In those instances, were you treated by medical personnel and did they put a limit on your work?
The first time I took a knock, it was on
load-in. I didn't realize I had a concussion until I started forgetting lines to a show I had mixed 100 times and needed to grab my mix script at
intermission to finish the show. The doctor at the hospital was less than helpful and essentially accused me of making up the story because I waited 12+ hours to see a doctor.
After that, I didn't see a doctor for any of the other instances. One nighter touring isn't too kind, so the other instances I tried to
lay back as much as I could and get the locals to do the bulk of the heavy lifting, and traded out tasks I could let the locals do with some of the electricians. Each of us on the crew got injured at least once, and every time we helped each other out without question and accommodated one another as much as we could just to get to our next stop on time. I didn't have an A2, so no one could sub for me on the mix. The name of the game was get through it, and stay as safe as possible.
The only other critical injury I should have seen a doctor for was a dislocated arm - an 8 hour drive we had to do in 6 meant that there was no way I could get to a doctor and still make it to the next city on time. A guy on the crew ended up re-setting my arm in the
lobby, the part I didn't like was when he told me that it wasn't his first time doing that on a
load out. I had shoulder pain for months after, and I definitely do regret not holding up the bus and demanding to head to a doctor, however I think at the time the thought of just ending the pain blinded me from proper decision making.
The unspoken rule of one nighter touring Broadway is that you suffer silently, get through it, and don't complain. If a show is cancelled because of a person on the crew, there is a definite sense that your job could be in jeopardy. We always went to the hospital for injuries after the show was loaded in, but only if we'd be in the city the next day. There is a three-strike policy between the non-league producers and the IA, and it wasn't too hard for them to come up with strikes in order to
send you home "for cause". I must say, this was
never explicitly said by anyone that workplace injury could get you sent home, it was just the general feeling that if you were the cause of a show cancellation there was danger, especially with how easy it was to accrue strikes (my first official one was for kicking off my steel toed boots during a
sound check after a
load in...a
house manager found it unprofessional and wrote my bosses, a coworker got one for wearing shorts during the same show, that
house manager was quite the critic). I must say, each of these experiences taught me A LOT about workplace
safety and how to respond to different circumstances. I valued that tour in particular for what I learned, and am glad to see that the tours are taking
safety a lot more seriously.
