-The play is Bogosian's "Suburbia", and the place is Muhlenberg College, circa 1996. The play is set in the parking lot of a 7-11, and all the set's street lights are functional set pieces providing most of the stage right lighting. In a particular stroke of genius, ALL these lights are bundled into one power strip. Which, of course, is not fastened to anything in any way at all. And it's behind the set, with thirty feet of unobscured space on either side of it, leaving virtually no way to get to it during a performance. Also, these lights need ten minutes to warm up, so they must be turned on well before the play starts/resumes after intermission. And there's no curtain, just house lights up and down.
Got it??? SO... I'm playing the character of Tim, who starts the second half of the play on stage unconscious. As curtain is rapidly approaching, I begin to realize that these lights aren't coming on. The plug had come loose from the socket backstage. I'm starting to get quite antsy, but can't do anything cause I'm in full view of a packed house. Just before the scene begins, the lights, miraculously flicker on. Here's how we were saved...
It's exactly ten minutes before curtain. Our stage manager, Bob, the most neurotically anxious man I know, is in the booth panicking to anyone who'll listen that the lights aren't coming up. The stage right crew, the one who should have fixed the problem, was a guy named Phil. Phil once missed an entire performance because his Intramural basketball team had a game that he "just couldn't miss". No help. Stage left, about 50 meters away from, there are Tony and Louie. Tony, the fifth degree Back belt, turns to Louie and said "Stay here!!"
Tony drops into a military crawl and proceeds to maneuver JUST below the rear footlights, with a clearance of about one centimeter between him and the audience sightline, and clears the full distance across the stage. There's now a scrim between him and the offending power strip, which he lifts up with such amazingly focused and slow concentration that the audience never sees any of the scrim move. He then rolls underneath the scrim, fixes the socket, the lights start to come on, and he does the whole process in reverse to get out! Bob is now screaming on the headset trying to figure out how we fixed it, to which Louie, who's watching Tony in abject awe, replies to Bob, "Shut up! We're doing Ninja s--t down here!!!"
-John P. Dowgin
-My senior year of high school (John F. Kennedy, St Louis, Mo) we did the production of Annie Get Your Gun. The previous year I had been the stage manager, but for this show I was head of lights (aka master electrican). I had just dimmed the house to black for a scene change when the unexpeirenced stage manager came over the wakie talkie and told me that she could not find the sand bags for the trees that were used in the last scene. These trees were 18 feet tall and were only supported by an L brace, and one 20 pound sand bag. Each tree needed one and there weere five trees on stage. I asked her what she had near for temporary use until the sand bags were found and she proceded to tell me she had four bookbags. I asked how many books in each and she said at least two. I then told her to have the stage crew sit or lay down with their feed over the L braces and if they felt the felt the trees were going to fall, putting more pressure on the brace. She quickly told me thanks and to bring up the lights. So I died and when the five minute scene was just about to end, Annie Oakley leaps over one of the braces to get on stage for her cue. As she did so I noticed that the first tree was swaying so I told the Stage Manager to put more pressure on the tree to which she responded "I am no where near the trees". Ao as you can imagine the first tree hit the second hitting the third, then the fourth, the last one which in turn hit the hide away walkway I had just built prior for the show -- breaking the walkway in two and breaking every tree in two or three parts -- needles to say our technical director was not to pleased at his coice in stage management that year.
-Debby
- "Little shop of Horrors" Sandy Spring Players 1997: The set for this was a disaster to begin with. Basically, it was low wall, with a door on one side, and four wall pieces mounted on casters. This wouldn't have been so bad, if not for the fact that the opening night of the show, during one of the most dramatic scenes of the second act, the lead was backing away from the plant and backed right into the door. The door promptly broke
loose of it's minimal support, and nearly squashed the female lead on the way down. Although the rest of the cast and crew was off stage in various stages of anger and hilarity, the two of them managed to pull the scene, and the rest of the show off without a hitch. The door remained on stage until the finnaly, when two of the other backstagers ran out to drag it to the side. The audience thought it was all part of the show. It's amazing how much faith the audience has in us.
-Izzy Church
-This past summer (summer 1997) I worked on Godspell with a theatre group in connecticut. I am prop coordinator for the shows at the highschool and for the summer theatre group. Well second to the last night of the run (only 4 performances total) the table (2 sawhorses and 3 planks of wood) fell down while someone was up on the table during the "alter" scene. It was funny but also it wasn't. They were singing something and right after the last note, one beat after they stoped, the table fell, which was funny b/c it was on the same beat. But NO one even took it off the stage!! Me and the director are behind one of the flats trying to get one of the cast member's attention. (and this is after about 4 stories were told or something and there are 44 cast members on the stage and not one of them takes it off until me and the director tells them to take it off) Well finally after "day by day" the unuseable table finally came off the stage. Well the TD was also the SM so we were back there screwing in screws and he was calling cues at the same time. 150 light cues in this show. Well we were going to screw in the screws when the cast members made loud noises that we had planned, well turns out that they weren't that loud that night, so we just screwed it back together (until intermission when it got fixed for real) and we didn't care at this point because we needed to use it for when they do the "lamp, lamp, lamp" scene, we just got it fixed as the lights were going down for that scene to be set up. And we will never forget it b/c the night that it was professionally taped, was THAT night so its on tape!!! -Kayce
- At the Cultuarl Arts Center played a childrens group. The show
they put on was "Tewlth Night" and they had trelace for a set. Well
if you ever went to your own local hardware store you know that store
bought trelace is nothing. So when one of the girls dresses tugged
on the side support it just collapsed. So when the suport collapsed
the whole set started to fall like domino's. And of course this had
to of happened on the only showed the payed to have TAPED!
-JWP
-Doing "The Thrill of it All" at Thunder Bay Theatre in 1994
was hot. It was the middle of the summer and I swear the heat
wave was melting my costume. During final dress rehersal, to
top that off, one scene called for all the characters to be
"caught" illegally gambling and a great chase for 10-15 minutes.
Each actor is chased by police and makes 2-4 crosses from every
angle imaginable. I was playing a male pickpocket with suit and
tie and hat. On my last cross from SL to SR the police man almost
gets me so I run faster and do a great look back and shout CS.
Only that time my hat starts to fall (which would reveil I was
female) so I grabbed my hat with both hands and on turning back
to see were I was running (being near sighted and never wearing
glasses on stage)found that the new set flats were now up and
right in my running path. Being a theater person I didn't want
to destroy the set so I threw my self into the front row of the
house and into the brick wall. I could hardly walk much less run
the next day. I decided to make my cross in the troth after that.
-Christine P. Carriveau
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