One of the magic aspects to live theatre is that it is live. It means that things happen, things change and as actors we roll with it and have fun, so does the audience.
I am on stage, an actor is saying his line and out comes, "he's going to open his own butcher, his dad likes delis and stuff!" Definitively not the line of "he's going to open his own deli, his dad's a butcher". To my left, I can hear the stifled laughter and feel the smirk of the other actor, in front of my I can see the attempt to hold in laughter from another actor, and for myself, I can feel the urge to let go a full bodied laugh. But we can't! The show is not for us but for the audience. For them the line is fine, we need not holler at its error. So as professionals we must keep it together and go on with our scene. A challenge but a fun one.
Sometimes on stage things go "wrong" and we need to acknowledge them. Like when I said "which is another word for ....." and forgot the word cowardly. I stumbled repeated myself as if trying to find the word and once again found myself blank. From across the stage another actor in the scene says "cowardly?", as a question in character, and completes my line. To which I must respond to keep it real. "Exactly, thank you!". Not even in the script, but necessary to keep things truthful on stage. As a professional, I felt like a fool in front of my colleagues, as a professional, I accept it and carry on with the scene. Again, the moment is not for us, but for the audience.
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