What to Do When Something Goes Wrong on Stage

You reach for the letter on the desk, the one your whole scene turns on, and the desk is bare. Or the door you’re supposed to slam sticks. Or your partner’s entrance line comes and goes, and the doorway stays empty.

Live theater runs on hundreds of small things going right every night, and sooner or later one of them won’t. The good news is that audiences forgive almost anything they can’t see. What they notice is an actor who stops being the character to deal with the problem.

The short version: keep the story going and stay in character. Solve the problem the way your character would, using what’s on stage. Fix only what you can fix from inside the scene, and leave anything bigger, or anything unsafe, to the stage manager. Afterward, tell the stage manager exactly what happened so it doesn’t happen twice.

The rule under every fix: the audience follows you

Theatrefolk lists breaking character to apologize to the audience as a common beginner mistake. Their point is simple. The audience doesn’t know the script. Until you show them something went wrong, as far as most of them know, nothing did.

So the first job in any mishap is to stay in the world of the play. Your eyes, your voice, and your body tell the audience whether this is a story or an accident. A wince, a glance into the wings, or a laugh at your partner turns a hiccup into an event.

The second job is to ask one question: can the scene go on? If the story can survive the problem, you handle it in character. If someone could get hurt, or the show physically can’t continue, it isn’t your call anymore. That belongs to the stage manager, and we’ll get to it below.

A prop breaks, or never shows up

Props are a common culprit, because they pass through so many hands. A cup isn’t preset. A letter falls behind a sofa. A plate breaks on the first touch. The fix depends on whether the story needs the object.

• If the story doesn’t need it, let it go. Skip the business, say the line, move on. Nobody misses a teacup they never knew about.
• If the story needs it, give the scene a reason it isn’t there, in your character’s words, or use something else on stage. A book can stand in for a letter if you treat it like one. If you have to leave the scene to fetch it, give your character a reason to go.
• If it breaks, don’t play with the pieces. If they’re soft or harmless, leave them, or nudge them out of everyone’s path with a natural action, and keep going. Broken glass or anything sharp is different: never pick it up or push it around, stay clear of it, and tell the stage manager at once. If anyone could step on it before the next scene change, it’s their call whether to hold the show.

The best model for an in-character cover is in a play written before any of us were born. In Act 1 of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon has eaten every cucumber sandwich meant for his aunt, and his butler, Lane, covers for him on the spot:

ALGERNON: Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially.

LANE: There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.

ALGERNON: No cucumbers!

LANE: No, sir. Not even for ready money.

That’s the whole technique. Lane doesn’t apologize or explain the real problem. He gives a reason that belongs in the world of the play, says it with complete conviction, and the scene carries on. Wilde wrote it as a joke, but it is exactly what you want to do when the prop table lets you down. You can read the whole scene on our Importance of Being Earnest page.

Your partner misses an entrance

A missed entrance feels the longest of all, because you’re alone with a cue that nobody answers. The actor who’s late is probably rushing to get to you, so your job is to keep the scene alive until they arrive, without making it obvious that you’re waiting.

Start with what’s in your hands. Most scenes give you something to do: tidy the room, pour a drink, look out of the window, reread the letter. Do it in character, and do it with intention, as if your character is waiting for exactly this person. If the play allows it, a short line that fits the moment (calling their name, wondering aloud where they’ve got to) buys a few more seconds and tells backstage that the stage is waiting.

Sometimes the other actor can’t make it at all, and the scene has to bend. Randy Graff, recalling her run as Fantine in Les Misérables, told Playbill about a night when Colm Wilkinson missed his cue to carry her to the bed. She sang her part, let his music go by, and got herself into the bed. In the same roundup, Kelli O’Hara remembers missing a whole scene of Follies while she was in the quick-change area, and her castmates carried it without her.

Notice what both stories have in common. The people on stage didn’t stop the show. They kept the story going without the missing piece. Don’t jump ahead to a later scene to save time unless you’re sure everyone else on stage can follow you there.

When your partner skips a chunk instead

The opposite problem, a partner who jumps ahead or forgets a speech, has its own playbook. Our guide on what to do when your scene partner forgets a line covers feeding a cue from inside the scene and folding back in anything the plot can’t lose. If you’re the one who blanks, start with what to do when you forget your lines on stage.

A costume gives way

Zippers fail, buttons pop, hems catch. Costume problems are frightening because they feel personal, but the rule is the same: handle it as the character would, and keep going if you can do it safely and decently.

Krystina Alabado told Playbill that her jumpsuit zipper broke during a quick change in Mean Girls. With no time to pin it, she went on and did the number holding it closed with one hand and doing the choreography with the other. That’s the practical answer for most actors: hold, tuck, or adjust with one natural movement, then forget about it.

Bigger failures are the wardrobe team’s to solve. Playbill’s look at Broadway’s dressers describes a Hamilton performance that held for a broken zipper while a dresser sewed the actress back into her dress. If a costume problem means you can’t go on decently or safely, tell your dresser or the stage manager the moment you’re off stage. Don’t fix it alone in the wings and miss your next entrance.

A light or sound cue goes wrong

Technical cues are run by the stage manager and the crew, not by you. If a cue comes early, late, or not at all, your job is to keep acting as if the world of the play is behaving. Their job is to get the cues back on track.

• A sound cue doesn’t play. If the story needs it (a doorbell, a phone, a gunshot), react to what should have happened, or give it a line: “Was that the door?” works whether or not the bell rang.
• A sound cue plays at the wrong time. Don’t answer a phone that rang a page early unless the scene can take it. Often the cleanest choice is to ignore it and let the board operator correct.
• The lights go wrong. If you’re left in the dark, stay where you are and keep going if you can be heard, or hold still until the lights come back. Never walk around a dark stage you can’t see.
• The set misbehaves. When the curtain failed to close at the end of Act One of Present Laughter, Kevin Kline and Cobie Smulders improvised until it did. Most of us won’t be asked to improvise a whole act ending, but the instinct is right: play on until the people backstage fix it.

The audience won’t settle

Phones ring. Someone talks. A child decides to join the show. Dealing with the house is the house manager’s and stage manager’s job, not yours. Your job is to stay in the play.

Playbill tells the story of an actress in How to Succeed whose scene was interrupted by a child calling out from a box seat. The audience laughed, and she kept trying to stay in character. That’s the job. If you hold your focus, you give the audience something to come back to.

You may know the famous exception. During Shows for Days at Lincoln Center in 2015, Patti LuPone took a phone from an audience member who was texting during the show, as CNN reported. It made headlines precisely because it is so rare. Unless you’re a Broadway legend with decades of goodwill, let the front-of-house staff handle it.

When the show has to stop

Some things the story can’t absorb: an injury, a fire alarm, a falling set piece, smoke where there shouldn’t be any, someone ill in the house. In those moments, follow the stage manager’s instructions. In most theaters, it’s the stage manager who calls a hold and speaks to the audience. The Emerson Stage stage manager’s handbook, for example, makes the stage manager and assistant stage managers responsible for communicating with cast, crew, and audience in an emergency, and tells stage managers to keep a house announcement mic at the calling desk.

What that means for you:

• If you’re hurt, or you see something unsafe, stop and get help. Safety comes before any performance.
• When a hold is called, stay still or leave the stage as directed. Don’t improvise around it, and don’t make your own announcement unless stage management asks you to.
• If there’s fire or smoke, or an evacuation is called, don’t wait in place: follow your theater’s evacuation procedure and leave by the nearest safe exit.
• When the show restarts, the stage manager will tell you where. Go back to that moment fully, as if the break never happened.

Occasionally a performer is the one who speaks to the house, because stage management asks them to or because no announcement comes. Backstage describes an actor who stopped a play when an alarm went off, apologized briefly, recapped the story so far, and picked up where he left off. The article’s lesson is to stay centered and bring the audience back with you. Brief, calm, and back to work.

After the show: tell the stage manager

The scene survived. Now make sure it doesn’t happen again. Find the stage manager after the show (or at the next break, if it can’t wait) and say exactly what went wrong: which prop, which cue, which entrance, which costume piece, and roughly where in the scene. Stick to facts.

Stage managers write these things down. The IUSB stage management handbook, for instance, has the performance report record holds and problems with scene or costume changes. That report is one way the crew learns there’s something to fix before the next performance.

Two things not to do. Don’t confront the crew member or castmate you think is at fault; it’s the stage manager’s job to sort it out. And don’t keep replaying the moment in the next scene. Note it, let it go, and play what’s in front of you.

Rehearse the what-ifs before opening

You can’t rehearse every disaster, but you can rehearse your reflexes. Theatrefolk’s round-up on production challenges suggests a “what if” game: name the things you’re afraid will go wrong and plan a response for each. Here’s a version to do on your own or with your cast:

• For each scene, name the props the story can’t do without. Decide what you’d say or do if each one were missing.
• Find the moments where you’re alone waiting for someone else’s entrance, and choose one or two pieces of business you could stretch.
• Learn your partners’ lines around your cues, not just your own, so you know which lines the scene can safely lose if it has to.
• Know where every exit is, and what the stage manager’s hold procedure is in your theater.
• Check your own props and costume at every preshow, and report anything wrong right then, before places.

The deepest preparation is knowing the scene so well that nothing throws you. If you know the whole conversation, not just your half, you can feel where it’s going when something goes wrong and steer it back. Offbook helps with that: realistic voices read every other part and play the next cue when you finish your line, and you can change how fast your partners talk or let the scene move on after a silence, so a pause doesn’t stop the run.

For the listening half of the skill, our guide on how to listen on stage is the best next read. An actor who is really listening notices trouble first, and is already halfway into the fix.

Questions actors ask

Should I ever break character when something goes wrong?

Only when the stage manager calls a hold, stage management asks you to speak to the audience, or someone’s safety is at risk. For everything else, stay in character and solve it as your character would. Stepping out to apologize or laugh tells the audience something went wrong, and that is usually worse than the mistake.

What if I’m the one who caused the problem?

Fix what you can from inside the scene, then tell the stage manager plainly after the show. Everyone in theater has dropped a prop or missed a cue. A quick, honest report is what earns trust; hiding it doesn’t.

My scene partner is waiting for a prop I was supposed to bring on. What do I do?

Give the scene a reason, in character. Your character forgot it, left it in the other room, or will bring it later. If the plot really needs it, find a moment to go and get it, with a line that makes the exit belong to the story.

What if I laugh when something goes wrong?

It happens. Turn away briefly if the moment allows, breathe out, and put your focus back on what your character wants from the other person. The more completely you go back into the scene, the faster the laugh passes, for you and for the audience.

Who decides whether the show stops?

Usually the stage manager, under the theater’s own emergency procedures. An actor who is hurt, or sees a danger, should always stop and get help, but the call to hold the show is normally stage management’s.