-
Mac 600 catching fire pre-show (a
capacitor gave way spectacularly and set the wiring
loom on fire). Chief LX went up a ladder with a fire extinguisher and put it out. Called the hire company and they got one to us in double-quick time; addressed it and hung it up. I'd let the ushers know we may start late but it went up on time.
- A brown-out which was long enough to cause the moving lights to go out, then of course they can't
hot restrike. LX op busked his way through until the movers came back online.
- Student production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", using a (
manual)
revolve which we'd put off-centre. It had three walls on it, dividing it into 3 offices, with a timber skyline next to it as part of the set. We'd had a hell of a get-in and been short on time and so it was less than perfectly built;
on opening night a piece of timber on one of the
revolve walls came loose, and when the
revolve op winched it around, the loose piece caught the skyline, pulling the whole thing down on top of him. Luckily he was unhurt. We frantically closed the tabs, got the actor who was doing the voiceovers to make an announcement (the main character in the show has a
book titled the same as the show and an actor "plays" the
book as a
voice over character) and madly screwed the skyline back up. The next night the
revolve operator turned up wearing a Valkyrie helmet.
- Professional production of "La Cage aux Folles" which had a
track in the floor so we could move furniture on and off without having to push it - it locked onto a pin and was controlled by ropes in the
wing. All good until an actor jumped a
bit too vigorously on the sofa and managed to jump it off the pin, meaning we couldn't
track it back offstage. One of the cast had a pair of black overalls and black baseball cap as a costume; he wasn't wearing it at that moment so I ended up throwing it on, tucking my hair up under the cap and running on to push the sofa offstage, having abandoned the LX operator to take the cues himself (he was more than capable - same guy who put the
Mac 600 fire out!).
- One rehearsal stop and one show stop in a production of "Les Miserables" caused by
smoke from a
smoke machine getting to a detector which wasn't on the isolate
circuit. Both really were a series of unfortunate events. Four fire engines turned up both times, figured out very fast what was going on and we continued.
- I'm originally from Christchurch, so I've had my share of earthquakes during shows. We developed a
protocol which all actors and crew were briefed on: our procedure was that the
stage manager, operator or actors had the right to stop the show if they felt it necessary - but stay put until the shaking had stopped. It was the SM's
call as to whether the building would be evacuated; the ushers were all briefed that if there was a good-sized quake, they were to open the fire exit doors as quickly as possible once the shaking had stopped, in case of aftershocks which would jam the doors closed (obviously the first quake may have jammed them, but you can't do much about that!). We were also very conscious when rigging lights to make sure that
safety chains were very secure and that on older units (
Strand 803s mainly!) and bigger units (2ks - we'd normally
safety the barn doors anyway) the barn doors were safetied on as well. It was complicated for us by the fact that the
theatre was in a heritage stone building, so in a quake you lose chunks of the outer facade - so evacuating could actually be more dangerous as being hit by flying stone was always a possibility. This was a non-flying
house though so we didn't have the concern of heavy scenery above people's heads. A different
theatre had a production of Les Mis on (not the
smoke alarm one!) when an good-sized earthquake came through; they did stop the show and not continue it until everything had been checked (although it turned out everything swung OP-PS and not US-DS so nothing hit other scenery pieces or lighting bars).
- A show I worked on but had handed off to another SM did have a fire which could have been serious - very long story, but mercifully we had a completely sensible, reliable, un-flappable actor in the cast who was right there and had the presence of mind to grab the fire extinguisher and put the fire out before it took hold. They stopped the show and didn't continue simply due to the amount of
smoke in the building; the fireys turned up as the alarms had gone off and checked that it was extinguished.
- In my
current job I manage an opera
orchestra. I had a player appear halfway through a show to tell me that a bunch of
music stand lights had gone out; raced to investigate and discovered it was one "chain" (they
daisy-chain from one stand to the next in chains of six) that had gone out so we flipped enough of the pit
fluorescent lights on so they could see the music (it wasn't a show-stopper) and madly started troubleshooting. Turned out someone had moved their chair
leg onto a cable and sat on it, breaking the cable (24v so no danger of electrocution, luckily). We replaced the cable, turned the lights off and the show continued.
- We've had several show stops lately due to revolves not revolving - usually it's a three or four minute reboot of the controller and it comes right.