I was reminded of this event after reading an article in the NYT by Dick Cavett about the humor of what can go wrong on stage in live theatre, “Oh No, Live Drama and Unwritten Humor”.

In college, I played the title character in the play “When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder”. Red was a young, ineffectual loser trapped in a dead end job in a money-losing diner in the desert on Rt. 66 after the interstate opened. One of the subplots concerned a tourist couple on their way to Baton Rouge and the woman, Clarise, was a concert violinist carrying a very expensive violin with her. My goal is to get out of the diner and hitch a ride with them. In a key dramatic moment at the end, the husband, in anger, raises the violin above his head to smash it. I run up behind him, grab his arm while yelling “No!”, cradle the instrument in my hands then gently hand it back to Clarise; immediately after, I grab my jacket and head out the door with them to Baton Rouge. After a life of being a loser, its my one heroic moment and saving grace.
During one performance, I rush up behind him, yelled “No!” and grabbed his arm. But I had unwittingly torqued it, causing a chain reaction down to the neck of the violin where it snapped in two. It’s supposed to be a stunningly dramatic moment in and of itself, the climax of the play, so we all stood there a bit stunned. Not knowing how to save the moment, I simply took the violin as usual, gently cradled it and while handing it back to Clarise, announce “well, I guess I ain’t going to Baton Rouge now”. The actress playing Clarise, in a brilliant moment of improvisation, reaches out to my face and gently, lovingly strokes my cheek and says, “grab your jacket and let’s get out of here”. I’m not sure what author Mark Medoff would have said if he had witnessed that performance as we had re-written then entire ending of the play. Afterwards, we and the cast considered ourselves heroes and our director heartily congratulated us afterwards, further adding that if we thought that’s how the rest of the performances were going to go we were dead wrong and ordered a steel plate be installed inside the violin to make sure it never happened again.