Oh please! What board op' hasn't done that on one show or another? I know I have; more than once.
My worst was 18 years ago, summer rep theatre doing Grease. I was sound op, and had just left a high school where I learned and mastered the art of sound design and operation using audio cassettes. This was my first experience with cart machines and with reel-to-reel, and there was some dicey gear up there along with speaker on-off switches to route to different pairs of speakers.
The whole show was reel to reel, f/x wise. Middle of a run, we get to the scene at the drive-in. Audio of a hokey drive-in pic was recorded on the reel. Scene comes up, I get the go, nothing. Reel's playing, faders are up, no sound, for 6 seconds (felt like 6 years while I freaked). I saw the speaker switches off--oh, $#!t! -- I quickly rewind the reel to cue it back up, while *at the same time* bump the speaker switches on. The speakers BANG! on and emit a trail of ahllslkgjlksfdklgLSHGLKSJFHLSKJFGL!!!!!!! while the reel rewinds, I emit a trail of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in fast forward as the house starts laughing and Sandy and (the guy playing the Travolta part) sit there in the car, facing downstage, munching popcorn, passively watching the movie, staring almost right at me in the booth. The SM is trying to calm me down over the clearcom, I get the reel cued, playing, the show goes on, and I'm doing what I can to hide under the sound desk pretending I didn't exist.
I'm now in-demand as a sound guy, but back then I was seriously questioning my ability to do sound, my ability to do theatre, and my worthiness to breathe.
sean
When we did Cinderella we had the big ben sound for midnight the first night we missed the cue. The second night we got it but you could hear it from the other side of the school. It woke the audience up at least....
On Gala night too! Oh, the havoc we wreak...Tonight, during Act I Preset, 'dip and I were moving a set from the stage building to the shop building. Neither of us noticed that the roll-up door to the shop was two feet shy of being completely open. We were going at a pretty good clip when we slammed that set into the roll-up door. Fortunately, all we did was pop a few staples and crack a support. Our shop forman, who by the way was the one who had not completely opened the shop door, despite a policy that it always be either all the way open or all the way closed, spent the next 20 minutes repairing the damage that 'dip and I had done. As with my previous incident, the audience never knew there was a problem.
On Gala night too! Oh, the havoc we wreak...
(No, the set was fine, this was what--Two and a half hours before the start of the act it was half way through?)
I still felt really bad about it though!
Always look up, even if there hasn't been anything there for two months, and nothing should've been...
My worst screw up was actually a team effort.
... at this point, our Flyman decided to be helpfull and grabbed my end of the Frame, steering right into the upstage black traveller and snagging the stage left side piece of the frame. My crew partner kept right on pushing.
My first indication that we had a problem was when I heard a sound like a tree falling accompanied by the sound of shattering glass...
Yeah, not much is actually "foolproof."
And thought that by hitting the Go again it would stop it and hit it repeatedly and went through all the sound cues for the rest of the show.
We use essential cookies to make this site work, and optional cookies to enhance your experience.