Theater etiquette for actors

[cocacola35]

Currently I am in a Christmas production at my local community theater.  The cast is quite large and is a mixture of children and adults.  I love to act, but quite frankly the lack of professionalism demonstrated by some of the cast members is really starting to ruin the experience for me.  Here is the current list of grievences that should NEVER be committed when you are a cast member:

1. If the director buys your costume with her own money treat it with respect.  DO NOT throw it on the floor and allow it to be stomped on when you are through with it and then complain that you can't find your costume during the start of the next performance.

2. When you are asked to lower your voice when you are backstage DO IT.  Sometimes we slip up and need to be reminded a couple times to keep it down- but it is inexcusable for the stage manager to have to remind certain individuals 20 times per performance to shut up.

3.  I know that I am short and look like a teenager, but I am 27 years old.  After five weeks of working with me you should know this.  One 13 year old started shoving me as I passed him to get into place- since I couldn't make a comment to him (the show was going on) I just grabbed his arm and gave him the look of death.  He immediately apologized.

4.  I don't care how small your part is- you had better be deathly ill or dead to miss a performance.  Sure, you have one of the smaller parts but what if EVERYONE with the smaller parts decided they had something better to do that night?  Sometimes there are other things that I want to do to, but I'd never skip a performance and ruin the show for everyone else.

5.  The backstage IS NOT a daycare center.  Your child who is not in the show and is making all that noise during the performance is not welcome backstage.  The least you could do is make your child be quiet, not whine to the stage manager about how you don't want to be mean to him.  You should have arranged for someone to watch him.  You knew about these perfomance nights when you signed up for this gig so you could have arranged for childcare ahead of time.

6.  When the stage manager or director tells you to do something DO IT.  Don't stand there and argue with them for five minutes- you don't take orders well don't be an actor.

7.  DO NOT play with the props.  It really puts me in a bad mood when I am scrambling around backstage to find a prop that isn't where I put it.  God help you after the show if I find you playing swordfights with it before I go onstage.

8.  DID I MENTION THAT YOU NEED TO BE THERE FOR EVERY PERFORMANCE!!!

9.  DO NOT stand at the stage entrances to watch the show!  I don't care how quiet you claim you are, you are in every actor's way who is coming on and off the stage!  Are you really so self-centered and stupid that you don't realize that?! 

Yes this is community theater and yes you are not getting paid, but you still are required to act like a professional and treat others with respect.  You also don't have the right to ruin the show for the people who are paying money to see it.  Okay, I feel a little better now.  Thank God this is the last weekend of this show- I don't know if I could keep myself from throttling anyone any longer.

 

[jfulle5]

Is there any kind of manual or chart hanging up so people can see the basic rules? I know it seems like common sense things but some people still need it in writing

[kingsrings]

Having been involved in theater for the past 12 years, I hear you on every single one of these. I've experienced every single one of them in one form or another, and it's so aggravating. I think the problem lies in that some people just don't have respect for community theater or take it seriously because it's mostly all volunteer. Therefore, they don't take it seriously and slack off on the committments necessary to make things run smoothly. They would never act that way at their full-time paying job. It has come to the point where the last audition I went on, the first thing the director did was stand up in front of us all and tick off a list of rules that we must follow if we were to be cast in the show. They were all about the things you mentioned in your thread - being late, showing respect, etc. She has probably been driven to the point of having to do that since she'd been burned one time too many in the past and is trying to nip it in the bud now. Isn't it funny that adults have to be told they must be responsible if they accept a part in a play?? Unfortunately, they must be told this, although it will probably just go over the head of the offenders.

[Bob Ducca]

4.  I don't care how small your part is- you had better be deathly ill or dead to miss a performance.  Sure, you have one of the smaller parts but what if EVERYONE with the smaller parts decided they had something better to do that night?  Sometimes there are other things that I want to do to, but I'd never skip a performance and ruin the show for everyone else.

This reminds me of my all-time favorite theater story.  In college, a group of my friends who were theater majors were doing "Dr. Hero," and a bunch of us music majors came to watch.  Dr. Hero has a cast of 12 (I think) and only one part is names (Hero).  The remaining 11 cast members constantly shift into different characters in different scenarios, and the interplay in terms of dialogue and blocking was very intense and rapid-fire.  Opening night went well, I heard, but the second night...

One of the ensemble didn't show up.  I later found out that she was out to dinner with my MIL (?) and just "didn't feel like" being in theater anymore.  Take one person out of the ensemble, and it made no sense.  But the show must go on...

I was there.  It was brilliant.  They never missed a beat, and the combination of scripted drama with the necessary improv that would accompany a missing actor was really thrilling.  Of course, the next day they re-scripted and re-blocked, but I will NEVER forget the looks on the faces of the actors when they realized "Suzy" wouldn't be showing up.

I love the list, and wouldn't change a thing.

[kingsrings]

One play I was in, the night of the dress rehearsal, one of the actresses called and said that she wouldn't be able to make it because she had just gotten tickets to a concert that she really wanted to see. She wasn't at all apologetic and didn't think that she had done anything wrong. Unfortunately because it was the night before opening, it was too late for our director to fire her, something she probably took advantage of in her decision to forgo dress rehearsal. Thank goodness there wasn't anyone but the stage crew in the audience that night. Another play I did, one of the small-part actors didn't want to be in the play and only agreed to do so because the director was desperate to find someone. He refused to come to the rehearsals until tech week, and refused to talk to anyone. Then when performances started, he left as soon as his part was done, which meant he wasn't there for the curtain call. A week into the play, he called the director and left a VM that he was quitting the play. I really hope the karma for such people gets back to them in the end.

[cocacola35]

Is there any kind of manual or chart hanging up so people can see the basic rules? I know it seems like common sense things but some people still need it in writing

Just about everything I listed has been told to the cast numerous times before we started rehearsing and just about each night before we start perfoming.  I don't know how much harder the rules can be beaten into some of these thick-headed, mannerless morons.  I also sincerely doubt that these individuals would bother to read the rules if they were hanging up. 

Yeah I definately understand how community theater attracts the most irresponsible people.  They would never behave this way in a professional setting because if you pull any of that stuff I listed you will be fired and replaced in a blink of an eye.  It's definately something that you almost expect in a show with a large cast, which is pretty sad.

[kingsrings]

In larger cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, that kind of theater behavior rarely happens. There are so many actors and so much competition, that if someone behaves that way, they can be fired and replaced in a time span of half an hour.

[Cyndi]

I feel this with choir, which in some ways is the same as theatre. There have been people chosen to do SOLOS who didn't show up, so after that the director would teach at least three people the solo part so someone else can take over if the chosen soloist misses the show. There is also the ongoing problem of people coming to every rehearsal and then not the concerts, which is REALLY frustrating because our sound suffers.

[MineralDiva]

I agree with everything on the rule list.  The only consolation is that at least now you know who won't be cast in another show! 

A few years ago, Mr. Diva directed a show that had already been cast.  He was asked, after the fact, to step in and direct.  One of the female cast members had recently had a baby, and insisted on bringing the kid to rehearsals with her.  Okay...we could deal with that...within reason.

What we had difficulty dealing with, was her equal insistence upon holding the child while nursing him and trying to work her blocking, during rehearsals...fully exposed to all who were present.  And when I say "fully," I mean it!  (This is the same creature whom many of you may remember from the thread I posted about her baby shower for her second child...the one that included the registry listing size HH nursing bras for HER?  Yeah...THAT one!) This was our first introduction to this...person.


By Hell-week, she still knew nothing of her blocking and was struggling with her lines.  Mostly because she never put the kid down long enough to do any work.  Mr. Diva insisted that the child be watched off-site, by either his(the kid's) father or a sitter, for the final week of rehearsals.  She gave him a hard time about it...but he wouldn't budge..."I'm sorry.  You're obviously distracted and as a result, so is the rest of the cast.  We open next weekend and have work to do here."  She did finally comply. 

I was responsible for costuming the three women in the show.  One wore one of my St. John suits, another had her own dress...and "Bossy the Cow" wore another of my own dresses, which I told her explicitly to bring to me to be cleaned, should it need freshening up between opening night and closing.  It was dry-clean only.

The night before the last performance, I was watching in the audience, when I realized that her dress wasn't hanging correctly...there were threads hanging from the hem of the skirt, and the color seemed "off" somehow. It looked like the top had shrunk.  I asked her about it afterward.  "Oh...I washed it."  "You whhaaaat?"  "Oh, don't worry.  I only use organic detergents and I hung it to dry."  "You whhaaaaatttt!  That dress is dry-clean only and now it's ruined!  I've never even worn it myself, before I loaned it to you...and you WASHED it, when I told you NOT to?"

I never have been able to wear the dress.  She never offered to pay for it either.  We later found out it wasn't just her bringing the child to rehearsals.  She really WAS an idiot!  And she's one idiot we'll never be working with again.

During final rehearsals for the last show we just finished in October, one of the actors told Mr. Diva that he was going to keep the cape from his costume.  Excuse you?  We just paid someone $300 to make that cape!  The E-Hell you are!

And this was an actor we were PAYING for his performance!  So, idiots are idiots, whether volunteer idiots or professional idiots!  LOL

ETA:  It's not so much about her nursing the child, as much as it is the inconsideration and sense of entitlement she displayed, at the expense of others.  I don't have a problem with nursing mothers.  I was one too.  The whole attitude of this person, went above and beyond the beyond!

[ginlyn32]

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[Mrs. Eclipse]

When I was younger, I went to drama camps at this one kid's theater.  It was in a building with it's own theater, rehersal stage, the works.

I remember, in addition to all of the above, we had a problem with kids watching the show from the wings.  Like, hovering.  In plain view of the audience.  They thought that if they were behind the curtains, no one could see them.  Yyyeah.  Sometimes it was so clogged with watchers that if someone needed to get on stage, they had to shove past people.  One time someone never got on stage for their number!  And, of course, they were talking at full volume during the show.  I mean, how many of you didn't see that coming?

So, seeing that the rest of the stuff carried over, did anybody else go to a theater where people insisted on clogging up the side so no one could get on stage?

[cocacola35]

Until one year.  A group of young women from another local troupe joined us for a musical; they were playing minor roles of the lead characters' daughters.  Apparently their troupe had some very different "traditions."  These girls thought it would be hee-larious to put REAL vodka into the bottles for the tavern scene, as a "fun prank" for opening night.

I don't know why people think that it is funny to ruin another actor's performance (thank God that in your case nothing worse happened).  That lack of professionalism not only causes hurt feelings or worse, it can also dissuade audiences from coming to another show at your theater.  In fact just last night before our performance, the director told the cast that there had better not be any pranks pulled during the show because it's the last weekend.  The audience that comes the last weekend paid to see this show too and deserve the same professionalism and quality as the previous performances.

Unfortunately after last night I now have another thing to add to my list that I thought was common sense:

10. Kids, if you see your family out in the audience DO NOT wave to them or walk over their seat.  Trust me, they CAN see you on that stage by themselves!!!  You are old enough to know that this is a BIG no-no in theater- it completely wrecks the story and mood for the cast and the audience.   

One little girl (seven years old) saw her grandparents out in the audience and broke away from her stage "parent" to go to them and wave.  Sigh....only two more nights.......   

[MineralDiva]

One little girl (seven years old) saw her grandparents out in the audience and broke away from her stage "parent" to go to them and wave.

Aaaack!  Now you understand the old adage:  "Never work with animals or children!"

[kingsrings]

OP, your list should be in every dressing room in the world!  And of course, this reminds me...

Years ago, I belonged to a local light-opera company; we did operettas and musicals, and were really a very tight ship despite being all-community and all-volunteer.  There was some annoying drama between our director and another local director, so we pretty much had the same folks year in and year out, and never really crossed paths with people from other local theatre companies.

Until one year.  A group of young women from another local troupe joined us for a musical; they were playing minor roles of the lead characters' daughters.  Apparently their troupe had some very different "traditions."  These girls thought it would be hee-larious to put REAL vodka into the bottles for the tavern scene, as a "fun prank" for opening night.

Except our leading man had advanced Type 1 diabetes.  Fortunately, he also had a VERY good sense of smell; and realized what was going on in mid-scene, right before he actually drank out of the bottle.  (Onstage death or diabetic coma is such a "fun prank...")

The next night after makeup call, the company heads called a joint meeting, at which we all got a VERY stern lecture.  At the end of the run, these girls were asked to please forget our company existed, and never, ever show up for auditions again.

Our company was serious about music and theatre; and anyone that wasn't pretty much never made the cut again.

     - saphie

I've seen a lot of those on-stage pranks, and I've never thought that any of them were funny. I have as good a sense of humor as anyone else, but there is a time and place for pranks, and it's certainly not when people are trying their best to put on a really good production.

[kingsrings]

When I was younger, I went to drama camps at this one kid's theater.  It was in a building with it's own theater, rehersal stage, the works.

I remember, in addition to all of the above, we had a problem with kids watching the show from the wings.  Like, hovering.  In plain view of the audience.  They thought that if they were behind the curtains, no one could see them.  Yyyeah.  Sometimes it was so clogged with watchers that if someone needed to get on stage, they had to shove past people.  One time someone never got on stage for their number!  And, of course, they were talking at full volume during the show.  I mean, how many of you didn't see that coming?

So, seeing that the rest of the stuff carried over, did anybody else go to a theater where people insisted on clogging up the side so no one could get on stage?

Umm, guilty as charged. I was a very new actor, and it was my first community production. I had a small role, so I had a lot of off-stage time. I stayed in the wings out of sight of the audience so I could watch the rest of the play. I ended up getting in the way of an more-experienced actor making his stage entrance and got quite the tongue-lashing from him. After he calmed down, he nicely explained why I should not do that anymore. Live and learn.