Someone most have mentioned that “Scottish’ play during the course of rehearsals, as the show had more then it’s fair share of accidents on stage, as well as off. The largest incident involved me. In the first scene together, the mechanicals were supposed to walk onto the stage and crash into each other for comic effect, unfortunately, as I was falling forward, the actress playing Snug, the joiner, flew her head back and my nose collided with her hard noggin. I heard a loud “crunch” and blood began to rapidly pour from my nostrils. Another cast member, took me to the restroom to help stop the bleeding and to get me cleaned up. I frantically asked her, “Is my nose broken?” She shook her head, but I think she was just trying to keep me calm. As I looked in the mirror, I could tell my nose was a lovely shade of black, purple, and blue and under my eyes, I looked like a raccoon.
Later that night, I went back to my dorm. My roommate took one look at my face and drove me to the nearest hospital. The emergency room triage nurse asked, “Did you break your nose or has your nose always been there?” Everyone thinks they’re a comedian.
There is not a whole lot that can be done with a broken nose until the swelling goes down, so my nose was immobilized and I was sent back to school. A week later, my nose was reset, although, to this day I don’t think it was ever set straight.
For the rest of the run of the show, I was the not the ‘butt’ of everyone’s jokes, but the ‘nose’ of endless gags and humor. I received not a ‘break a leg’ card, but a ‘break a nose’ card from the cast on opening night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream posters around the auditorium had a piece of tape across Shakespeare’s nose, and the day after my nose had been set, I walked into my Theatre Tech class to find everyone with tape of their noses. It’s a good thing I had a sense of humor and could laugh with them for I knew they were laughing with me, not at me. I still laugh today.
I mean, seriously, who flipped over her desk in first grade? Who walked into a tree branch slicing her eyelid open (yep, you read that right - I sliced open my eyelid)? Who punched herself in the nose, while trying to take something apart? Who broke her baby toe on a footlocker? Yeah, that would be me.
And whoever said I was graceful?