Break-a-leg-o-grams pranks

Break-a-leg-o-grams were a fixture of every mainstage performance put on by Josh and Jared's drama program. On the night of a show, a booth would be set up outside the house entrance where friends and family could pay a dollar to write a message for their actor. At intermission, the messages would be read out loud before the whole audience. These messages were typically “break a leg,” “great job,” “we love you,” and other trivialities.

Because Josh and Jared often hosted or were in the cast of the shows, they had a sort of backstage access to the break-a-leg-o-grams table. Predictably, they took full advantage of this for pranking. They'd write as many grams as they wanted without paying, and no one cared.

The guys would make break-a-leg-o-grams addressed to a group of four or five drama students from different grades and friend groups who didn't know each other. The message inside would be something like, “Hey girlies! Can't believe we made it to our big night! Looking forward to our big sleepover tonight! LOL xoxo.” Then, they'd sign the name of yet another student who wasn't friends with the people mentioned. Most often, they'd go with a nickname such as “Lil Chinita.”

Other times, they'd write a gram for someone and sign it from a close friend. Instead of a message of love, they'd fill it out with a phrase like, “I will fight you after school,” “don't mess with me,” or other harsh words for no reason at all.

Even though Josh and Jared hosted shows often, they were never tasked with reading the break-a-leg-o-grams themselves. That job was done by completely random drama students, and being that those students were often naive and inexperienced, they'd read the guys' messages with absolutely no suspicion.

At some point, the drama teachers must've wised up to the prank messages, because they changed the break-a-leg-o-gram format so that well-wishers could only select from prewritten messages to be read (fittingly, the prewritten messages were a lot like the ones the typical audience member was writing anyway). When that happened, Josh and Jared just wrote their same personal messages underneath the printed ones, and the readers continued to read them just as before.

It may have seemed like hearing random inside jokes read out loud during intermission would take away from the professionalism of the production — but it did not. These drama shows were usually made up of student-written scenarios and inside jokes anyway, so a few more minutes of break-a-leg-o-grams containing weird references barely registered. The audiences would just sit there not knowing what the hell they were listening to, regardless. The students actually named in the grams would be just as clueless, left to look around in utter confusion.

The guys would do this prank at every single show for all four years of school. There was absolutely no point to it other than for their own sick amusement.  ❒

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