I have been in puppetry for many years and I can remember a few times when something funny happened to me, so I thought I would share them here.  If it could go wrong, it went wrong with me! (Murphy's Law)
I use a stage made from PVC pipes and not all pipes are glued together (for easy assembly.)  I tell my puppeteers not to lean on the stage for that reason.  Well, one time a puppeteer leaned her puppet against the stage because her arm got tired and part of the stage fell apart.  All of a sudden two human hands came up and put the stage back together and we got a lot of laughs from that. (It was one of those "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" moments.)
Just recently, I was singing a song that I wrote and half way through the song, I fell asleep (Yes, I really did.)  The teacher was wondering what happened to me.  I woke up a few looonnnggg seconds later and finished my song.  I told the teacher, after the play, what had happened to me and we both had a good laugh!
If you had a funny experience, please post it on this thread. I would like to hear about it.

YOU ACTUALLY FELL ASLEEP!!!!!!! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha.
that is hilarious, that has never happened to me, but imagine how much of a comedy situation that turned out to be. i dont know if i would be more embarassed than anything else, but i cant say i have ever fallen asleep half way through a sketch!!

the worst thing that happened to me was that one year i was peforming in a christmas production that i wrote and i was using a donkey puppet that i had made, he appears to some chidren sneaking around an old barn on christmas eve out of a little stable compartment, the thing is, we has decorated it with tinsel and lights and the moment i poppeds the donkeys head out, his big ears dragged all the tinsel and lights with them and i couldnt remove it all without being seen, so i spent the entire show with the donkey all wrapped up in tinsel and lights, and to make matters worse, it made me completely blank what my lines where for a few moments, the audience thought that it was all part of the show and the kids watching found it truly funny (the donkeys charector was of a silly, slightly stupid teenage donkey) so i managed to get away with it, the only problem was that we where doing a touring show and we had to keep that bit in it for the rest of our tour, so evey night i had to get him to drag the lights and tinsel off and pretend to forget my lines!!!

who's next???

Ben.

Jeezbo, it sure is funny how mishaps can work in our favor!!

There is another time I remember, when I was about 10 years old, I really started to develop an interest in puppetry.  I watched a lot of Charlie McCarthy and his friend Mortimer Snerd, and I guess I liked Mortimer the best.  One day, I was pretending to have Mortimer as my puppet with my arm in the air.  I started talking to my imagined puppet and my mom heard me.  She told me that I had an imaginary friend, so I told her that I was practicing with Mortimer like the one on TV.  Maybe she never saw Mortimer Snerd on TV, but she said again the I had an imaginary friend and that I was just making up an excuse for my "friend."  Aarrgg!  That was many years ago and thankfully, she no longer remembers that incident!  I have practiced very little venting since then, but I might pick it up later!

Puppet eyeball fell off mid show and rolled into the audience.  My son picked it up and held it up to the puppet and said "here's your eye".  Quick thinking adult handed it over the curtain and the puppet said "Thank you for finding my eye", and went on with the show.  He talked about how he helped the puppet all day.  After that we told team to go with it and pretend that it was part of the show no matter what happens.  We keep a tool box of emergency items for quick fixes now.

While doing a show for a group of kindergarten students, my son, who has very long arms, raised his puppet too high above the stage. He didn't have long sleeves on and from the crowd, came a very distinct voice. "Look, you can see the puppet's butt". Needless to say, we sort of lost the show for a few minutes. Since that time, we make very sure to have a sleeve to cover the "puppet's butt" to prevent this from happening again. I must admit, I still laugh when I think about it.

That is funny!! Thanks for sharing!!

  If it could go wrong, it went wrong with me! (Murphy's Law)

I love that one. Not only is it so true for theatre, but it's actually happened on a very ironic level for me.

2004 I stage managed for a show called "Murphy's Laws". The show was about a comedian's life and how things have been going wrong for him in life. He used examples from his life to talk about all the laws.

I kid you not, every night, something different would go wrong; and it wasn't planned. At one stage in the show, he's talking things going wrong, and jokes around with eggs and a golf club - he puts one on the ground and then scares the audience by swinging at it. (Keep in mind this is a 'pub theatre', and the audience is about a few inches away from him) The in-joke is that the eggs are pre-drilled and emptied. Except of course, one night when he forgot!

One night, I ended up part of the show. Because of the nature of the venue, the SM also acts as lighting operator, sound operator and special fx operator. The cast gives me a CD before the show, and that's what I use. The CD players were notorious for stopping/starting suddenly with computer-burned CDs; and one night it happened right when the performer is referring to a radio interview which I then play. It didn't work; I pressed play time and again, and while I was fiddling, I was very much 'laughed at' by the performer. Thank goodness it was live comedy and he had a good sense of humour about it all.

I always remember Rachel Griffiths (she's in Brothers and Sisters and is an Aussie) perform in The Doll House about 10/15 years ago and watching as she and an extra just nonchalantly dealt with the fact the Griffiths' period costume starting falling apart onstage. Without even blinking, the extra - a maid in the house - went offtstage and got a safety pin, came back and the two improvised some scripting. The whole thing was completely in character. I've been a fan of hers ever since.

Of course, more on the puppetry side of things, a few years ago when Ronnie Burkett was around performing 'Ten Days on Earth', he had one of his puppets go a little haywire. The puppet's head spun around on its pivot like something out of a horror movie. He was brilliant and just laughed it off with some sort of suitable comment.

... I could go on, but won't. Done too many shows: one thing I keep as my mantra is that "there's no such thing as a perfect show". Embracing that has saved my nerves

But that's the whole reason I love theatre. My favourite moments of a show, as an audience member or part of the crew, is when things go wrong. It's often the most honest moments of the night and I enjoy watching a skilled performer/crew member work around it.

... Terry, your story of "the man behind the curtain" is hilarious! But the narcolepsy - man, I've never, ever heard of anyone doing that. Laughing for 20 minutes outside of the context of the show because an actor screwed up; yes. Falling asleep on stage; no.

Ben and Snail, your stories are great too! It reminds me of a show I worked on where one of the actors one day accidentally mispronounced "diabetes" in rehearsal. The rest of us laughed so hard and so much at the way he said it that it stayed in the show and ended up being a big hit with the audience. Funny how often the best moments come from accidents like that.

Jomama, yours made me laugh the hardest.

I've forgotten dozens of "normal" performances in my career, but I never forget the ones that didn't go right!  They're the most fun to look back on and remember!...like Peter Pan vomitting in the air during "I'm Flying" because the actor drank too much at a cast party the night before (ah, college); a fog machine going haywire and rattling its way on stage so that the "man behind the curtain" had to reach out on stage and wrangle it; an actress mooning the audience because she had an on-stage quick change and didn't realize the back of her skirt was tucked in her panty hose; heck, I flashed the audience during my acting career when the snaps on my loin cloth broke free and I was left with nothing but a smile and a dance belt during a very long tableau (that was in an epic outdoor drama about the Elizabethan history of North Carolina and I was a Native American)...I could go on and on.  It's always a relief when a show goes as planned, but never as much fun as when they don't!  It's always more fun if you get a good story out of it!

We had a wig come off a puppet during a performance. The audience was cracking up, the puppeteer was frantic, and the 2nd level puppeteers couldn't figure out what was so funny.