I Was Stabbed in the Back With a Real Knife While Performing Julius Caesar. “I realised what had happened while acting out my character’s death, and thinking: I have to lie here until the lights go down.”
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Comments 3
This is … less rare than you’d think. The culture of safety around stage combat in the theater is as strong as it is, I think, because it is eternally at war with the culture of young artists being fucking idiots.
I watched a co-star get stabbed with a real knife in a production of Les Liaisons Dangereusus because the actor playing his fight partner couldn’t find his prop knife backstage and so grabbed a real knife from a shelf as he went onstage (the actor was bloodied but ok). My spouse got stabbed in the stomach by his Lady Anne while playing Richard III. (Under-rehearsed struggle, insufficiently dulled prop knife, stitches required.) These are only two of the stories I know.
Less serious (but funnier) story: a friend got CLOCKED in the nose during a high-school play competition and bled everywhere. After the performance, as she was headed to the hospital, the cast got notes from the judges who said all the fake blood was "a little much."
Students shouldn't be trusted with sharp objects of any kind. Student actors, even less so. As a stage actor I feel guilty for encouraging the "show must go on" culture even as it leads to things like "I've been stabbed, but I have to wait until the lights go out."
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