My Worst Mess Up

[theatre4jc]

My worst was during a very boring Checkov play. Can't remember which one and am to lazy to look it up. I was the lightboard op. It was back in my college days. 2 weeks into the run of the show. One night left. We had a scene where the blackout was suppose to happen while this girl spun a little twirl on stage. I fell asleep. Like really out. SM was yelling and cursing in my ear. The sound op who was on clearcom with us and sitting right next to me just laughed and I woke up after this girl had spun in circles on stage for a full 60 seconds. Haven't fell asleep during a show since. Been 6 years and about 1,000 shows. (I did 6 years of touring with near 180 shows a year)

 

[Peyton]

My personal high score was in a run of Guys and Dolls. I was setting up a scene behnd the mid traveler, and it was almost totally dark. I can see in the dark quite well, but even so, this was dark. Somehow, another stagehand had already put a large metal trash can i place, unknown by me. As I was finishing up, I accidentally brushed up against it, and over it went, rattling loudly for at least what seemed like 20 seconds. But miraculously, nobody else had heard it, which still baffles me.

 

[beachcombah15]

everything always seems to be louder, brighter and longer when you do something yourself...

 

[willbb123]

My worst mess up? Probably the one night that I forgot to lock out the unison panel. So mid show the house light came up to full in a 5 count. Good thing they hit preset one, which is only house lights, instead of preset two, which also brings up stage works. Now that I think about it, any button would of been bad, and brought up a random assortment of show looks.

Of course it was an award show, and my boss's boss was there. I'm still getting crap about it. When ever something minor goes wrong, I hear, "well atleast the house lights didn't come up."

 

[Sony]

Only partially my mess up, but the computer system controlling our heating system at MVPAC was outdated a years before it was installed, I don't know why it was installed but it's horrible. So this system is very old, and requires a computer running HyperTerminal to access it. Also the Backup Battery for it is dead and so every time we lose power...we lose heating to almost the entire school because we lose the program.

Now, when living on an island in the Atlantic Ocean where power comes from 7 different undersea cables...power isn't exactly stable and it flickers often and goes out every couple weeks.

So it was the day of a show and we had lost power that night and therefore the air conditioning system was busted. It was getting very warm and I was trying to at least get air flowing in the PAC so it wouldn't get too stuffy until my boss got there so he could access the computer to get the system back online fully. Well in order to do this, manually fired up the air handlers using the override switch (by the way, standing next to a massive air handler and hitting the override switch which in turn makes a huge BANG as the 100amp contactor starts the motors and then the cacophony of the fans starting up is one of by favorite things ever. ) Anyways, so about 20 minutes later by boss shows up around the time we start loading the audience into the PAC and despite the air handler running its still getting very warm.

At this point the event production manager was starting to get frustrated by the lack of AC so my boss and I go in the back to fix the system. Well we get the system back online eventually, and walk out to find that the 20+ Ton 3 Stage AC Chiller on the roof of the building has failed to start up and therefore AC still is not working. So we freak out and go back to the computer and try to force it to start up, no luck, we tryed everything.

Well, about 15 minutes before the show starts we finally figure it out. Apparently with this control system, the Air Handler is considered part of the Chiller and wont start up the Chiller if the Air Handler is in Override mode. So after I shut down the Air Handler and returned it to Automatic mode we were able to get the whole system up and running again.

We were really worried because once before my boss said he had all of the fans on the Chiller die in one winter because they were shut down and not run at all for the entire winter so they all rusted solid and blew all the bearings. He feared that it had happened again.

 

[chris325]

So, in my high school's production of Beauty and the Beast about 4 years ago (before I was there), one of the scenes ended with two of the characters (freshmen at the time) joyously banging together their beer mugs before a blackout. At the last rehersal before the show, one of the characters manages to drop his mug in the process, where it proceeded to shatter on the stage floor. Afterwards, the two of them promptly exited the stage and frantically brought the shattered remains of the mug to our set builder, who still makes fun of them for that brilliant move four years later.

Here's the video: YouTube - The Mug

 

[KyleBaczynski]

Unless the keyboard tray tips over and your thumb hits the spacebar. Actually had that happen on sunday.

Our lighting guys did that on our Friday show... I was supposed to be spinning a set around at breakneck speed to make the scene change as fast as possible and right when I went out to grab the set the lights came on.

Grabbed one of the Clear-Com headsets when I got back to SR to ask what happened... one of the guys in the booth left their talk button on and you could hear the director yelling at them. It was mildly amusing.

 

[Trimble]

Our marching band's color guard performs in the school's variety show each year. For their grand finale, they throw their flags WAY high in the air and catch them. I am supposed to do an instant blackout the minute the flags hit their hands. After a performance, the not-so-nice team captain informed me I was blacking out too slowly-- "YOU need to kill the lights A LOT sooner, ya think?" At the time I had misinterpreted her and blacked out when the flags LEFT their hands. The effect for the next audience was a bunch of screaming blind color guard girls running from death-flags ten feet in the air and the sound of sixteen flags being dropped to the stage. Slightly amusing after their rudeness.

 

[NJLX]

My worst I can remember was Blacking out a scene by accident. In bye bye birdie. All the actors walked off stage and I forgot they come back on. it was a LOL moment which made it a bit better on the crew and everyone.

I did the exact same thing during our production of bye bye birdie last year. fortunately for me, the actors didn't notice and skipped that part, and the director got confused and thought i did it right