Till Death (or Intermission) Do Us Part
Dear Abby,
Okay, hear me out before you file this under “theater people are weird.” I run a tiny community playhouse in our small town and last month we staged a fundraiser: a deliberately over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek “zombie wedding” as part of the show. The “bride” and “groom” were two local actors doing a five-minute gag during intermission — faux vows, fake bouquets, the whole theatrical kabuki. The audience loved it.
Here’s the part that makes my head spin: the friend we asked to “officiate” is ordained online through one of those universal ordination sites and — without telling anyone — filled out an actual marriage license form he found in a prop box (we keep old, blank official-looking forms for set dressing). He signed it, the actors signed, and the friend apparently mailed it to the county clerk “for authenticity.” Two weeks later the clerk called me and asked about the marriage certificate, because it had already been recorded.
Now the actors are acting like a real married couple. They want to be on each other’s insurance, they’ve asked if we’ll give them married-couple billing for a cast party, and one keeps threatening to cite our “wedding” on a housing application to get a roommate discount. The town paper ran a jokey blurb that made it sound official, and now half the neighborhood is “congratulating” them.
My questions: legally, was this an honest (and expensive) mistake, or did we accidentally create a legally bound marriage? Am I — the show director who encouraged the gag — responsible for fixing this? Do the actors need to get an annulment, or would a quick divorce be the bureaucratic route? And morally, am I terrible for laughing? I wanted a ridiculous fundraiser, not a courthouse drama.
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