PRANKS FOR THE MEMORY: YEAR-ROUND APRIL FOOLS

April Fool’s Day pranks may be fine for the rest of the world, but actors have never consigned making fools of one another to the first day in April.

There’s a long theatrical tradition, descended from the English music hall, of “corpsing”--trying to make your fellow actors laugh. Amateurs and pros, newcomers and veterans, bit players and stars have all been known to cut up now and then.

Some classic gags involve tampering with an actor’s props. Many an onstage suitcase has been secretly filled with weights; many a lewd or funny photo has been substituted for a more innocent one.

Costumes too can give rise to practical jokes. Some perverse souls like to whisper “Your fly is open” to an actor just making an entrance. Others have been known to “flash” fellow players from the wings.

Lance Roberts, currently featured in “Cats” at the Shubert, recalls a memorable prank played on JoAnne Worley in “They’re Playing Our Song” a few years ago. Worley, a free spirit, liked to rattle fellow cast members by appearing on stage with her front teeth blacked out.

On April Fool’s Day they struck back. Building on Worley’s association (from TV’s “Laugh-In”) with chicken jokes, they hid rubber pullets all over the set. Whenever Worley opened a prop handbag, or turned down the covers of a bed, another scrawny chicken came to light. Claims Roberts, “The audience loved it. They knew what day it was.”

Sometimes pranks can turn into running battles, as Dick Van Patten of the Ahmanson’s “Picnic” discovered. As a child in the anti-Nazi play “Watch on the Rhine,” he watched the co-stars wage a battle of one-upsmanship. One night, the male star covered his hand with cold cream before an onstage handshake with his leading lady. Van Patten will never forget her retaliation: serving the male star stage martinis from a pitcher filled with live goldfish.

When the script calls for an actor to drink liquor, the apple juice in the glass may be replaced by real scotch, or the water by real gin.

When the Improvisational Theater Project’s James Quinn tried filling a goatskin flask with wine for a local production of “Man of La Mancha,” his victim turned out to be a devout teetotaler. Out of religious conviction, he had never touched liquor in his life. In the death scene that ends the play, this thoroughly soused Don Quixote proved brilliantly convincing.

Connie Grappo performed in a huge outdoor epic, staged on the shore of an Ohio lake, in which a half-naked Indian brave faced a gruesome death scene. Normally, the “blood” that flowed from his wounds came out of a hidden capsule. One night, however, his fun-loving cohorts smeared him with molasses instead. As he lay feigning death, all the insects in Ohio seemed to congregate on his chest.

Stage veteran Tom Troupe, now featured in the Melrose Theater’s “The Bar Off Melrose,” once played Jesus in a college pageant. He was strapped to a large crucifix, which was to slowly rise by means of a backstage pulley.

A stage manager, eager for mischief, removed a few weights, and zoom! The cross surged into the air at tremendous speed. As Troupe disappeared into the rafters his loincloth came floating down, and the audience roared.

Pranks can creep into dress rehearsals too, as Gary Mascaro, found out to his amazement. Mascaro, who choreographed “Newcomer” for the Taper’s Improvisational Theater Project, made his stage debut in the premiere of the rock opera “Tommy.” As Tommy, he had one climactic entrance at the top of a 40-foot scaffold.

At dress rehearsal Mascaro was told that his outfit was waiting on the scaffold. He climbed up, was met by a giggling wardrobe person who ordered him to strip, and . . . no costume. Being young and ready for anything, Mascaro turned the joke around by entering in the buff. “Great!” said the director, and kept it.

A comedy revue, such as those staged by the Groundlings, is fertile ground for shenanigans. One night Tim Stack caused fellow Groundling Jon Lovitz to gasp with uncontrollable laughter simply by crashing a rehearsed scene and standing there, looking innocent. And John Moody, opening a Groundlings show, got the bright notion of leading the whole audience back into the dressing area, where half-clad actors fled from the descending hordes.

A big, busy musical like “Cats” encourages fooling around. Once two felines, who had been teasing another cast member, found the tables turned. Once on stage, they found that their tails had been joined together--and they were supposed to exit from opposite sides of the stage. On this occasion, they went out paw in paw.

April Ortiz came to “Cats” from the L.A. production of “La Cage aux Folles,” a show notorious as a prankster’s delight. Shoes were filled with shaving cream before a quick change; prop celery was soaked in jalapeno juice. One memorable evening a piece of hot pizza passed from hand to hand across the stage until arriving at a startled dancer who had complained backstage of being hungry.

Mostly though, actors pride themselves on concealing their pranks from the audience. Explains Leland Murray of “Tamara,” “People go to the theater for the magic. They don’t want you to be just like them. The minute you play these games and let the audience in on them, you become their equal.”

Constance Grappo, director of the Eagle Theater’s “Andrea’s Got Two Boyfriends,” takes this even further: “It makes me really mad, as an audience member, when I see things happen on stage. You stop believing anything the performers do for the rest of the play.” Actors who pull pranks, she feels, “are basically telling the audience that they don’t matter.”

Still, midway through a long run, actors often use pranks as a way to keep a role fresh. Pranks test an actor’s concentration and his ability to think on his feet. Frank McCarthy, now in “Tumbleweed” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, insists that “pranking” is a sign of affection, to be aimed only at “someone you know can handle it.”

Ortiz of “Cats” agrees: “If people don’t like each other in the company, it doesn’t happen.”

Closing nights, by tradition, are times for extravagant practical joking. Chris Mulkey of the New Mayfair’s “Blue Window” was only too happy to spell out for a nosy reporter all the last-minute gags he hoped to initiate: during Lisa Pelikan’s climactic monologue, pulling out a deck of cards and playing solitaire; he’d then give her a huge, sloppy kiss. “That would freak her out,” he said.

But when “Blue Window” closed in mid-March, Mulkey, like his cast mates, treated the play with utter reverence and played no pranks.

Lance Roberts understands perfectly. Says he of closing nights, “Everyone plans tricks in advance, but when the time comes, it’s so sad that you want to savor it. You want to have those special memories.”