Hi all,
At my school last night we were performing the last show of a Broadway musical and dance revue show. It was pretty cool, because every act was tied into New York City in some way. The second half was set in a night club, so we got a really good deal and rented a hazer to give just the right smoky effect. The show was in our black box theatre, so we placed the hazer on our tension wire grid and allowed the haze to sink down toward the stage. Through the course of tech week we figured out that it took about 1 and a half minutes of running the hazer during intermission to produce a nice relatively dense haze that lasted the entirety of the second act.
I was the sound designer, and having nothing to do during the show, was house managing. We were running the hazer when the fire alarm went off. The front of house staff jumped into action. I got on the radio to tell the stage manager to hit the panic button on the house light panel and to evacuate the cast. I (along with the other usher) started yelling to the audience to move towards the fire exits camly. We helped the senior citizens in the audience get out safely and then we hauled ourselves out. Once outside we were joined by my school's public safety department who helped us to hold the crowd on the far side of the road until the fire trucks came. In a few minutes we managed to explain to the firemen that it was a haze machine that had caused all the smoke and not a fire. After checking out the grid they deemed the hazer to be the cause and left.
Public safety and the fire chief both congratulated us on how well we handled the evacuation.
So, first of all, this gives everybody an idea of how important it is to have properly trained front of house staff even if (like in our case) they are just volunteers.
It also raises the question of whether the manufacturer lies when it says that a diffusion hazer cannot set off smoke detectors. It was the detector right above the area of the grid that had the hazer that tripped. The really odd thing was that we had been running the hazer in the same manner each night for a week of tech rehearsals and for two other shows and had not tripped the fire alarm. Does anybody have any other experiences with fire alarms and haze machines?
Thanks
At my school last night we were performing the last show of a Broadway musical and dance revue show. It was pretty cool, because every act was tied into New York City in some way. The second half was set in a night club, so we got a really good deal and rented a hazer to give just the right smoky effect. The show was in our black box theatre, so we placed the hazer on our tension wire grid and allowed the haze to sink down toward the stage. Through the course of tech week we figured out that it took about 1 and a half minutes of running the hazer during intermission to produce a nice relatively dense haze that lasted the entirety of the second act.
I was the sound designer, and having nothing to do during the show, was house managing. We were running the hazer when the fire alarm went off. The front of house staff jumped into action. I got on the radio to tell the stage manager to hit the panic button on the house light panel and to evacuate the cast. I (along with the other usher) started yelling to the audience to move towards the fire exits camly. We helped the senior citizens in the audience get out safely and then we hauled ourselves out. Once outside we were joined by my school's public safety department who helped us to hold the crowd on the far side of the road until the fire trucks came. In a few minutes we managed to explain to the firemen that it was a haze machine that had caused all the smoke and not a fire. After checking out the grid they deemed the hazer to be the cause and left.
Public safety and the fire chief both congratulated us on how well we handled the evacuation.
So, first of all, this gives everybody an idea of how important it is to have properly trained front of house staff even if (like in our case) they are just volunteers.
It also raises the question of whether the manufacturer lies when it says that a diffusion hazer cannot set off smoke detectors. It was the detector right above the area of the grid that had the hazer that tripped. The really odd thing was that we had been running the hazer in the same manner each night for a week of tech rehearsals and for two other shows and had not tripped the fire alarm. Does anybody have any other experiences with fire alarms and haze machines?
Thanks