@Logos I was involved with an amateur production where they brought in a stuffed cat and it was somewhere different on the set each performance. I countered by getting a really realistic looking stuffed mouse and parked him whichever way the cat appeared to be looking.Lo these many years ago I took over as Production Manager with a small pro theatre co that had a strong tradition of "pranks" on matinees. I hated it. The audience deserve the best possible performance and if you are worrying about whats going to happen to you if you open that drawer they ain't gonna get it. I over about a year got it down to where on matinees there was a toy cat somewhere on set placed by the crew just before the beginners call. Some of our regular audiences found out about it and got into the game telling the FOH manager when they spotted it. It was a bit of gentle fun.
Edit: Now that you've got me thinking, our shop built a production of "How To Succeed In Business." Opening out of town in San Jose, California with Mathew Broderick as J. Pierpont Finch. We built a hardware box approximately 2 feet square with approximately 12 divisions per layer by 3 layers deep. After we had all of the hardware packed neatly into its individual sections, we had two unused compartments. We filled the void in the middle level with a realistic looking stuffed mouse and the empty compartment in the lowest level with a mouse trap baited with cheese. We heard the university students in San Jose loved it and added the mouse to the window washers' scaffold Mathew Broderick entered on at the top of the show. We were told Mathew liked the mouse as well and that the mouse went with Mathew and the scaffold all the way to Broadway.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
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