Taking a brief break from my current self-imposed hermitage...

One of the classic plots of CD fiction is the "Not Enough Girls" scenario. A school or theater group is mounting a production, and finds that there aren't enough girls to cover all the female parts. Enter our hero(ine), a male who is coerced into essaying the role. (Of course, in the perfect world of femme fiction, the guy invariably makes a flawless girl, plays the part to perfection, and is awakened to a more permanent commitment to femininity.)

Actually, though, this scenario does sometimes happen in real life. Putting aside all-male settings like boys' schools, there are also times, even in a mixed-gender theatrical troupe, that a guy has to step into a female role -- usually not a major one, though.

I heard of one such incident some years ago from the proprietress of a local wig shop. A small local theater was putting on a production with a lot of smaller secondary and tertiary roles. The females were overtaxed doubling up on these parts, so for one small non-speaking walk-on part of a female movie star, they drafted a young man to play the role in drag. The wig lady helped them not only with finding appropriate tresses, but assisted in giving him a crash course in female movement and deportment. With the bit part played straight, not camp, and the lighting/distance forgiveness of live theater, he pulled it off with no one in the audience the wiser unless they carefully scrutinized the cast listing and noted a male actor's name associated with the female character's name.

I'm wondering if anyone has heard of other such real-life situations. Maybe some of you were actually involved in such a scenario?