Biggest Technical disaster mid performance

[James]

OK Last night's show wasn't good.

 

You know it's bad when the director gets up on stage to apologize to the house for the problem.

What happened was the prompt (completely accidentally) kicked the plug out of the wall for the amp rack, killing all FOH and musician's wedges. No MD clavinova, no percussion - and this happened just before a dance number.

 

This is a standard dubiously wired church hall - where the 13A sockets are all on2.5mm fused @ 10A - and everything seems much more sensitive here than anywhere else.

 

So when the plug was kicked back in it took out that spur.

 

Oh and it takes a good 5 minutes for the caps to fuly drain the the amps PSU's and if I was to switch them back on without having drained they take the spur out again.

 

Just thought I'd share my embarasment.

 

 

James

[Brian]

Mine went like this...

 

It was a rock musical show with the band on stage. The drummer was centre stage on risers with a 2k fresnel on a stand behind his head. Taped to the stand, and positioned to discharge in front of the lantern was the pipe from a large smoke machine. I think you can guess what the effect was meant to be.

 

Anyways, I'm back stage operating the smoke machine from behind the rear blacks, my 'on' cue was easy, just listen to the music, but I was going to be told by someone FOH over a set of radio cans when to turn it off. Last night of the show I turn the smoke on and wait for the off cue, and wait, and wait. I then look down at the radio to see that I'd forgotten to turn it on. Turning it on I hear 'OFF, OFF, OFF, WE CAN'T SEE THE STAGE'.

 

Whoops.

 

Brian

(who I think at the time blamed it on a faulty radio).

[timmath]

What happened was the prompt (completely accidentally) kicked the plug out of the wall for the amp rack

 

have seen the same thing, but it all of Video City on a corporate show, including the AVID - bang went an hours worth of onsite digitizing for the second half of the show.... oooops!

 

tim

[James]

have seen the same thing, but it all of Video City on a corporate show, including the AVID - bang went an hours worth of onsite digitizing for the second half of the show.... oooops!

 

Ouch,

 

I've seen avids try to recover, and whole unity's out for almost a week after the plug being un-ceremoniously pulled from under their feet...

 

James

[Ellis]

I won't name the venue, but at the time the pit was powered off the same 100A single phase supply as the stage LX.

 

One pantomime performance, eight bars from the end of the show, the MD's fan heater switched on, pushing the current just too far and...

 

BLACKOUT

 

Needless to say the fan heater was removed from the pit for the rest of the run.

[James C]

Not the biggest sdisaster, but one that pained me throughout the show:

 

Edinburgh venue, so 20min turnaround time. Rake goes in, James squeezes under it to daisy chain the 4 (4x500W)groundrows up. Busy 20mins, James goes up to desk just in time for show to start, and doesn't do a rig check. Houselights go down, first cue goes up...and I've plugged one of the groundrows up completely wrong. First cue has an all-green backdrop, except for the blue on the end. Next cue has an all blue backdrop except for pink on the end. next cue...You get the picture. Quite how I managed to get all four wrong, rather than just swapping two of them over...let's just say I have unique abilities in some areas.

 

Awful - an hour and ten minutes of seeing my mistake in every cue, and being unable to do anything about it :(

[Mars]

On a architectual and historical site, grabbing juice from anywhere from the walls to feed the dimmers, lots of lumen required...

An hour for the premiere, adding the last bulbs to a socket, stand alone somewhere deep in the basement...

Five minutes for curtain (there was none actually), I was getting a bit tense, when an actor strolled by, eating an apple, noticing the utter darkness everywhere in the basement...

Running... running back, getting the joint pliers, faster running... down, down, down...

What did I... that one plug unplugged... turning, the mains fuse room, which one... testing and guessing... this one? A spare, somewhere from the ground... in the pliers, ramming it in its place, somebody took a photo???

Running, 3 levels up, a corridor, an olympic record, ears on, hearing:

"...art NOW!"

First cue rolling.

Hmmm, it could have been worse.

[Tom]

A couple of Stage Management ones for a change.

 

A very frantic one day fit up. I'd finally opened the house about 15 minutes late (no house tabs by the way), called the quarter and was sitting down for the first time all day in the dock with the other SM to grab a quick cup of tea before the show. We both had a funny feeling that we had forgot to do something. After about 5 minutes realised that the chairs we are sitting on should be on stage. And neither of us are in our blacks yet.

 

Different show, opera this time: On stage is a 5 metre long Chaise (very) Long. At the high point of one of her arias, the Diva is meant to run along it and up onto the raised end bit. In order to stop it flipping over, we'd built a box into the other end which was filled with stage weights.

On the performance in question, due to a sustained hang over, we'd been a bit slack with the pre-show checks. I was standing in the wings as the moment in question approaches when I stubbed my toe on... a large pile of stage weights. Hmm, they're not supposed to be there.

Luckily at that moment, the singer had to come to the edge of the stage to talk (well sing) to somebody off and I was able to whisper to her not to do the chaise bit, otherwise she'd have gone A over T into the pit with the chaise following her.

 

I try not to do furniture any more.

[IanG]

My worst took place during a dress rehearsal, so fortunately it wasn't the end of the world. Still was a bit of a disaster though.

 

After a hectic fit up weekend, we started the dress about an hour late and tempers were beginning to fray. I'd just rigged some monitors in the pit (supplied by the band) and noticed that there was a level issue somewhere. However, I didn't have a lot of time so I just cranked up the level (they were self powered) and vowed to take a look at it later.

 

All went well until about half way through the first act, when an almighty racket began emanating from somewhere in the house. I started killing sends until everything on the desk was down, but still the racket persisted. By this point everyone is looking at me, the director's blood is starting to boil and I'm still trying to work out where the hell the noise is coming from.

 

So the LX bod (who also does a lot of sound related stuff) passes behind me to go down the ladder to the house to investigate, and I get up to follow. He slides down with his feet on either side and heads off towards the pit.

 

Eventually it was discovered that the powered monitor in the pit has dodgy soldering on it's input connection and had lost proper grounding, and this combined with it being turned right up explained the ear-splitting noise. We turned it off and got on with the remainder of the show, and in the end the week went well.

 

There was one casualty though - in his haste to get down the ladder the LX had hit a nearby fridge with his foot and had a sprained ankle for the rest of the show week.

 

Including, oddly enough, the get out :-)

[David]

Sitting in the crew room between shows, when a load bang is heard. That will be the PA blowing up says a kindly stage hand. I walk out on to the stage to hear a lot of noise coming from the PA stacks. Go to the control position to discover that the desk is of.

 

Try to turn it on, nothing, reset trip switch on the incoming, nothing. The desk is dead.

 

Its 6pm the next show is at 7pm there are 1200 punters outside, a cast of 12 including a TV name top of the bill,. a 6 piece band, 12 radio misc, 6 channels of fold back. 2 mini disks of Click and 2 mini disks for FX, and NO DESK. I have never felt so sick!

 

With the help of 2 of the locals, we pulled the dead digital desk out and put in the house analogue desk that was at the back of the control room. Its now 6.45 and they want to open the house.

 

We get all the stage hands to hold a radio on stage and talk, so I could EQ them ( it was felt that the turns should stay in there dressing rooms(?). The band was pulled out of the green room and we had a 5min band call, to set the fold back and eq.

 

The doors were opened at 7.10 we went up at 7.15 and I have never worked so hard on a show.

 

And their was not one complaint about sound from the punters that night.

[ianl]

during a run of cinderella, some one had hired aluminium tumblers rather than wooden ones, the aluminium ones obviously being quite a bit heavier. about a week into the run all the cloths started ripping across the top at quite an alarming rate. so there I am mid show steeling 6 tumblers to the grid.

The rest of the show took place in the garden that being the only cloth on a tab track. this led to quite a lot of confusion in the audience despite some impesive improvising by the cast

[Light Console]

During a OB of a concert, with Hospital Radio recently, we heard a loud bang, flash of light and glass pouring down from the backlight Par bar. This then preceded to tinkle on the Tubular Bells and bong on the Kettle Drums below :** laughs out loud **: . It was no more than three mins into he first number of the night. Luckily there was no one playing at the time, but frantic stage hands came rushing to the wings armed with brooms. The commentator had to explain what had happened, as the glass was cleared out of the way for the next number. Turned out that TWO pars on the same circuit exploded at the same time, and the dimmer was dead! The cans had mesh and gel, good job the ceramics didn't fall out!

[Magnus]

When I was studying in Glasgow I did a little stint up at Pitlochry Festival Theatre to fill in for their assistant LX. The show was a cracker with a brilliant revolving set called “Lady Killers” and apart from board opping it I had one Interval Focus to do. This involved one 2K lantern on a stand at the back of the set being focused for the train scene at the end. The channel was called and on the riggers I typed it in and automatically without thinking pressed rem-dim forgetting that all house lights were programmed into the cue we were sitting in. I didn’t realise due to the working light on stage that I had just plunged 500 very fragile coffin dodgers into utter blackness in the auditorium. Oops Never mind it was a small lesson learned the hard way. B-)

[Andrew C]

OK, here's one of mine. B-) Lurking backstage S/R ready for a panto scene change, twirlies twirling, singers singing, musos doing whatever they do. End of scene, crescendo, pose, DBO, cloth down, scene change up-stage, panto idiots do something D/S.

 

Well, that was the plan. One of the talent walks into the brace on a flat pushing the top about a foot downstage, which meets the cloth coming down. I'm stood U/S of the flat and all I know is that the flat is moving of it's own accord. So I grab that. Then comes the tearing noise from above...

 

WTF!! I have no idea what's going on, I can't see anything, and the stage is full of cast who just mill around. Lights don't come up as they can see that the cloth is still ½ way up. The guy on the lines (S/L) can't work out why his end of the cloth isn't dropping any more. (It's got a flat stuck through it!) SM is also S/L and can't see anything either.

 

I'd probably still be there if it hadn't been for another member of the crew having the night off, with his kids in the front row. He joined us across the pros, got some tabs shut and some workers on.

 

Made a proper mess of the cloth, but the flat was OK, and no one got maimed either; somehow.

 

Moral of story? Stick to lights & sound!

[Angelic]

Two quickies!

 

Firstly at my upper sixth form leaver's musical (a while ago!) we utilised three flats hung from a scaff bar with hooks at the top (low on budget, low on time, low on budget sort of thing). All went well for the first three nights, but come the final night one of my crew turned a flat around, hooked it back on and left the stage as per the scene change - all was fine and dandy, until we realised that one of the hooks wasn't hooked on properly. Yup, we realised that as soon as the flat started swinging towards us! Luckily I grabbed it, hooked it, bowed and left for the nearest pub!

 

The second incident happened just before a tech run, so no turns or audience. Box (ish) set, flats held up with braces to the back with stage weights, muso thinks he can use one of the stage weights for a better use, half of the set ends up on the floor :unsure:

 

Luckily all went well!