For one corporate pharmaceutical gig I worked the company decided to create lifesized mascots of their biggest sellers, medicinal "pen" injectors. If you've never seen one of these they do look somewhat like a pen. They're a brightly colored plastic tube about eight-inches in length, about as thick as an Italian sausage, gently rounded at the tip, where there's a small hole where the injection comes out of. It is no stretch to say they look decidedly, um, anatomical. The biopharm company hired four actors to wear the costumes and lip-sync to songs between sessions, the songs consisting of lyrics about the company's products set to classic rock tunes. There were only a couple problems with this. One, in order for the costumes to stay in scale, they had to be about nine-feet tall. Because they were so tall they had to be built out of thick foam rubber to not bend under their own weight. Because they were thick foam rubber and cylindrical, they were very constricting, coming down below the actors' knees, and only letting the arms out of the costume just above the elbow. The costumes came in two parts, one that went from the shoulders down, and the top of tube, which fit on top of the bottom tube and went another four feet up, about three feet into the air above the actors' heads. Unfortunately, the company apparently hired the worst actors in all of Vegas. One of the numbers they had to perform was "My Pen," set to the tune of "My Girl." Fairly slow rhythm, 4/4 time. One actor, however, had absolutely no rhythm. All he had to do was sway back and forth with the beat and he consistently got it wrong. Rehearsal consisted of the pens only wearing the bottom half of their costumes trying to get this tone-deaf chucklehead to sway WITH the music. "No, no, when you hear that, you more forward–FORWARD!" while the show runner screamed about how unprofessional all of this was.
Because the costumes came below the guys' knees they couldn't walk very fast and had to be placed onstage before the song began and the curtain pulled open. Since I was only an A2, I got drafted. I capped each of the pens with the top of their costume, placed a wireless mic into their hands and then walked with them as they wobbled into place. The song started. I ran backstage, and drew open the curtains. The tone-deaf pen still couldn't find the rhythm so to compensate the lead singer started waving his arms harder, trying to draw focus. When his big solo came up, he poured it all on: gesturing, waving and dancing. But they hadn't rehearsed with the tops of their pens, and he didn't realize how top-heavy he was. As he hit the high note he swayed a little too far and slowly began to topple. He couldn't regain his balance because the costume came below his knees and so he fell, hard, onto the lip of the stage and flailed around, like a beached whale. The other pens, seeing he was in trouble came over and tried to help him up. The first one forgot about his heavy costume and leaned over to lend him a hand–and fell over on top of the first one. Now there's two pens rolling around on-stage and the other pens are trying to help them by rolling them over to the stairs, so they can get their feet underneath them, but it looked like they were just kicking them as they flailed around on the floor. The audience by now was laughing hysterically, and the stage manager was screaming in my ear to do something– and that's how I found myself on-stage in front of hundreds of people, breaking up a fight between nine-foot tall dancing dildoes, and helping them to their feet.
