Tale #21: Get Your Hands Off My Balls

There is nothing more dangerous in theater than an unpredictable child actor with a live microphone backstage.

Ok to be fair, there’s probably like ten-thousand things that are more dangerous, but going for dramatic effect here.

The production was Hairspray Jr. It was a performance day and the show was moving along at a good pace. Nothing had gone wrong so far, no children had cried that day, things were looking good.

We were at the scene right before the dodgeball scene when I started to hear whispering voices coming from backstage. I was sitting at the back of the house in my music-operator spot (see Tale #20) next to Dale. I should not have been able to hear whispering voices from backstage.

I quickly realized that someone’s body microphone was on backstage and their hushed conversation was coming through the house speakers. With 32 microphones on the soundboard, it is very easy for one to be on early or by mistake.

The dodgeball scene in our production featured about 20 dodgeballs as props that the kids used to play the game on stage. When you work with child actors you always need to pre-assign who gets which prop, how many they get, who is allowed to touch them, etc. Otherwise, the kids scream or fight or cry or all of the above and it just never ends well. We have seen children throw props at other children…on stage.

Anyways, there I was sitting at the back of the house operating the performance tracks. I quickly deduced what the kids were whispering about backstage. They were fighting over the dodgeballs. I could hear the conflict escalating and their voices getting louder. I was very worried something bad was going to be said….and then it was.

Clear as day, over a live mic, for an audience of about 450 people, I heard the young actor playing Seaweed shout “get your hands off my balls.”

I immediately dropped my head in my hands to muffle the sound of my laughter. Obviously, I knew they were talking about dodgeballs backstage. I could only imagine what the unsuspecting audience with no context clues thought when that demand came out over the speaker system.

We definitely increased the amount of talks we gave to the children about being careful with backstage chatter when wearing a microphone in a show.