So last night I think we had the worst show ever of my play. It's a very anti-Bush political show, so it's hard to continue to do after the election and we're all kind of over it, ya know? But we still enjoy hanging out with each other. Seriously, the cast gets along great, which is good and bad because we've developed a lot of personal jokes and really bonded yadda yadda. But it's not a happy play. It's set in the depression and most of it takes place on Dust Bowl farms.
So in the third scene, there's this big confrontation 'should we just steal from the rich merchants' or 'shouldn't we just wait for the government to help us out' that kind of thing. The men storm out, I follow them to the door, watch them go, then shut the door and come back to the three women and one 12 year old girl left on stage. Except this time, as I'm watching the men go, I hear Reilly kind of .. sob during her line. And I think 'oh, she's putting some more emotion into it today' for like two seconds before I realized that she was trying not to laugh. So I turn back and somehow in the five seconds that I was by the door, everyone on stage is holding back laughter. I look at Mary, the 12 year old, and she's completely sucked her lips into her mouth to try to keep the laughter inside. I look at Erica, who is speaking and think, if the two of us can hold it together everyone else will get back on track. As soon as our eyes met, it was over.
All five of us are on stage fighting to get lines out without giggling. I have no lines left to say, I'm just supposed to sit on stage and be sad and shocked, but I can't because we're all about to burst into laughter. I finally completely turn my back to the audience and everyone else onstage to try and get myself under control and I hear THE AUDIENCE giggling.
It was terrible! We're all thinking 'fuck! oh shit! stop laughing!' At one point I thought we were just going to have to give in to it. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It's the worst laughter when you know you shouldn't be laughing. It's almost impossible to stop.
ed [email] said at 12:18 PM 11-12-2004: Never done that on stage, but it is truly agonizing trying not to laugh at an inappropriate time, ESPECIALLY if there's someone else about to lose it, too. I generally avoid eye contact with ANYONE and try to think of horribly sad things. It usually helps, but not always.
Chrispy said at 11:22 PM 11-12-2004: I used to have a real problem at work with laughing at "inappropriate" times. I was working in factories as a troubleshooter at the time and would tend to deliver really bad news while chuckling. My boss would tense up when ever I walked up to him grinning or laughing.
andrew [email] said at 1:38 PM 11-12-2004: My great aunt, an old jewish lady, kept describing to me the civil war sketch on SNL where Christopher Walken played Col. Lingus and how the actors couldn't stop laughing.
amanda [email] said at 1:52 PM 11-12-2004: At one of my summer jobs a few years ago, we had a meeting where the company brought in an analyst. He was from Texas and when he introduced himself to the group, it came out as, "My name is _____ and I will be your ANAL-ist." The other college-aged guy in the room and I made unfortunate eye contact and we spent the duration of the meeting unsuccessfully choking back laughter each time the guy said "analyst."
Mr Tom Davies [ url ] said at 6:57 PM 11-12-2004: I am never hiring you for a theatre gig again.
My "hilarious" corpsing story... I was in a production of Hamlet, as "anonymous hanger-on" in Ophelia's funeral scene. Gertrude had traditionally mimed the putting of the posy of flowers onto the supine body of Ophelia, but this time she found a whacking great bunch of plastic flowers out the back of the set, brought them on, dumped them on Ophelia, who laughed, setting everyone else off. I got so mad. Dead girls shouldn't laugh.
cousin daniel said at 12:25 AM 11-13-2004: i'm telling on killoggs. when i was at work the people were crowding around my desk... "what is that your looking at daniel, it's so interesting." they kept asking me what was going on with that "killoggs stuff". "i want to touch you daniel, your so sofisicated" it was like a nightmare. (drunk post).
