LJ Idol Exhibit A Week 3

I don't remember the first time I heard the word “shenanigans” but for some reason I hear it in my paternal Irish grandmother’s voice when I think about it. This is the grandmother who insisted that she had no Irish brogue which was said was always said in the slight Irish brogue.

Shenanigans to my mind was getting up to something that one probably shouldn’t and knowing that when one got caught, there would be consequences. The balance was to figure out if the adventure was going to out weigh the punishment.

I have been accused more than once in my life of getting up into shenanigans. I have not always made the smartest choices or the most level headed ones. Sometimes it was a practical joke that became the stuff of legend. Other times it didn’t turn out as we had planned and we regretted the end result. We never started out to hurt anyone or anything but sometimes chance will take things out of our hands and make for some of those life lessons one really wishes they hadn’t learned.

As I got older, I became that person who would shut down the shenanigans before they really started. I learned years later when I was on an Actor’s Equity sub committee that my reputation in town was “firm but fair”. I didn’t play favorites and I didn’t let some of the classic theatrical horseplay go to far.

The change happened because of something that occurred while I was an assistant stage manager for a production of Christmas Carol (Side note: To this day I cringe when I hear the words “God bless us everyone” which is what I get for doing a Christmas Carol one too many times in my career.) When you do Christmas Carole year in and year out with little change, you get bored. When you get bored in the theater, shenanigans seemed to ensue.

We were doing this show on a very small stage. So backstage had to run like clockwork with everyone going the direction they needed to go. We had one hellacious run around for Scrooge that was an “all hands clear” situation so he could make his next cue on the other side of the stage. Exiting right before he had to enter where three proper Victorian female carolers who, with a short song, bought us the time needed for Scrooge to get around to his next cue which was to terrify a little boy. Our Scrooge was (and is) quite a character. And again since this was about the 5th year he had been Scrooge along with the fact that we had been doing about 10 shows a week (non-equity house), he started saying all kinds of things to the ladies as they exited trying to get them to crack up. Which he managed to do more than once.

Now the ladies had also been at this show for a while and decided that there needed to be some form of response. Nothing that would throw him too far off but just enough to put him on notice. I knew that something was brewing but not quite what. So one school matinee where the kids really didn’t want to be there, it happened. He made his smart ass remark to the ladies and two of them goosed him from behind. It had to be one of the more interesting entrances of Scrooge in the history of the play. He managed to compose himself and go on but everyone in the cast knew that he had be gotten.

This lead to the boys vs. girls note fight on the call board. It got a little lewd and crude with notes back and forth. And there were tiny pranks being played back and forth. Nothing of serious consequence just bored actors letting off some steam.

All fun and games until the incident with the coffin.

If you know the story of A Christmas Carol, I am not giving anything away here. If you don’t, well spoilers kiddies and you have been warned.

There is a section when Scrooge is with the Ghost of Christmas Future where he is transported to his chambers and has to listen as his rooms are stripped of anything of value. In our version the coffin was about to be removed when the charwoman (the same young ladies that had goosed Mr. Scrooge) have the undertaker open up the coffin and they take Scrooge’s nightgown and night cap (because the night cap had a very nice tassel.)

So they open the coffin like normal and the charwomen look in to see a pornographic fold-out pin up from a gay porno magazine called big dicks with the head of the young man replaced with the face of our Scrooge out of the playbill. This would not have been bad enough but the next lines as things like “he died here alone all unnatural and the like” among many other lines. The actors onstage were desperately trying not to crack up. Meantime the walls of the set shook as the rest of the cast were at the various peep-holes and slits where we did a really cool night of the living dead effect.

The director was beyond livid and justifiable so. The audience hadn’t a clue what had happened but they knew something was off. And everyone in the cast knew that it had gone too far.

The next night there was an edict from the Artistic Director that these shenanigans must stop and would stop at the cost of anyone’s job who part takes of this sort of nonsense again.

That whole show taught me a valuable lesson about jokes and jokes going too far. I kept that in mind as I continued my stage management career. There is a time and a place for these sorts of shenanigans but there are consequences as well.

This was my entry for this weeks LJ Idol. I hope you enjoyed it and consider voting for me later this week