The Costumer Is Going To Be LIVID

When I did theater in high school, the tech crew would put a speaker in the hallway that was our backstage so that we could hear what was going on onstage, including lines said through microphones and sound effects.

One day, after the cast had been rehearsing for a while but while the tech crew was just getting started, I was talking to some of my friends backstage, very close to both the speaker and the men’s room.

One of them excused himself to use the bathroom, and I turned to do something else. A second later, music that the crew was planning to use for a set change started playing over the speaker, but since they hadn’t used the speaker before, they played it at an unbelievably loud volume. I jumped a mile because this was in no way expected, but they soon turned it down to bearable levels.

I turned around to see that my friend was even more surprised than me and was now lying sprawled out in the entrance to the bathroom.

Friend: “Well, I had to use the bathroom. Had to. It’s a past-tense need now.”