air, grinned sheepishly at the audience and then walked off stage, forgetting completely that my dance partner needed me for the acrobatic ending. He had to improvise a little dance on his own, and came off looking like a goon. This is what I call a chain reaction flub.