[Kiwi]

I'm posting this because I'm wondering how many people can top what I've been doing for the last week. For this show, I dug around in the mud for about a half hour, one of the nights in a very heavy, cold rain, to cover these old shoes with it so much that they were unrecognizable, covered one of the actors with cottage cheese, then cleaned it up backstage and on stage every night, as well as garbanzo beans, both of which had been dug into the floor from the actors walking all over them in the scene, prepared a bunch of unpleasant looking/smelling food, and of course built set, which meant getting glue and paint all over my hands, clothes, and everywhere else.

Can you top it?

[Electricity24601]

Wow! I totally can't top that one. Mind if I ask what show that was?

The dirtiest thing I've done is just deal with sweaty actors during quick changes.
The hardest was getting mics switched in about 15 seconds and packing up all the costumes and makeup supplies and making them fit in a tiny room after every night.

[Kiwi]

This was for The Nerd, which ends tonight (hooray).
Yeah, I forgot to mention changing a guy into a tuxedo at the very end of the show in a couple minutes, so I've got the sweaty actor card to add too, lol. This is why I don't tech if i can help it.

[Brackynn]

Well, I doubt very much that I can top that, Kiwi! But I do have interesting memories of a show where I was followspot operator ... and so glad that I wasn't a stagehand.

Part of the set involved a refrigerator that had to be taken on and off a few times throughout the show. Because the actors had to open it and take food out, there was real food in there. Including milk. But no electricity. I went down to the wings during one of our breaks to talk to one of my stagehand friends and she shoved me in front of that fridge without saying a word. Even with the door closed, it reeked of off milk. She spent the whole break complaining about how she had to hang around this putrid-smelling fridge for hours. Like I said, I didn't envy her one bit.

I did wonder why they didn't just change the milk, though *shrug*

[Kiwi]

Yeah, really. I mean, were the actors drinking the milk being used? Pretty sure that wouldn't work out too well. And if they weren't, why'd they even keep it there?

[tortallcit]

wow... both of those are really bad... doesn't top mine at all (Sweeping stage every day, twice a day for Oklahoma... damn hay bales...)

[EarlCarpenterFan]

I've never had to do anything that dirty, but the worst thing I've done was dealing with stage blood in a production of Henry VI. It was incredibly sticky (I think it was golden syrup with food colouring). Once, somehow, it managed to drip down the back of the props table and I spent the interval under the table scrubbing it off the floor.

[wicked_diva]

My worst doesn't seem too horrible in comparison with that first one, but it was still bad. I worked as a dresser at Busch Gardens Europe last summer, and for American Jukebox, I had to mop the stage everyday, and if the stage felt "sticky" or "slippery," then we'd have to do it again. I also had to change 10 singer/dancers into about 6 spandexy costumes each during a 30 min show. And everything was outside in the VA weather, which was up to 115 Heat Index. Plus there were up to 6 shows each day.

And for Kinetix, it was only bad because there was no AC in the "green room" and that when it rained, we had to be out squeegeeing the stage and mopping it all up.

Moral of the story - don't work at Busch Gardens.

[QuaxoCoricopat]

Spoiled milk smell will always remind me of brown stage paint. Ours was based off of milk and someone let it get water in it, which made the milk paint mold. We had to keep it around though, because our budget was so small.

Worst duty probably for me was going into the scrap velvet box. You see our theatre had it's roof ripped off in a tornado 10 years ago, ruining practically everything. Almost everything was a total loss. But because we're cheap, we kept our lights for parts and our curtains to use as scrap blacks for props, to block backstage lights etc. They were mouldy, musty, and shed like a cat. Your snot would be black for days afterwards.

Worst place in general was a little Opera company I worked for that made us work in 100 degree weather in a metal shack with no air conditioning or plumbing, shoddy electricity (the fuse box was mounted to the outside when it was supposed to be inside, and was the wrong power level). Then there was the mouse infestation and the urine soaked set... I broke contract over that one.