Actors go off script, get engaged during Cape Breton theatre show

An actor at the Boardmore Playhouse at Cape Breton University went off script during a performance of Broadway Showstoppers on Sunday to propose to his girlfriend who was performing in the show and she said yes.

Rob Bowden got down on one knee and said, “I just figured that since I was on my knee,” and asked Jill Taylor to marry him. The moment was captured by a friend and uploaded to Taylor’s Facebook page.

“I planned this with everyone,” Bowden continued in the video. “The sound guy, the light guy, the producer, director, choreographer, everybody — my sisters, my friends … just not you.”

Taylor, a teacher, looked out to the audience during the proposal and said, “Hi, mom, I know why you stayed for the seven o’clock show.”

“I was just so overwhelmingly happy … everybody knew but me, so it was really cool,” Taylor told CBC News in an interview on Monday.

The couple shared a kiss after Bowden asked Taylor to spend the rest of her life with him and the audience went wild.

Taylor said she and Bowden had talked about getting married, so she knew her answer.

“It was a surprise, but he knew I was going to say yes, so that made it a lot easier,” Taylor said.

Bowden said keeping the proposal a surprise was a challenge, but added he couldn’t think of a better place to propose than on stage.

He’s a jewelry designer and made Taylor’s engagement ring. He kept it on his finger during the performance of Sing!, from the musical, A Chorus Line.

“I kept moving my hand really fast so she wouldn’t see it,” Bowden said

“And I didn’t see it at all until the end of the number, I didn’t even notice … the whole time we were singing and dancing until he got down on one knee, ” Taylor added.

After the proposal, the couple finished the song and dance.

Bowden said proposing on Mother’s Day was significant to him.

“I lost my mom quite a few years ago and to be able to do it, to be able to do it on that day was really special,” he said.

The couple has not set a date for the wedding, but are not ruling out the stage as a possible venue.