What a year this has been! The Learning Theatre Organisation traveled thousands of kilometres, performed hundreds of times, to dozens of companies with one goal in mind, and that is to help our customers to transform, motivate and energize themselves and their people towards a better and brighter future for all of us. We also saw many terrible things happen during this year and it is because of this that we decided to make our December newsletter a little bit less serious. So here goes…

The theatrical world abounds with stories of weird and wonderful happenings on stage during performances. And one can understand that, in the adrenaline cauldron, that is a live stage performance in front of an audience, actors can sometimes lose it entirely.

There is the wonderful story of two (nameless) actors on stage during a performance of an Agatha Christie murder mystery on London's West End. The scene is the climax of the first half and it ends with the killer shooting the killee. On this particular night however, as he opened the drawer of the desk to take out the gun, the “murder weapon” was nowhere to be found. (The stage manager had forgotten to place it) The killer realised that he had to improvise and quickly. So he started thinking through his options – strangulation, stabbing with a paper knife, hitting with a blunt object… In a fit of brilliant comedic improvisation he did none of the above. Instead he approached the killee with a glint in his eye and landed a tremendous kick on the killee's backside, whereupon he promptly left the stage. It now became the responsibility of the killee to find a way to die after being kicked in the pants. And in an equally brilliant bit of comedic improvisation, he staggered about for a bit, then clutched his backside and called out; “Aaaaagh! Poisoned boot!” whereupon he fell down dead.

An equally funny incident happened when, on the opening night of a new play in Stratford Upon Avon, the janitor decided that the love scene between the handsome leading man and his beautiful companion was going on for too long, so he (the janitor) walked on stage in front of a full house, tapped the leading man (in the throes of a marriage proposal) on the shoulder, handed him the keys and asked him to lock up the theatre when the show finished.

In the same way we have seen and heard some wonderful, unintentionally funny moments during the last few years in some of our Industrial Theatre productions.

Imagine doing a highly motivational play about customer service to a packed audience of employees from a fairly large electricity service provider… And then the power is cut and the lights go out. Or receiving a sizable cheque from one of SA's leading financial institutions, only to have our bankers return it to us with “Refer to Drawer” stamped on it…

But these incidents are relatively minor when compared to some of the shenanigans seen on stage…

During a performance to a group of the leaders of a large industrial group, a very talented young actress had to jump off a box and launch into a rather important speech. On the day in question she was pumped far to full of adrenaline and after a very spectacular jump she launched into an impassioned speech - Two octaves higher than her normal voice! The effect on the audience and fellow actors was immediate and overwhelming. They all burst into gales of howling laughter. The dramatic moment was gone forever, but no one who was there will ever forget it!

Then of course there was the moment when one South Africa's best known actors and TV personality had to open a play in Pietersburg with the words; “Okey dokey Ms Poggenpoel, take down this letter” He had an unexplained but spectacular dry. For the life of him, he couldn't get past “Okey dokey Ms Poggenpoel”. After three attempts Ms Poggenpoel replied; “Shall I take down a letter, sir?”, but the poor man was in such a state of panic at this stage that he didn't hear her, and if he did, it didn't register, and he again repeated his immortal “Okey dokey Ms Poggenpoel.” A third actor then stepped into the fray and whispered the words loudly from the wings. Our leading man then realised that someone was trying to help, and moved closer to the wings to hear the words. At this point the audience also started prompting him with “Take down a letter!” And cool as a cucumber he turned to them and said; “Who's doing this show? You or me?”

The last incident that will live in our memories forever happened in the backwoods of Kwa Zulu-Natal. The facilitator opened the proceedings with a speech and every word was promptly, and efficiently translated into Zulu by an interpreter. From the first word it was clear that the interpreter felt that he was the most important part of the speech, because without him, he believed, the audience would not understand. His translations of fairly simple English sentences became more and more flowery and verbose, and he even managed to get a couple of laughs from the audience. At last the speech came to an end with a suitably climactic ending from the interpreter. They sat down, the music started and the actors took their places on stage. A hush fell over the audience and the first actor said his opening line, in English. That was when the interpreter really came into his own. He bounded onto the stage, took up a position next to the actor and translated the line. The second actor spoke, in Zulu this time, and once again our man bounded over to him took his position and repeated the line in Zulu, but this time he also copied the actor's gestures. Then it was the turn of the actress, and as she spoke (in Zulu) the interpreter moved over to her, batted his eyelids a couple of times and perfectly mimicked her voice, stance and gestures. The audience was howling with laughter, the actors packed up laughing and it was left to the poor stage manager to remove our man from stage. Needless to say he was not going to go quietly. Having once tasted the joy of making an audience laugh, he felt that he had a right to be there. A minimum of force was used and finally he left, demurring all the way. The company manager took the man to the pub and bought him a beer, explaining that the play was a performed in a mixture of Zulu and English and that he needn't translate anything, whereafter he calmed down and didn't take part in any further proceedings.

Many similar incidents happened to us and our teams as we criss-crossed the country playing in sawmills, board rooms, community halls, on the back of trucks, under the stars and occasionally in real theatres. This is a tribute to those marvelous actors and to our wonderful clients who required so much of us and forced us to never sit back, and to never accept second best. To all of you we wish to offer our thanks and the assurance that we will always do our best to help you and your companies to improve your systems, your people and your bottom line.

I wish to end with a quote from one of our audience members after seeing a play designed to motivate illiterate employees to go for ABET training. He came to us after the show, a gray old man, bent over with age and with tears in his eyes he thanked us, and said; “Today, you ripped open my chest and touched my heart. Today I realised for the first time that if I try hard enough, I too can learn to read and write…” It is moments like that, that make our jobs worthwhile.

We at the Learning Theatre would like to wish all of you a very blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year.