I wanted to try something a little lighter and sillier for a change– I thought it might be fun to start sharing some stories from past performances. I certainly have a wealth of them.

One of my favorites from high school is from my sophomore year. I was playing a character who wore a big, oversized robe, with long sleeves that dragged almost to the floor. The robe was heavy and made of thick, bulky fabric.

Read more: Story Time: One of my Favorite High School Theatre Memories

The Thursday before our Friday opening night at our school was always our “preview night,” a a night with limited attendance, reserved for school faculty, production volunteers, and the actors and staff of our district’s middle school drama department. It was always an exciting night– the promise of getting to show off in front of our favorite teachers and next year’s freshmen was especially thrilling to our teenage sensibilities.

And this preview night was going great! I was feeling confident and in my element. The whole cast was having a blast.

In one scene, an actor came on stage holding a hat she had worn in the first scene. (The hat also had some fake hair extensions hidden in it– the character was supposed to “cut her hair” between scenes.) During the course of the scene, I would pass this actor a silver platter, and she would take both the hat and the platter offstage with her. This would leave my hands free to perform my big solo to close the scene.

On this night, I hand the actor the platter. After doing this, I’m blocked to turn to another actor, who was standing on my other side. I do so, and I feel an odd tugging on my sleeve. I pull my arm away, and I notice the actor I’m now talking to has a funny look on her face. But I am an *actor*, and I am in the zone, and I do not break character! My character admonishes both of the others, and they exit.

Then it’s time for my solo. It’s fabulous! The audience is hanging on my every word! The energy is magnificent. They’re laughing at all the right moments, and when I finish the song, I get wild laughter and applause. I turn to walk off the stage, and there is a cluster of faces visible in the wing, staring at me.

Funny.

I get backstage, and before I can ask what’s going on, the actor who had given me the funny look earlier grabbed my sleeve and lifted it up.

Attached to the bottom, swinging from pins covered in fake hair extensions, is the first actor’s hat, complete with locks of fake hair. When I had passed her the silver platter, the hat had become attached to my sleeve. She’d tried to grab it back, but didn’t want to ruin the flow of the scene (we were in high school, after all, and running on a heady combination of adrenaline, stage fright, and sugar), so she left it. The other actor, too, hadn’t known exactly how to approach the elephant in the room, and so they both left… and left me to sing my entire solo, wildly swinging around the hairy hat attached to my costume.

Well, the audience loved it. And the middle school show’s staff told me they used it as a teaching moment to illustrate the importance of staying in character even when you have a prop or costume mishap. Which… yes, I absolutely knew the hat was there the whole time, and uh… it was absolutely intentional on my part that I didn’t remove it, and it’s definitely a testament to my superior focus as an actor. Yes… for sure, go with that!