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Stories from the Stage

STORIES FROM THE STAGE – Alan Alda

Strange Moments That Were Oddly Not Embarrassing

The first time I nearly died onstage was in Cleveland, Ohio. I had stolen the text of the Book of Job from the Bible and was performing it as a play. I was playing Job.

I was twenty-four years old, way too young and healthy to look the part, so I decided to wear about a half pound of suppurating sores made of putty as well as a bald pate with wisps of crepe hair. I didn’t really know how to keep the hair glued down, and on opening night, while I was complaining to God, a little piece of crepe hair floated off my face and wafted through the air. When I took a deep breath to launch into another complaint, it flew into my mouth and down my windpipe. I started choking miserably. For the first minute of distress, instead feeling embarrassment, I was sure the audience thought I was an incredibly realistic actor. Not quite. If anybody thought it was acting I was doing, around the second minute, they were probably thinking, This kid is going to die right in front of us. I coughed and choked so long and so pathetically, they had to bring down the curtain. And this was opening night. I finished the play—not to especially rousing applause—and after the curtain came down, I could hear an elderly theatergoer in the front row say to his wife, “What did they put that on for?”

The second time I nearly died was, again, on an opening night. This time on Broadway. The play was called “Fair game for Lovers” and I, still in my early twenties, was playing a young man frustrated by love.

My character had been jilted by his fiancée, and there I stood, alone onstage, ranting with passion about my fickle girlfriend—while I smoked a cigarette. Unfortunately, I had never quite got the hang of smoking. Smoke made me choke, and I often found it difficult to light a cigarette without burning the end of my nose. This night, I managed to get the thing lit and waved out the match, which I held at my side while I went on with my rant. There were two important things I didn’t realize: I was wearing a cheap acetate robe, and the match head was still glowing. Halfway through my monologue, I heard a whoosh, like wind suddenly rushing through an open car window. I looked down and saw that the entire front of my robe was a sheet of flames. In a moment like this, a normal person might think, How close am I to a seltzer bottle? Not me. My first thought was, Oh, God, this is going to get such a gigantic laugh. The audience, of course, familiar with the image of people being trampled to death in a burning theater, was not laughing. There was dead silence while I furiously patted out the flames. I didn’t even get a round of applause for my quick thinking. I did get a nice mention in the New York Times review the next day when Walter Kerr said that I was a young actor willing to do anything to get attention, including set myself on Fire. I was more interested in getting a laugh, than life itself.

The third and final brush with death on stage was during the Boston tryouts for “The Apple Tree.”

It was Act Two, where we told the story of “The Lady or the Tiger?” I had just finished a song and was heading upstage to choose one of two doors. Behind one was the Lady and behind the other was the Tiger, and certain death. Just as I turned, a huge lighting apparatus fell from the flies, grazed the feathers of my cape, and pounded against the floorboards, pinning the cape to the stage. It must have weighed a hundred pounds, and the noise was like that of a car crash. It had passed a couple of inches from my head. The audience gasped. I, of course, tugged at the feathered cape as though I were Marcel Marceau, and somehow that managed to get a laugh.

Finally. A laugh.

In the old joke, an actor is dying, and his friend says, “Dying must be hard.” The actor says “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Especially, if you combine them.


Alan Alda is an American actor, director, and screenwriter best known for his role in the long-running television series M*A*S*H (1972–83).

On Broadway, Alda is a three time Tony Award nominee whose career includes productions of Purlie VictoriousThe Apple Tree,The Owl and the Pussycat, Jake’s WomenQEDGlengarry Glen Ross (2005 Revival), Art and Love Letters

His later television work included recurring roles on ERThe West Wing, for which he won an Emmy; 30 RockThe Big CThe Blacklist; and Ray Donovan. Film credits include, including Same Time, Next Year (1978), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Marriage Story (2019). He received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in The Aviator (2004).

Alda’s books included Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned (2005), Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (2007), and If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating (2017).

Categories
Stories from the Stage

STORIES FROM THE STAGE – Debbie Allen

As a young woman of 27 years old, I was cast as Anita in West Side Story. I had no idea how the work process of putting that together would inform me, inspire me, and truly lead me to want to direct and choreograph. I first auditioned for Leonard Bernstein, then it was Jerome Robbins. And then, when we actually went to go to work and rehearsal, there was a man – Gerald Freedman – who did a lot of the scene study work with us in between learning different variations of “America.” We sat at the table for at least two weeks and it was there that I truly experienced taking a script, breaking it down, deconstructing the narrative, creating the circumstances that were not written in the play, and understanding the musicalization of all the emotions that I was going through as an actor. It was exciting. Coming from Houston, Texas, where everything was segregated, we couldn’t even go to the theater or to the movies that the general public attended. So I didn’t grow up with West Side Story, but I came to love it and was inspired by the work ethic of the production to guide others on the path that led me to success.


Debbie Allen is a two-time Tony Award nominee for her electrifying performances in Sweet Charity and West Side Story. In a career that spans three decades, the name Debbie Allen is synonymous with dynamic energy, creative talent and innovation. For her vast body of work, Ms. Allen has earned three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, five NAACP Image Awards, a Drama Desk, an Astaire Award (for Best Dancer), and the Olivier Award. Debbie made her Broadway debut in Purlie. She holds four honorary Doctorate degrees and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is currently an Executive Producer as well as a director and actress on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.