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One time, I did a play with Ted van Griethuysen, who is a company member at The Shakespeare
Theatre, and there was a cat meowing in the audience, for real, meowing in the audience
for the entire last 30 minutes of the first Act, a cat, and I kept, and I thought I was
losing my mind. I went backstage, and I said, "Did anyone hear the cat," and no one heard
the cat, and so they were like, "You are crazy," which we already knew, but, um, but then I
thought, you know, it's true, I am crazy, and then the Stage Manager saw a cat pop out
of a woman's bag in the audience, and then he went and said, "Ma'am, you have to take
your cat out of the theatre," and she said "I don't have a cat in here." She zipped up
her purse, and she stayed, and kept the cat in her zipped-up purse for the second Act.
It's crazy, but, no, this was actually in college in doing a performance of "The Importance
of Being Earnest," and the girl who played Gwendolen, uh, like, developed the violent
stomach flu in the middle of Act II, and, um, so, I remember John and I were eating
our little crumpets and whatever, and we had to look at each other, and I was staring into
the wings watching her hold her expensive gown back and yarf in a bucket, and then,
but the best part was in the third Act, where everybody's onstage for the whole time, she,
she was brilliant, this kid, 'cause she'd stand there and she'd be part of the scene
and everything then she'd sort of look offstage and go, "Oh, yes," as if somebody had motioned
to her, and she'd wander off, and then you'd hear these horrible wretching noises.
Aww. Were you Lady Bracknell in that one?
No, I've always wanted to play Lady Bracknell. No, I was Algernon. I was ... I got my best
direction ever for in--from a director in that show. Um, we had this wild professor,
and after rehearsal one day, he said, and he sounded like this, bless him, he literally
did, he said, "Mr. Dow, it's a little much." I said, "Well, Dr. Parkington, should I pull
it back, should I change it, should I--" He went, "No. But it's a little much." So I went,
"Okay."
He has to faint, and he's been fainting, repeatedly, incorrectly, and so he keeps going, "Uh, ow.
Uh, can I have a hip pad? Ow."
I've been fainting for the past 15 years incorrectly, so ...
Do you faint?
I mean, no. Onstage.
Onstage.
Falling.
Right.
I, I like to fall.
Falling's great.
It's fun, yeah.
But don't hurt yourself. I decided I couldn't fall for, like, three
years though 'cause I was doing it in every play. I was, like, in "Hedda Gabler" and falling
doing--I've never done "Hedda Gabler," thank God.
That show, if there's a show that needs a--You've never been in "Hedda Gabler?"
No. I know, it's good, it's good. But-- Oh, that was another funny story, um, uh,
doing a production of "The Philanthropist," and at the end of that play, the character,
uh, commits suicide in a dining room chair, shoots himself, um, so anyway, the back of
this high back dining room chair was packed with a tube with grey macaroni and blood and
all sorts of stuff, but it went off in the middle of Act II, so they're having this dramatic
scene over the dining room table, and all of a sudden PUGH, SPLAT all over the wall,
and the audience was like "Muh? What's going on?" and they restarted, did it for the final
scene and when he did kill himself and it splattered all over, you hear the whole audience
go, "Ohhhh."