I humbly ask my fellow actors to submit to my will. Forsake any other publisher. Pledge your allegiance, devote yourself to our common cause. Rise up with laptop in lap and render unto me an offering.

Gosh I love writing flowery language. Maybe that’s what I love about the stage, about the camera, about the book, the writing, the reading.

In my recent post about the theatre, I realized that many friends were drawn by our mutual experience and thought I to myself, here an opportunity arises. So, send me your tired, your poor your huddled stories of the weird things that have happened to you in the theatre, and I shall place them here with your name on the marquee in lights. I will also give you an attribution.

To start the ball rolling here’s one. Pirates of Penzance. I have done this operetta more than any other over the years. I have Fredrick’d, I have Sargeant’d, I have Major General’d I have Pirate King’d I have done everything but Mabel but there’s still time.

So once upon a production I was playing the Pirate King. It was Longmont Theater Company complete with orchestra and real swords. Great cast, great costumes, sets and all that theatre stuff.

I remember that it was in the beginning of the third act that I killed someone. Now the PK wasn’t actually a bad guy. He (to my knowledge) never actually ran anyone through or hung them from the yardarm or vivisected them or any of that stuff, but this one night I killed someone on stage. Well, I came close.

I hope that some of you were in this production and remember this great misadventure of the stage. Whilst swashbuckling my way downstage singing a cheery song to the young Fredrick about leap year; I swashed. I buckled…and so did, at that very moment my sword. The blade left the hilt and in a complete and perfect arch took flight. It headed right for the orchestra pit, and I could feel the audible gasp from the actors, the crowd, and a scream from one nearly murdered cellist.

I don’t remember the aftermath. I don’t remember how we recovered but I am quite sure the show went on because that’s what we do. I am imagining that I completed the production brandishing only the handle of my sword which must certainly have amused the audience. But probably not the cellist.

Submit your stories for “Tales from the Script” to donwarrick@yahoo.com.