Your worst theatre injury

[teqniqal]

onal Although some injuries can be shrugged-off as a learning experience, many cannot - they result in career ending disabilities or worse. Learn how to see potential hazards and then avoid them. Going home at the end of the show is more important that getting the show done. Play Safe!

 

[emoreth]

Worst so far: Concussion due to giant steel roof beams crossing the catwalk at waist height and a lack of helmets (none in the building at the time as far as I know). There is now a box of appropriate headgear in the access room and a sign warning people not to go up without putting some on.

 

[lightingtek]

I am a high school technical director, and I must say that this is a very informative thread, one that I will be sharing with my students when class starts in less than an hour.

That being said, I've left school for the ER three times, twice in an ambulance. The first two (both with the flashing lights) were due to my back going out and locking up so bad I couldn't walk or even sit up to ride in a car. Both of those were a week after our all school musical which I had been working 12-16 hour days on to get the set done in time, and my hip had gotten out of alignment and just finally locked up, wouldn't work any more. Neither time was I lifting anything heavy, or even wrong, in fact the first time I merely bent over to walk under a platform.

The third trip to the ER my wife happened to have stuck around after a show to help strike, (most likely because she was hungry and wanted to go out to eat afterward) which was a rare occurrence, and I'm grateful that she did. About half an hour into strike, after one of my students finished using a 10 foot ladder to clip some light duty hanging wires, I went to move the ladder to my next task and suddenly felt searing pain in my face and dropped the ladder yelling "G*D D@MM!T (name of student), WHAT THE H3LL DID YOU LEAVE ON TOP OF THE LADDER!?!?!?". Surprisingly all work stopped immediately (you can yell "HOLD THE WORK" as many times as you like, and the drills keep moving, but yell one profanity, and everyone stops cold) as everyone turned to see me clapping my hand over my left eye and blood gushing out from between my fingers. My wife ran up to the stage to help me off of the platform I was on (about 57" high... yes, the 10' ladder was on top of a 57" platform), just praying that I didn't remove my hand from my eye while all of my students (one of them a 4th grader... it was "Frankenstein" and he was playing the younger brother) and a lot of their parents were watching, because she just KNEW that my eye was gone. Luckily the 8 INCH DIAGONAL WIRE CUTTERS only caught me in the eyebrow, and then bounced and hit be twice in the nose. Nearly broke my nose, caused lots of blood, but no permanent injury. Facial scars are B@D @S$, right? At least my wife thinks so.

Ironically, this is the show that I posted a question about in the rigging thread last fall asking how one goes about rigging a trap door for a hanging (with noose) effect. Also the same show we hired a professional rigging company to fly a platform with an actor 14' into the air. No injuries, or accidental hangings occurred during the course of the show or its construction, just one major one at strike.

On another side note, our all school musical closed this past weekend, and I have already been to the chiropractor to make sure everything is aligned to avoid that next trip to the ER.

 

[Nelson]

Yeah, I've had a few close calls with things that I, stupidly, left on top of a ladder. Thankfully I learned my lesson without injury. Close calls were close enough!

 

[sww1235]

Man this is a scary thread. Luckily I haven't been seriously injured in a theatre, b/c I am paranoid about safety. Hell I was the only one wearing safety glasses and hearing protection while operating the table saw or router.

 

[peacefulone61]

I fell 20 feet of the top of an A frame extension ladder, rehanging a show in college. A stage manager came in and must not have seen me on stage and started to close the curtains the next thing i know I hit the ground landing on my wrist and shattered it 46 micro factures if i remember correctly. I took out part of the set, but put it back together before I had it checked out.

 

[EBB]

Not the worst. But certainly the most fun I've had injuring myself.. Snapped my wrist and pulled my sprained my ankle when I decided to tarzan my stupid self down from the pin rail. Worth the glory of my peers? meh... I'll say yes since I was stupid back then.

 

[Roger L. Lattin]

I don't know if it was the worst injury I have had but left some interesting scars.
I was working on "Circus of The Stars" where they teach "actors" how to be circus performers, I got friendly with the lions and tigers' training staff. We were on a long break, when the tiger trainer asked me to sit down and hold a 5 week old baby tiger cub while they rehearsed with mom and 8-10 other big cats. So, I sat down on a chair near the cage (but not too near!!!) so mom could see her cub while working. Things were going well for a half hour or so, 20-25 lbs. of young kitten playing, purring, trying to nurse off my thumb and looking very closely at each other. Mom came by several times to check on her cub but the way she'd looked at me let me know where I was on the food chain!
The cub was laying down in my lap sleeping when mom came by and made this weird grunting sound. The cub made a big mewing sound and sank ALL twenty of it's claws into my thighs, I didn't jump (mom and the trainer were right there inside the performance cage) I maintained my sitting position the cub started to purr again. I held it for another 15-20 minuets enjoying each other's attention.
When I went to the bathroom later my legs were covered in blood to the point my socks were stuck to my legs and several of the puncture wounds were still bleeding. I cleaned off my legs went back to work, climbed up to the 40-50 ft. spot tower for another act finishing the 14 hour day with out further incident. I have 6-8 little scars in each thigh from one of my best days in the industry!

 

[techieman33]

We were loading in a small theater show last year, some little company with just a couple of crew that had very little experience on the road. So we're unloading the truck with a hydraulic lift gate a piece or two at a time. The road guy with the truck brings down an upright piano shell (it was almost all there and crazy heavy). The problem was everyone else was taking stuff inside and it was only the 2 of us at the truck. So the lift gets to the ground and I start to turn the piano around so it comes off long ways and we don't risk tipping it over. Well the road guy had other ideas and just started shoving it straight off. Of course the piano fell over and landed on my toes. Ended up breaking both big toes. It was about 3 weeks before I could really walk around enough to work at all, and 3 to 4 months before I really felt confident that I could do stuff without worry about hurting them again. I always wear my steel toes now for in's and out's. Even on the "small shows."

 

[NewChris]

At my high school a few years ago, someone fell through a drop-in ceiling, trying to get to the auditorium ceiling. After she fell, she had a seizure and an ambulance was called and she was brought to the hospital. She was fine, but very scary.

 

[MPowers]

The dropped ceiling reminds me of a moment in my mis spent youth. At my undergrad school in the early 60's, the drama dept. gave out awards at the end of each year. One of them was the "Golden Screw" award. A gold painted old style stage screw on a stained and varnished plaque. It was awarded for the funniest or most memorable or most "I can't believe I did that" moment of the year. My sophomore year I won for "Missing". A new faculty member was trying to impress the world with his first production at his new school. Although we later grew to admire and love him, at this point he was really rubbing people the wrong way. Very late one night at a dress rehearsal that should have ended hours earlier, he decided that though the timing was perfect, we had to repeat the scene. That meant, while the rest of the cast and crew waited, I had to climb up above the dropped ceiling in the converted gym that was the theatre at the time, across the length of the building, on wood planks lain on the joists, reset the single feather to drop ( Man For All Seasons the cardinal Woolsey scene). On my way back I slipped on one of the loose planks and my foot and leg went through the ceiling, knocking out a panel that landed just inches from the faculty member in question. I got the screw up award because I missed him.

 

[MarshallPope]

Well, go figure. We do "Golden Screw" awards here as well. Ours are low budget, though - just a 3" gold-painted wood screw screwed into a chunk of 2x4. Ours are the same concept, though. Every year the student leadership comes up with 5 or so categories to award embarassing moments or whatnot. Luckily, I never had occasion to receive one as a student, and I've avoided them so far as staff, knock on wood.

 

[zmb]

The cub was laying down in my lap sleeping when mom came by and made this weird grunting sound. The cub made a big mewing sound and sank ALL twenty of it's claws into my thighs, I didn't jump (mom and the trainer were right there inside the performance cage) I maintained my sitting position the cub started to purr again. I held it for another 15-20 minuets enjoying each other's attention.
When I went to the bathroom later my legs were covered in blood to the point my socks were stuck to my legs and several of the puncture wounds were still bleeding. I cleaned off my legs went back to work, climbed up to the 40-50 ft. spot tower for another act finishing the 14 hour day with out further incident. I have 6-8 little scars in each thigh from one of my best days in the industry!

This, by far, has to the injury with the best story behind it.

 

[TheaterEd]

This, by far, has to the injury with the best story behind it.

I would agree. In the theater and in the shop are where I am the most safe, so the best I have are smashing my head into things, and putting holes in my fingers due to overly-enthusiastic power drilling. I would say my most spectacular fall came when I was acting. I was to jump onto a table and slide over it landing in a chair. It worked perfectly every time, but during our second show someone put a book in the wrong spot on the table. When I slid on the book I was going to fast and flipped backwards with my chair as the lights went out. Myself and chair went over the edge of the stage for a 6' drop to the gym floor..... I landed on my feet still holding the chair and booked it backstage during the blackout, could have been much worse if I wasn't a cat in a past life.

 

[StradivariusBone]

One of them was the "Golden Screw" award. A gold painted old style stage screw on a stained and varnished plaque. It was awarded for the funniest or most memorable or most "I can't believe I did that" moment of the year.

I like that a lot. We've taken to giving a "Thank You" card to the tech member that did something stupid (or something the rest of the crew presumed to be stupid) during a show and on the inside we write "for ruining the show." We usually try to find the most frilly, pink-covered, butterfly-filled Grandma card possible and have the whole crew sign it.

 

[MichaelPHS]

Worst injury.... probably back in college, setting up the lighting area (had just a multi-purpose dance studio) by putting a table out to set up the lighting console. I hadn't put the table down fully, resting it on my foot (in dance shoes at the time as Iwas in th show as well as tech) so I could get a better grip, when some lazy sod (onlysmall but still enough to hurt) decides to come sit on the table. Popped the nail out from my big toe under the skin but it was still attatched by the tip, even the nurse was squeamish about this one so I got my pliers and had to rip it offjust to get a bandage on it to stop the bleeding. I've also had someone during a focusing session put the wrong lantern up and damn near blind me. Worst accident I've seen though, 2 actors swingng a thrid around the floor in a paint suit (workmans onsies I call 'em) during a break time slowly but surely getting closer to the legs of the rostra each spin. Sure enough she twats her head on the leg, goes to hospital with a concussion and still to this day makes jokes about the dent in her head

 

[flash1322]

Updated worst injury, I was working in a cove in our Proscenium theatre here at WMU. Its about 15' the air and I'm about 6'6" so my head was a good 20' from the ground, I went up to replace a gel that the lighting designer wanted changed and I took one step too many. Next thing I remember was waking up at the hospital and people asking if I knew who I was. I was out for about 6 hours, I had a serious concussion and a separation in my shoulder, ended up being in intensive care for about 4 days till they released me. Since the accident they put in harnesses in the coves, people complain that they have to wear them but its better then getting hurt.

 

[StradivariusBone]

Updated worst injury, I was working in a cove in our Proscenium theatre here at WMU. Its about 15' the air and I'm about 6'6" so my head was a good 20' from the ground, I went up to replace a gel that the lighting designer wanted changed and I took one step too many. Next thing I remember was waking up at the hospital and people asking if I knew who I was. I was out for about 6 hours, I had a serious concussion and a separation in my shoulder, ended up being in intensive care for about 4 days till they released me. Since the accident they put in harnesses in the coves, people complain that they have to wear them but its better then getting hurt.

Holy crap! Glad you're here to post about it!

 

[ruinexplorer]

I hope that they are evaluating the fall risks throughout the theater, not just the coves.

 

[flash1322]

I forgot to note that this was my 1st year here, its been 3 years since and the conditions are still sketchy in areas.