The
Actor's
Nightmare is a comedic
play by
Christopher Durang. Comedic that is to everyone except those have acted, in which case it's more of a horror flick.
The Actor's Nightmare describes every actor's
worst fear and the classic
actor's nightmare dream.
In this comical scenario, a man stumbles onto the stage and is mistaken as the
understudy in not one, but three different plays. And the poor man in question
George Spelvin is merely an
accountant who wandered onto the wrong side of the stage at the wrong time. Quickly he is ushered into place, and assured that he
'will do just fine' and it sure was a shame what happened to the lead actor in that auto-accident. He desperately tries to find out what play he's in, but no one really seems to know. Or if they do know, they choose not to tell him because of
'similar jokes he's played in the past'. He tries lamely to get them to understand he's just an accountant, but somehow gets manipulated into the cast.
He must now replace the leading man in a series of plays he never has rehearsed for. The lead One by one he somehow manages to stumble through a short of a
Noel Coward script,
Private Lives,
Shakespeare's
Hamlet and a
Samuel Beckett-eqsque play,
Endgame, or
Happy Days. Finally it concludes with a very real version of
Robert Bolt's
A Man For All Seasons. George desperately tries to follow along through all this, and... well, I don't want to spoil the ending, you'll just have to read it for yourself.
I would love to post the script for y'all, but it is the
copyright is still active, and would be illegal to do so.