#little shop of horrors play | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quill-of-thoth · 7 months

Text

It's apparently Little Shop of Horrors day, so let me tell you all about the time I was house manager for the worst musical of, if not all time, the 20zeroes.

I was a theater kid in a school that did NOT do musicals. For crosstown rivalry reasons and a bunch of other stuff. The other high school did musicals so all you choir divas go try out over there. Also casting at my high school was highly correlated with seniority, AKA you were more likely to get speaking parts as an upperclassman, assuming you had been in any play before.

However, my junior year we got a new drama teacher, and therefore a budget, and therefore a spate of more musicals and small cast plays to perform. I got cast in zero things because my acting was pretty mid and my ability to sing is... not. However I was both one of the few non-graduating upperclassmen and The Responsible One and my presence building set / herding freshman / going off book early resulted in fewer stitches, so I got to be house manager. In high school theater, house manager shows up at call to help with things, then opens the ticket booth, answers questions on the walkie, and is the person fourteen year old ushers come to when somebody's mom needs to be sent to the special hell for people who talk on their cell phones in the theater. We did our very first school musical in like a decade, Little Shop of Horrors, in january.

If the Gifs have not clued you in, Little Shop of Horrors is the story of a florist's assistant who mistakes a man eating alien for a talking plant and decides to feed his crush's abusive boyfriend to it. This is not a weird plot for musicals, BUT it requires some prep work. 1) The Chorus tells a lot of the story, so in order to Give Everyone A Chance and to keep everyone's barely trained vocal chords in good shape, we double casted the chorus. Meaning that on nights where they weren't singing, they were supposed to usher, because we never had enough ushers and there were too many of them for all of them to fulfil their crew obligations building set.

2) There are three chorus leads. Some performances have them be the whole chorus but our director had ambitions, so we had three chorus leads and like ten background chorus members per chorus. Performing alternating nights. In the same set of matching RENTED costumes. (Background chorus wore their choir performance duds I think.) 3) Audrey 2, the "plant" is a puppet of some description, large enough to eat a successful dentist. Meaning that somebody has to be mic'd up to voice him, and somebody ELSE has to make him move. And you have to get him on and off stage, or configure the stage in such a way that he can be covered up. Ours rolled. I had only occasionally been on set crew for Little Shop, and most of the chorus hadn't been at all because of their choir schedules, so I rolled up opening night at half past call expecting an hour of running errands for people and an easy house opening. The Stage Manager handed me my walkie and said "I already hate this," which was just her personality regarding opening nights but which should have been a warning. I was quickly informed that The Chorus was being kept in the empty choir room upstairs of the stage because there were too many of them to stay in the dressing rooms, so there was going to be a LOT of walkie chatter about cues. We also had to shuffle in a dude from light crew to drop the show's only F-bomb, because the freshman voicing Audrey 2 hadn't known it existed when he tried out and was now in a tizzy because his Very Religious Grandma was coming. So I had to keep an aisle clear up in the nosebleeds so a crew guy could sneak in the dark from the spotlights to the sound booth to delightedly yell Fuck into the microphone. "We never get people in the nosebleeds anyway," I told Stage Manager, who shrugged unhappily. "Chorus of twenty. Choir kids. Musical."

Spotlight guy, passing by, said something like "I can handle it."

I did some emergency stitching on somebody's loose costume button, sorted out some props, ran around blocking off or opening doors, and then opened the house. With ONE usher because the Chorus Ushers were late. "Isn't their call time twenty to opening?" I asked the one reliable usher, who was build crew only, and he shrugged. I told him to put people as far to the front as he could, no exceptions, and not to use the stage left nosebleeds, and continued taking tickets and cash. We already had a crowd when the Chorus Ushers arrived - Late, not appropriately dressed, or telling me that they had to leave before the show was over because their parents did not want to pick them up any later than that time. I volunteered to tell their parents that having a kid in a show was a commitment that included days that they were not performing and that we had several reliable upperclassmen running carpool if they had emergencies. Only one of the ushers took me up on it, so I decided that we could close missing one usher since we had more than usual anyway, and signed them all in. I walkied the Director that we had all the ushers we were gonna get and that they were late but we had it under control, which was the last time ANYTHING was under control that night. The first obvious problem was that the Chorus Ushers didn't seat anyone, which was literally their one job. They just... walked in and out of the theater following people? I had to leave Reliable at the cash box and demonstrate, then move people out of the one row reserved for ushers and the closed off nosebleed area. Someone, probably Spotlight, had cordoned it off with duct tape so I don't know why they even tried. Then I had to explain that you cannot save a whole row so that tall people do not come and block your view. And then somebody wanted a half off ticket because they intended to leave at intermission. And somebody else wanted to pay by credit card even though they'd had weeks of warning that we were not set up to do that. Add in people jockeying for seats and ushers sneaking off to hang with friends or family and by the time the lights went down I was composing some strongly worded advice to our director about training ushers and making sure that showing up to usher one night wasn't the whole price of being in the cast. Then, in the middle of the second song, a phone rang. "Hi Mom. No, the play has started. Yes I have a ride home. No, dad decided he wouldn't - It's fine -" "Excuse me, Ma'am," I hissed to the rapidly confiscated phone, tugging the usher towards the back doors by the hoodie, "Your daughter is working and we do not allow cell phones in the theater." "But -" "All calls must be taken IN THE HALLWAY (which we had reached by then) and your ringer is expected to be off." "And who are you?" "The Stage Manager," I said, like I was an actual responsible party, and hung up. "When you are done sorting this out, I expect neither you, nor your phone, to make a single sound for the rest of this play. Any upperclassman with an available car seat will give you a ride home if you need it." That made one freshie with the fear of House Manager put into them properly, hopefully it meant she'd behave in general. And walkie hell immediately broke loose. In the next, possibly forty minutes, by virtue of being the person who had already left the auditorium and was wearing normal clothes, I learned the following:

someone needed to run a repair kit up to the chorus holding room

Because Second Night Choral Lead (on props duty) and Opening Night Choral lead had gotten into a slapfight about discovering that they shared the costume

consisting of shoving and shouting that one of them would ruin it for the other because she was "too fat" for a one size fits all wrap dress

And inevitably torn it

Stage Manager could not handle this

Because she'd gone up to Choral Holding Area to tell everybody else in the chorus to shut the fuck up because they could be heard ON STAGE

And the Choir Divas had decided to lock her in a closet

so somebody allowed to have building keys (director) had to come and let her out and put the fear of god into them

So someone ELSE who knew blocking had to move to cues position

Because The Dude in The Plant was relying on that

So I had to go help cover for whatever they should be doing that didn't involve knowing the script

And somebody else had to go whipstitch Opening Night Choral Lead back into her damn dress before their next cue

Also The Dude In The Plant was concerned because the rolling portion of the stage felt kinda wrong? The part he was on? Inside the plant puppet?

The director needed a List Of People Whose Parents Were Going To Be Called after the play because we do not lock people into storage closets

And don't think he won't ALSO tell on you to the choir director who will have you out of SO MANY performances for this behavior.

Audrey the Human just tripped over something that shouldn't be backstage because Choral Lead two is being read the riot act instead of doing props

WHOEVER IS RUBBING FABRIC ON THEIR MIC OVER THE WALKIES NEEDS TO TURN IT OFF

Sorry the micbox is right next to the dress tear

The Dude in Audrey the Plant just felt something move that should not

The Dude Voicing Audrey the Plant informs me that one of my ushers has left and also left the door to the auditorium wide open

Surprisingly it is not little miss phone call

Anyway he's trapped in the sound booth waiting for his cue and Reliable Usher doesn't have a walkie

Chorus is back on stage, the riot act is in intermission, Background Chorus Choir Divas have declared that if they are removed from the Chorus for being loud assholes and derailing the whole cast and crew they won't usher and then where will we be?

GREAT! I DON'T WANT THEM!

Choral Lead Two is crying in the boys dressing room instead of running props because nobody's currently using the boys dressing room

Because Choral Lead One will be standing around in a spare sheet in the girls' dressing room while we fix her dress during intermission.

Dude in the Plant says, very quietly, "fuck"

As the combined weight of chorus and cast and plant muppet and dude in the plant and choreography breaks one of the casters on the set

Which fortunately only falls like a quarter inch so everyone stumbles and nobody is hurt

"Should I help?" No, Dude Voicing The Plant, STAY WHERE YOU ARE YOU ARE THE ONLY THING ABOUT THIS THAT'S GOING WELL

Chorus and Crew and Everyone except me (because I'm hunting for a MIA usher) is trying to deal with that rolling bit of set under the cover of SON BE A DEEEEENTIST, YOU'LL BE A SUCCESS!

Congrats my missing usher has not been teen-napped. She saw me putting the fear of god and of me into her castmate about cell phones and has stepped outside the entire building to I Do Not Care What But This Conversation can Wait we LEGALLY have to know where you are

Hey who is the fastest / most invisible sewer we have? Because this dress is messed up worse than we thought. We need them for all of intermission

Me, possibly, except I am working intermission?

Can you come at call tomorrow and fix it? We have safety pins

Sure

Why are there no safety pins in the safety pins box

I dunno why don't you ask the kid who was literally making a safety pin necklace last time I was at set build

Who?

IDK they're new probably

Rolling stage has been fixed! Well. Assuming we don't want it to move.

"Am I safe to eat the guy?" Yes, Dude In The Plant, chow down on our dentist, the set will hold.

Intermission.

THANK FUCK

A twenty five minute intermission is totally normal, Sirs and Ma'ams. Please feel free to buy cold stale football field popcorn.

Phonecall usher "Uh. So My dad. Decided he wasn't going to come pick me up at intermission."

I gave her the name of the senior with a car that I thought would be feeling least murderous, because I am not a complete monster.

No, sir, you cannot show up for the second half of a play and expect a half priced ticket. It is five. Goddamn. Dollars. Anyway somehow the worst thing that happened on second night was Dude Voicing the Plant deciding that he was actually brave and secular enough to do the swears so we got TWO people saying fuck directly into the microphone. He still passed on Tough Titties though.

#little shop of horrors #easily the worst play I was in #for a given value of in

58 notes · View notes