# Show Stop Stories



## cdiamondz

I've searched around a bit and didn't find a thread of stories of stopping shows, so I'm now creating one. Since I'm suggesting this, I might as well put my story here and let the rest of the community share their stories.

We were showing Suessical the Musical spring 2017. Since it was a school show, we skipped intermission and such to keep the running time shorter. What had happened was a student had a seizure the scene after "intermission" (a blackout extended by 30 seconds where we still had house lights come up dimly so school staff could monitor the high schoolers). One of the spot ops called it out over the headset when he saw some teachers moving towards a student laying on the ground. This lead to an immediate show stop, worklights and house lights going to full and curtain closing, all mics were muted, and a short announcement stating the the show was on hold for some time. EMS showed up a couple minutes later and took the student to the hospital. We then skipped some slow songs due to loss in time and finished the show on time.

What's your guys' stories of show stops?


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## StradivariusBone

We had a local school in for a chorus concert once and a student collapsed backstage and went into cardiac arrest. Did essentially the same as you said, once EMT's were on scene the director decided to continue the performance as they worked on the kid backstage. It was pretty rough, the student ended up being OK, but they had to defibrillate before they transported.

One of the things I tell my kids to consider in these situations is that they may be called upon to go and wait for emergency services. Our building seems very familiar to us, but to new people it is a maze. In that situation I had my SM go wait on the loading dock for them to arrive and not leave until he led them to the student that was arresting. Every second counts. Fortunately mom was a doctor and an audience member was a pediatrician. Both were performing CPR until EMT's arrived.


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## Aaron Clarke

Just a couple weeks ago I, opening night of Fiddler and I'm standing in the back of the house just watching the show. Suddenly in the middle of Miracles of Miracles I just hear this loud hollering- One the first one, I figured open dressing room mic, 2nd I start thinking who backstage would be screaming lick that, as the 3rd on started I knew sound would have had it by now and I start seeing movement in the house. House manager is oblivious and I go running down the aisle. Patron had just came out of a seizure a family member tells me and think he is fine, doesn't want to leave (turns out it was a dad to one of the kids in the show). So I let them know if they need anything I'm just 5 rows behind them. Short time later family stands and waves me down, had another one and stopped breathing, but is conscious now. I get the attention of the Director and her husband who come help him to the lobby as I'm the phone with 911. 

In hindsight I felt I should have insisted he come the lobby after the first incident. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of quick response from the house manager/crew though it was his first time and its an all volunteer house with no recent history on a medical emergency during a show. So I'm just thankful I was there and not buried in the light booth. Only person on the production team that even knew anything was happening was sound until I came back in to tell them, which worries me slightly. 

No show stop but I was close and one of those moments I spent the next week reliving think of how I could have reacted differently. Thankfully the patron recovered and is working with their doctor to find the cause. Was able to come he his son and the show the following weekend.


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## BillConnerFASTC

I think I've told the story but I was in trap room operating dry ice fog machines (of my own design and manufacture) and the trap hardware failed, with actress coming through. Stopped the show for half an hour or so. One of the other actors decided to vamp, reciting Shakespeare ala El Grande Coca Cola (he is one of the authors). ATD quickly built a support structure under trap for the rest of the show, obviously now sans trap gag; actress recovered; and the show went on.


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## Van

OMG! Where do I start? One of my Favorite ones was opening night of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at Artists Repertory Theatre. 3/4 thrust stage with two voms leading to the entrance. During the rehearsal process the violence in the "dinner scene" grew and Grew and GREW to the point that at the height of the argument Stanley lifts his plate and throws it down the vom. I winched during first tech. By the second tech I was uncomfortable. By third tech I mentioned, during notes that I was thoroughly against the idea and that it was just plain dangerous. Opening Night, Stanley throws that plate, it catches just enough air on the edge and it sails into the audience. It beaned the husband of the the reviewer for the Willamette Week, local paper. A collective gasp, dead silence, then you hear from the Audience, " Holy *#&(!". Stanley Stopped, looked into the audience and immediately said, " I'm so Sorry, do you need medical attention?" The man said "No, I'm ok. Keep going." Stanley took a breath, Looked out at the audience and said "Ok, the next line is..." and fell right back into character. From an Acting point it was incredibly amazing. From a technical point it was avoidable, and the bit changed the next night.


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## What Rigger?

I was on a ship once, on a conglomerate body of water, when an earthquake struck. It was weird to feel nothing abnormal, but watching everyone on land move about. So we went "full stop" and got out of sight of the audience until everything stopped moving.


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## JonCarter

OK. since the subject has come up I'll toss one in. This wasn't a "show stop," but it did produce a rather long intermission.

I was working as TD and LD at a summer theatre doing operettas, mostly Gilbert & Sullivan, some Strauss, Offenbach, Lehar, etc.. The theatre was in a (surprise!) converted barn. About a 300 seat house, 20' proscenium, not much in the way of flies (old hay loft, maybe?) and what looked like a home-brew light board. The supply was 120-240 V single phase AC. 

The board was in two pieces. The first unit had three 6kW autotransformer dimmers, each with a 3-position switch. The "DOWN" switch position fed the dimmer output to load connectors on the board, the "CENTER" was OFF, and "UP" fed the dimmer output to the other part of the board. Dimmers 1 and 3 were fed from the "A" side of the 120-240 feed; dimmer 2 was fed from the "B" side of the supply. (I know; not a balanced load, but not my design.) 

The other part of the board consisted of 3 banks of six 1 kW autotransformers. Each dimmer also had a 3-position switch controlling the power to the dimmer; "DOWN" was CONSTANT (dimmers alternating between "A" and "B" sides of the supply), the "CENTER" was OFF, and "UP" was powered by one of the three master dimmers. On bank one (dimmers 1-6) the constant power supply alternated between sides of the supply, "A"-"B"-"A"-"B"-"A"-"B", while power for all six dimmers from the bank's master dimmer was from the "A" side of the supply. A similar situation existed on dimmer banks 2 and 3. The result was that in each bank three of the dimmer's power switches had the full 240V across the two switch positions. I did not know of this situation at the time I took the job, but I found out soon enough. The switches were of a type that did not have a mechanical pause between positions. 

Fast forward to the activity. First show of the season. I was using the "A" master dimmer in its "Independednt" mode for house lights and its "Master" mode for the FOH DS areas (5) and curtain warmers (1) which also served as DS side lights. As the show begins: house down, overture, curtain warmers down, switch curtiain warmers from CONSTANT to MASTER & set first cue level, switch master dimmer from house to MASTER, curtain, all FOH comes up with curtain. Then the rest of the show and pretty much the reverse at the end of each act. This procedure worked fine for five of the six perfrormances. 

Fast forward to the end of Act I on closing night. All FOH is now @ 10 on master dimmer. Now, I usually switched the curtain warmers from MASTER to CONSTANT at this point, to leave them up on the curtain as the rest of the FOH stuff goes down on curtain close. This was usually done at a convenient point in the last number, usually a big chorus number of some kind. Apparently I had been lucky for the preceding five performances and always managed to make this switch somewhere near the zero-crossing of the AC power. Not so this time, when I managed to switch at the peak of the AC cycle, which resulted in a nice 240V arc across the dimmer's power switch. This arc, which did not extinguish itself, began throwing flame out of the front and back of the board. After what seemed like a half-hour of this (but was probably not more than 5 seconds) I pulled the board master power, which not only killed the arc but also killed everything else. And as the house lights were fed from the board, when the board lost power the house emergency lights came on. (Nice little battery-powered jobs, one at each corner of the room.) Our very unflappable conductor never lost a beat and finished the last pages of the score in total darkness except for the spill from the orchestra stand lights. After applause died he announced that intermission would be longer than usual and urged everyone to visit the patio bar.

I spent intermission tearing into the board, disconnecting the burned switch and wiring the circuit to a couple of switches nailed to a hastily made 1x3 frame sitting on top of the board. We finished the performance (after a long intermission--the bar did well that night) and I spent the following weekend replacing the switch and re-wiring half of the board so that nothing switched from one side of the 240V supply to the other. I still have the burned-up switch in my collection of oddities.


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## BillConnerFASTC

JonCarter said:


> This arc, which did not extinguish itself, began throwing flame out of the front and back of the board.



Yeah - one of those cool things we've had to give up. Almost surprised ETC has offered it as an option.


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## cdiamondz

JonCarter said:


> ... I still have the burned-up switch in my collection of oddities.


A nice memory of a fire hazard . Sounds extremely sketchy to even exist... Might I ask what kind of dimmers were in this deathtrap? Were they variacs?

EDIT: Dumb me doesn't remember that the dimmer type was mentioned...


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## JonCarter

cdiamondz said:


> A nice memory of a fire hazard . Sounds extremely sketchy to even exist... Might I ask what kind of dimmers were in this deathtrap? Were they variacs?
> 
> EDIT: Dumb me doesn't remember that the dimmer type was mentioned...




Well, probably no more of a "death trap" than any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of summer theatres-in-a-barn all over the country. As to the dimmers, no, not variacs. Superior Elec. 1kW & 6kW autotrasnformers. The masters were non-interlocking and were mounted in a steel case with handles & switches on the front, about 36" wide, 30" deep and 48" high, with a sloping top, with clipboard & cue sheet light. The individuals were mounted in three rows of 6 in a steel case, about 54" wide, 50" high and 14" deep. The dimmers units themselves were mounted on panels about 10" high x 8" wide with vertical control handles and (the infamous) switches on front. (I'm going from memory here; this was all about 55 years go.) The dimmer board sat to the operator's left of the master board, which faced the stage. All located DSL.


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## balderson04

Just a few weeks ago, my wife and I were watching our son in one of his first Equity roles in George Bernard Shaw's Candida at a summer theatre near Ottawa. Ten minutes from the end, he suddenly fainted and went down hard, banging his head on a footstool. In seconds, two doctors and a nurse, in the audience from Montreal, were on the stage tending to him; a local policeman who was in the audience was contacting emergency services and using his pull to get them moving. And, of course, his parents were in the theatre at the time. Long story short, they cancelled the evening show but he was back next day. Gall bladder problems that led to a toxic shock incident -- he has new dietary guides and is fully recovered. He was so limp from the faint that there wasn't even a bruise from banging his head, although it was LOUD! Or maybe that was just from his dad's perspective.

Anyway, that same run had two later power outages that stopped and eventually cancelled performances. Which has to be some kind of record.


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## JChenault

cdiamondz said:


> A nice memory of a fire hazard . Sounds extremely sketchy to even exist... Might I ask what kind of dimmers were in this deathtrap? Were they variacs?
> 
> EDIT: Dumb me doesn't remember that the dimmer type was mentioned...



Wait. I thought a variance was just another name for auto-transformer. Am I wrong?


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## RonHebbard

JChenault said:


> Wait. I thought a "*variance*" was just another name for auto-transformer. Am I wrong?


 @JChenault Without claiming any authority, herewith my thoughts and beliefs on the subject:
An autotransformer normally affords zero electrical isolation between its primary and secondary windings.
An autotransformer's ratio may be fixed, tapped, or continuoualy variable.
"Variac", as distinct from your term "variance" I believe is a specific brand / model name for a brand of continuously variable autotransformer cleverly combining Variable with alternating current / AC coining the catchy term: Variac.
"Variance" I believe falls more within the realms of @BillConnerFASTC and @Stevens R. Miller where I believe it relates to seeking a minor change in required specifications and / contractual terms although I could easily be incorrect with my hasty semi-definition of a "variance" being neither a Fellow of the American Society of Theatrical Consultants nor called to the bar.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.


JChenault said:


> Wait. I thought a variance was just another name for auto-transformer. Am I wrong?


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## JChenault

RonHebbard said:


> @JChenault Without claiming any authority, herewith my thoughts and beliefs on the subject:
> An autotransformer normally affords zero electrical isolation between its primary and secondary windings.
> An autotransformer's ratio may be fixed, tapped, or continuoualy variable.
> "Variac", as distinct from your term "variance" I believe is a specific brand / model name for a brand of continuously variable autotransformer cleverly combining Variable with alternating current / AC coining the catchy term: Variac.
> "Variance" I believe falls more within the realms of @BillConnerFASTC and @Stevens R. Miller where I believe it relates to seeking a minor change in required specifications and / contractual terms although I could easily be incorrect with my hasty semi-definition of a "variance" being neither a Fellow of the American Society of Theatrical Consultants nor called to the bar.
> Toodleoo!
> Ron Hebbard.



Actually I typed variac. The auto correct liked variance better.

Must proofread better


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## Stevens R. Miller

"Called to the bar?"

I always thought "variance" meant "the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its mean."


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## RonHebbard

Stevens R. Miller said:


> "Called to the bar?"
> 
> I always thought "variance" meant "the expectation of the squared deviation of a random variable from its mean."


 @Stevens R. Miller Please note: I did say "I could easily be incorrect with my hasty semi-definition of a "variance" and I could just as easily be a 'deviate' and / or a square, squared or derived deviation as well. ;^) Aren't semantics a wonderful thing?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.


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## BillConnerFASTC

Permission to do other than code - or zoning - requires is most common use of variance for me.


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## Infinidean

I was in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest when fairly late in the show Lady Bracknell started forgetting lines. After a few saves by other actors she stood up from the chair she had been sitting in, declared in an impeccable and slightly over the top British accent, "Carry on. If you can!" and prompltly feinted. As there were no understudies, the show ended with a couple of us telling the audience how the show concluded.


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## cdiamondz

Infinidean said:


> I was in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest when fairly late in the show Lady Bracknell started forgetting lines. After a few saves by other actors she stood up from the chair she had been sitting in, declared in an impeccable and slightly over the top British accent, "Carry on. If you can!" and prompltly feinted. As there were no understudies, the show ended with a couple of us telling the audience how the show concluded.



I watched a production some years ago where something similar happened. But they just got the ASM out on stage holding a script and acting with the rest of the actors.


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## TimMc

Yep. If only "auto correct" would exclusively correct the misspelled words... I've also noticed that the auto correction algorithms tend to have a bit of Aunt Pollie's prudishness, too. Certain words drop consonants, change vowels or become something else entirely. Not that we use such words here at Control Booth, but in private conversations this can be frustrating.

Edit PS... Arrrg. Can't edit to include a quote that was omitted in the original reply.
This was a response to JChenault's "Actually I typed variac. The auto correct liked variance better."


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## jdenora

Best show stop I saw (i.e. not working there) was back in the 80's, the premiere show for a new playhouse, maybe 200 seats. We went to see "Dracula" on, of all things, a dark and stormy night. About half way through act two, a bolt of lightning and crack of thunder, and all the power goes out. No emergency lights, and no cell phones. So we waited while house staff came out with flashlights. The actor playing Van Helsing sat on a stool at center stage and regaled the audience with some of the best theater stories I've ever heard while cast and crew were frantically lighting every candle and oil lamp they could find. In about 15 minutes the stage was surrounded by a bunch of open flame candles and lamps (yeah, real safe), and the cast picked up where they left off. It was absolutely amazing to see the rest of the show by candlelight. Five minutes before the end of the play, the power came back on. The entire audience began shouting to shut it off and finish by candlelight, which they did. Truly a once in a lifetime experience.


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## kiwitechgirl

I've been the cause of one - I was running floor LX on _Les Mis _and my smoke machine had got a bit clogged up, so I took it OUTSIDE, turned it up to full blast and ran it for a minute or so to try and clear the clog out. Next thing I know, the fire alarm goes off, doors open and everyone starts pouring out of the theatre. Turns out the smoke had managed to drift through a crack in the wall into a room where there was a non-isolated smoke detector.

We had a stop on a student production of _How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying _when a piece of bracing on the set came loose; unfortunately it was on a wall which was built on the revolve, and when the revolve turned (manual not automated), the loose bracing caught a fixed set wall and pulled the whole thing down on the revolve operator's head. Tabs in, crew swarm the stage to put the wall back up, revolve operator was fine, and after an unscheduled ten-minute interval we kept going!

I've had a couple of shows stop for fire alarms which have turned out to be false alarms (we had two in a week, turned out to be a faulty detector), one where it was delayed due to a bomb threat in a neighbouring building, and one delayed start because the AC had gone out earlier that day, it was the height of summer and although the AC had been fixed we needed to get the theatre back down to a workable temperature before starting the show.

Working in opera now; we've had more stops than I care to remember when revolves don't behave (controller reboots usually fix); this is an occupational hazard when you're working in rep and putting revolves in and out daily. The best days are when you have a matinee and an evening performance of two different shows, each has a revolve - and it's not the same revolve. We also had one show with a ring-and-disc revolve which we ended up doing semi in concert one night when the disc completely refused to move at all, no matter what the mechs did. Started that one an hour late on what was a 3 hour show anyway...that was a long night.

On one memorable production (no revolve!) which has since been removed from our repertoire, we had two stops within three minutes; the set had a wall stretching from wing to wing, then walls at 90 degrees to that which slid across to create different "rooms". It was not reliable in any way, shape or form and the sliding walls jammed frequently, needing a strategic boot or two to sort them out. No surprise we haven't done that one again.


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## cdiamondz

(If a mod feels like this thread is pin-able content it's totally cool with me.) I have an almost stop story, although it is pretty lame to be honest. During a scene change a heavy scenic element fell over as it was being moved almost breaking 4 feet (2 techs were moving it). ASM called for a longer-than-normal scene change as well as more light and rounded up some techs to carry the scenic element off quickly and safely. Said piece was redesigned for better stability. As for the techs with almost broken-feet: they were carried into the back and ended up driving them to the local urgent care to get their feet x-rayed to check for any fracture. They were all fine and dandy.

EDIT: Minor grammar.


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## bobgaggle

Not my story, but I knew a guy who was in a production of cuckoos nest. Small studio space. Apparently the performance was so convincing that an audience member (who we found out later, suffered from metal health issues) got up from her seat and ran onstage to try to convince the actors to not take the drugs. They tried to act around her as a house guy urged her offstage, but she kept getting more and more upset until the guy playing chief broke character and walked her backstage where she was calmed down...


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## mikefellh

Gee, worst I ever had in 15 years was a brownout...it was long enough to shutdown the digital projector, computer, and booth worklights, but since the power came back on almost immediately the emergency lights never came on...but both me and the audience was left in the dark until I figured out what happened which took me about 30 seconds and switch on the houselights (never leave the audience in the dark)...an eternity.

After that the Board had a long discussion about getting a UPS, but considering the amount of current the projector and computer used (more than 10amps) which would mean a large UPS, and the fact that was only the first time it happened it didn't make sense...could go for years before we had another brownout during a show.


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## Mercedes

Oh I've got a good one too. 

Two years ago, I was SM'ing a production of _Shrek. _Tech for that show was a bit rough, but we got through it. About halfway through the run, our Shrek decided to "jump" off of a raked stage (AEA rake with a step) to the main deck right at the top of "Big Bright Beautiful World" (this is the first major song in the show). He landed funny, and managed to completely destroy his kneecap. He fell to the stage, whimpering. I had to smack my Sound Engineer to kill his mic, I brought up houselights, and my Deck Manager ran onto stage. Thank goodness that we happened to have a General Practitioner, An ER nurse and a trauma surgeon in the house that night. They instantly popped up and ran to the stage. My HM called the EMTs, and we held the show. I suggested all the fairytale characters go out to the lobby and take pictures with all the kids who just saw that happen onstage (that was super scary to see-I made a house announcement so that the parents knew we were doing that). Shrek's Understudy was pulled, we got him into the second set of prosthetics and most of the costume (the EMTs had to cut our Shrek out of his pants) and our Donkey and Fiona went back into the dressing room and ran lines with him until he was ready. We held for about 45 minutes, but in the end we restarted and our Understudy got a standing ovation when he came on, and during bows. 

Our original lead was out of commission for almost a year while he had surgery and a ton of PT to get him back in shape. 

(Note: I couldn't bring the grand in because he was laying right underneath the line)


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## Dionysus

I've got a few show stop stories from my years...

The first was not a show I was working on, but I was there and remember it well. My highschool was doing Wizard of Oz (before I really got involved much) and one night a huge storm rolled in during the show.
The show was stopped due to a Tornado Advisory/Warning and Severe Weather/Storm (no where near Tornado country), The entire audience was ushered to the centre of the school where a lack of windows and such was. At first many of them thought it was a gimmick or joke. It was not, as before long their feet were wet and the power went out. Thankfully a tornado never touched down anywhere near. But the storm was certainly bad enough...

I'll save the rest for later. Work to be done.


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## Chase P.

Oh gosh, so many.

-Power outages in summer stock, always a wait for the board to reset and the board op and SM to get back to the proper cue.

-Poorly executed pyro (no direct line of site from operator to flashpot), dancer left doll prop on top of the flashpot itself, small fire upstage center during the party scene of the Nutcracker. A dancer playing a maid actually patted the flames out with her bare hands. By some miracle, no show stop required. Pyro practices were completely overhauled (duh).

-Main curtain removed for a production (very large curtain, used to be on the splash page of Rose Brand's website). Re-hung with white sash cord instead of the rated stuff to operate in opera tabs mode. Worked fine for a couple months, then failed during the top of Act II of the Nutcracker. Almost took out a bunch of little kids on stage when half the drape billowed in at speed. I had to sprint up 40' of spiral stairs to a pin rail to un-rig the thing so the show could resume.

-Had a dance captain/actor who was diabetic. Would regularly throw off his diet (he didn't take insulin) the night before by drinking, then black out on stage (still moving, just visibly not ok, kinda zombie like). I'd get sent out on stage during dance numbers to grab him and drag him to the green room to restore his blood sugar levels. Only one show actually stopped from that.

-National tour of Fiddler on the Roof, I was the most expendable stagehand at the top of Act II. For some reason, that was when elderly audience members always had their cardiac events. Probably the combination of sitting for a long time during the first act, then moving at intermission. Totally not because of the boring start to Act II. I would be sent out to the house on watch to let the SM know when the EMTs had cleared the room with the patient. Pretty sure I've witnessed several deaths.


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## RonHebbard

Chase P. said:


> Oh gosh, so many.
> 
> -Power outages in summer stock, always a wait for the board to reset and the board op and SM to get back to the proper cue.
> 
> -Poorly executed pyro (no direct line of site from operator to flashpot), dancer left doll prop on top of the flashpot itself, small fire upstage center during the party scene of the Nutcracker. A dancer playing a maid actually patted the flames out with her bare hands. By some miracle, no show stop required. Pyro practices were completely overhauled (duh).
> 
> -Main curtain removed for a production (very large curtain, used to be on the splash page of Rose Brand's website). Re-hung with white sash cord instead of the rated stuff to operate in opera tabs mode. Worked fine for a couple months, then failed during the top of Act II of the Nutcracker. Almost took out a bunch of little kids on stage when half the drape billowed in at speed. I had to sprint up 40' of spiral stairs to a pin rail to un-rig the thing so the show could resume.
> 
> -Had a dance captain/actor who was diabetic. Would regularly throw off his diet (he didn't take insulin) the night before by drinking, then black out on stage (still moving, just visibly not ok, kinda zombie like). I'd get sent out on stage during dance numbers to grab him and drag him to the green room to restore his blood sugar levels. Only one show actually stopped from that.
> 
> -National tour of Fiddler on the Roof, I was the most expendable stagehand at the top of Act II. For some reason, that was when elderly audience members always had their cardiac events. Probably the combination of sitting for a long time during the first act, then moving at intermission. Totally not because of the boring start to Act II. I would be sent out to the house on watch to let the SM know when the EMTs had cleared the room with the patient. Pretty sure I've witnessed several deaths.


 *@Chase P. Which venue?* I had nothing but great times with great IA people while in an old, dual-balconied, opera house next to _the park where not even the police venture after dark._ The venue's crew, along with staff and crew at the SF Opera, took absolutely spectacular care of my wife and I while our tour of "The Buddy Holly Story" was there for a full month in 1990, the year after a major quake. Great town. Great people. Fabulous, freshly caught, sea food and GREAT memories. [And then there's that 8 story shoe store in the heart of downtown with 16 CURVED escalators to take up all the way from street level to the 8th floor. [I can't speak for Tony Bennett but that shoe store is where my wife 'left her heart']
Thanks for the memories!
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.


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## Jeph H

Not exactly a show stop story, but I think it's worth a share. Here we go......

My old high school theater had a break-in years back and the culprit decided to sneak into the light booth and proceeded to *piss all over* our light board and backup sound board. The booth had to be serialized and everything. We had to delay an upcoming show while they cleaned up. The silver lining was that we got huge upgrade from a grant to replace the board. Although to this day, the backup sound board is still being used with the auditorium projectors. 

(And they never caught the culprit)


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## Stevens R. Miller

Jeph H said:


> The silver lining was that we got huge upgrade from a grant to replace the board.



So, if I want a better board, all I have to do is...


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## RonHebbard

Stevens R. Miller said:


> So, if I want a better board, all I have to do *is*...


 @Stevens R. Miller Urinate is possibly the word you're looking for but defecating or expectorating may work as well depending upon how far up scale you're hoping to jump. Do PLEASE keep us up to date on your progress and findings. 
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard


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## SteveB

Harlem Blues and Jazz Band concert at a venue in Mamaronack, NY, late 70’s. Invited singer is this older women, stage name of Princess White. She goes out on stage, belts out a few numbers, goes off stage right, sits into a chair and keels over dead, heart attack.

I’m the only tech person in the space, in the light and sound booth at rear audience. I notice the slack in the music as the band members are all looking off to the wing, finally one of them asks “Is there a doctor in the house ?”. That got my attention and I beelined it out the rear door and around to SR. EMS shows up but cannot get the stretcher backstage. She’s a huge women and we have to carry her thru the narrow backstage hallway to the lobby, where they get her to the ambulance.

My memory is the show never stopped, probably should have though, except the only person able to make the call was me and I was busy moving the lady to the lobby and in any event was all of 22 at the time so had no clue what to do.


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## Stevens R. Miller

SteveB said:


> Harlem Blues and Jazz Band concert at a venue in Mamaronack, NY, late 70’s. Invited singer is this older women, stage name of Princess White. She goes out on stage, belts out a few numbers, goes off stage right, sits into a chair and keels over dead, heart attack...
> 
> ...My memory is the show never stopped, probably should have though, except the only person able to make the call was me and I was busy moving the lady to the lobby and in any event was all of 22 at the time so had no clue what to do.



Dude, that's the show-stopper that proves there is no show-stopper. It must go on. Yours did. She was in it.

Sounds to me like you did alright.


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## Nic

This isn’t a true show-stop since it occurred during a final dress rehearsal...but it’s a good story anyway. It was actually the very first musical I ever worked on, waaay back in high school. We were performing Little Shop of Horrors and the actor playing Orin (the dentist) was to make his entrance on a real motorcycle. He was _supposed_ to start it and coast onstage in neutral. He didn’t. Instead, he came flying onstage in gear and largely out of control. He put the front wheel into the 10’ deep orchestra pit, complete with dozens of high school students and somehow, thanks to everyone jumping in to stop the actor and bike from falling in, disaster was narrowly averted.
The show was stopped for a good half hour while actors stopped panicking and while the gasoline from the cracked gas tank was cleaned up. Good times.

Edit: oops I didn’t realize this thread was as old as it was. Oh well, I enjoyed reading the stories and maybe people will post more.


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## LLDeen

Not a show stop, but a rehearsal stop. Our resident theatre company was rehearsing a musical and they had an antique car with an electric motor. Director didn't like it simply coming onto stage, stopping for dialogue, then exiting the other side of stage. The SM hopped in to help find the best way to bring it in, turn towards the audience, back up, then exit the stage. After finding a suitable route, the SM tried it in full. As I'm watching from the booth, I see the SM hop from the car as it continues into the pit (we had a small orchestra for this show). Many actors rushed from the wings to grab onto the car as it hung on the front of the stage. At the time, I was on crutches for a severe ankle sprain. I leapt up and rushed to the stage. The front of the car was inches away from the conductor's face. Our synth player was luckily absent that night or he would've gotten hit by the car. Luckily we were able to pull it back onto stage, the car had very minimal damage and the front of the stage was later replaced. For a few minutes, I forgot that my foot was even in excruciating pain.


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## Ancient Engineer

Two quick ones in here...

1. While doing a comedy murder mystery musical at the local black box, the male protagonist is involved in a multi-car accident on the way to the theater. He had to be extracted with the jaws of life. Now, nothing broken, but this kid is bleeding from everywhere. He self-exits the gurney and RUNS to the theater and makes call. (!) Covered in blood the SM says that they will cancel the show. Dood says "get me a box of band-aids and some tampons and gaff tape, this show is going on" and he heads for the dressing room. Bandages applied, the show starts... At intermission the SM stops by to check on the kid and his dressing room looks like the worst kind of horror movie. Covered in blood, just...eeew. Anyways he somehow convinces the SM to start act two. One scene into act two, dood exits the scene and collapses. Not revivable, the squad is called and I get to announce that the show has been cancelled because of this guy and the accident and all that. The paramedics come down the center aisle and gurney the boy out and the audience is just laughing and not moving. I explained to them multiple times that this is not part of the show and that they should exit the theater and nobody moves and the laughter is deafining. So out come the translucent (because that is what the theater had) trash bags of bloody stuff. Dozens of them. The other actors are now in street clothes and are leaving and the audience is _finally_ cottoning on... One elderly lady in the front row says: "You are not kidding, the show is really over?" All of the actors go "we are going home, you should too". One fellow was still incredulous and was the last one to go as I locked up the theater he earnestly says: "Well, that's the darndest ending to a show that I have ever seen". I had to laugh, what else could I do?

2. Ice skating show: Skater comes down center ice at high velocity and fails to turn before the ice runs out. Hits the 6" tall divider at the feet of the front row and goes head-feet-head-feet-head-feet-buuuut into the audience. Chaos ensues.


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## Dionysus

So as promised a few more Show Stop Stories.

1) I've had to interrupt a fringe show. I was running one of Eric Davis' Red Bastard shows when my booth phone rings. It's the house manager, who says a Police Officer has arrived and has reason to believe someone was in the audience, and this person's house was burning down and they needed to talk to them IMMEDIATELY. I interrupted the show and kindly asked the person to go out to the lobby. Never did end up hearing much more of the story, but always wondered. Thankfully only a brief interruption, but to a show that requires an extreme amount of rather awkward audience participation. The show asks some pointed questions about fidelity, sex, sexual orientation and the nature of love.

2) Another fringe show I had with an extreme amount of lighting, sound and video cues, when a huge storm hit and blacked out part of the city. At my theatre the power is only out for about 20 seconds, and we (as everyone should) have UPS' for our computers and consoles. However sometime before fringe (unbeknownst to me) someone while tidying up the booth had unplugged and replugged my QLab computer... Into the NOT battery protected side of the UPS.
I was about 5 minutes into the show, and everything was fine except for my rebooting QLab Mac. The show had layered video content and I HAD to start from the start of the show (yes I know how to load to time). Not sure if anyone is familiar with Fringe Festivals, but they typically run on a VERY tight timeline and do NOT allow for much of any deviation to schedule. I made the executive decision to restart and be damned to being a few minutes off schedule (I knew I could make it up if needed). Thankfully for my own sanity, but not for some others, most of the other venues were affected by the blackout and their shows were cancelled for the rest of the day. We ended up rescheduling all the rest of my shows to half an hour later to accommodate for people coming from other venues so they could still see shows that day.

3) I was co-TD and one of the designers for a small semi-pro summer theatre festival that ran for two summers. We had a few show cancellations due to the fact that in season 2 we had the majority of our shows outdoors in the courtyard of a historic Gaol (Jail), the same Jail that one of the plays actual events occurred in. Any light rain we would not cancel, but we cancelled for thunderstorms and high winds. Well one night we were starting to roll on one show when the forecast changed with a sudden severe thunderstorm advisory, and it was rolling in quick. Now I know to really watch weather like a hawk, long in advance.
Well this storm noone thought would be anything more than light rain. Until it was about to slam us. Don't remember how far in we were, but we started packing everything up as quickly as we could. We had some lights up on crank towers and the other TD started lowering them as the storm hit proper. Lighting struck the damaged lighting rod on the roof, arc'd across one of the stone walls, hit the tower he was cranking and down to ground. Blew his cellphone off of his hip apparently, and he was thankfully okay. But jeez that gave us all a scare. Had to change all of the fuses in the dimmer packs the next day of course. Thankfully I'd already killed the breakers for them.

I obviously have a bunch more (and some good ones) but I gotta go again.


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## misterm

College, performing in an adaption of C.S. Lewis' _Til We Have Faces_. Lots of video work that the cast had to interact with. Opening night, we're all facing downstage. I can see out of my peripheral the video playing on the screen, but there's no audio. SM calls us to clear the stage, they spend ten minutes trying to fix the problem, then send the audience home. Luckily, it was a "free preview" because the director had experienced problems obtaining rights until the day before.
Was directing a high school showing of "Honk!" for some elementary kids when we hear a loud BOOOOM form outside and lost all power. The actors didn't miss a beat and kept acting by the light from the windows (couldn't black them out) and the lobby windows (I flung open the doors pretty quick). They skipped the songs and improvised an ending within twenty minutes. Found out later the transformer at the corner blew up.


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## Ancient Engineer

Originally I was going to kind of laundry-list all the times Q-lab had [email protected]#ked over a show that I was on.

But in skimming through the journals... I have over 675 separate incidents logged during around 3,270 performances using the '-lab. (!)

So that seemed like a tedious prospect. Instead I will hijack the thread and talk about a truly lost art: Daily logging.

What? You haven't logged every performance in your career since 1986? I have, and it is pretty interesting sometimes.

To make counting easier, over the years I would do tick marks in the back of each journal to track incidents/recurring events so I didn't have to flip pages.

Like: Q-lab screwed the show, I screwed the show (about one tenth the number of times as Q-lab over my career: 62), Actor missed performance NC/NS (No Call/No Show), Lighting console screwed the show, Musician missed performance NC/NS, Sound console screwed the show, Above the line NC/NS (producer,director,SM,TD,Conductor), Power failure screwed the show, Weather screwed the show, Rigging failure, Scenery failure, Audience riot screwed the show (4 times), Total PA system failure, Rig spot op fell during show (3 times), Sleeping crew screwed/delayed/made interesting the show, Camera failure (4 times), Crew failure, White foam coffee cup left in scene on the best take (16 times!), Crew in scene on best take (3 times), No film in camera on any take (6 times!), Unexpected explosion screwed the show, Pyro landed hot in audience space (8 times!), Feet of film exposed (49,762,304'), Minutes of videotape captured (1,923,234min), On set determination that we'd "Fix it in Post, or FIP" (584 times), Actor/Crew perished during performance (7 times), and my favorite: Naked person randomly appeared during performance. Only four times during my brief experience in the performing arts...

When I die, I suspect that whomever goes through my crap will toss those books into the fire along with Rosebud.

But you should consider doing this. It is cathartic after a tough day to list your enemies and how you would like them to meet their fate and praise the successes which is what actually gets put down the most in the journal...

Thread hijacking complete. Thank you.


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## RonHebbard

Ancient Engineer said:


> Originally I was going to kind of laundry-list all the times Q-lab had [email protected]#ked over a show that I was on.
> 
> But in skimming through the journals... I have over 675 separate incidents logged during around 3,270 performances using the '-lab. (!)
> 
> So that seemed like a tedious prospect. Instead I will hijack the thread and talk about a truly lost art: Daily logging.
> 
> What? You haven't logged every performance in your career since 1986? I have, and it is pretty interesting sometimes.
> 
> To make counting easier, over the years I would do tick marks in the back of each journal to track incidents/recurring events so I didn't have to flip pages.
> 
> Like: Q-lab screwed the show, I screwed the show (about one tenth the number of times as Q-lab over my career: 62), Actor missed performance NC/NS (No Call/No Show), Lighting console screwed the show, Musician missed performance NC/NS, Sound console screwed the show, Above the line NC/NS (producer,director,SM,TD,Conductor), Power failure screwed the show, Weather screwed the show, Rigging failure, Scenery failure, Audience riot screwed the show (4 times), Total PA system failure, Rig spot op fell during show (3 times), Sleeping crew screwed/delayed/made interesting the show, Camera failure (4 times), Crew failure, White foam coffee cup left in scene on the best take (16 times!), Crew in scene on best take (3 times), No film in camera on any take (6 times!), Unexpected explosion screwed the show, Pyro landed hot in audience space (8 times!), Feet of film exposed (49,762,304'), Minutes of videotape captured (10,923,234min), On set determination that we'd "Fix it in Post, or FIP" (584 times), Actor/Crew perished during performance (7 times), and my favorite: Naked person randomly appeared during performance. Only four times during my brief experience in the performing arts...
> 
> When I die, I suspect that whomever goes through my crap will toss those books into the fire along with Rosebud.
> 
> But you should consider doing this. It is cathartic after a tough day to list your enemies and how you would like them to meet their fate and praise the successes which is what actually gets put down the most in the journal...
> 
> Thread hijacking (NOT QUITE) complete. Thank you.
> [/QUO*TE]
> @Ancient Engineer* When you annotated:
> "Naked person randomly appeared during performance. Only four times during my brief experience in the performing arts... "
> Did you not note SEX: Female, Male, Spayed, Neutered, Assimilated or Other? If not, why not??
> Toodleoo!
> Ron Hebbard


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## Ancient Engineer

Sadly Ron, I was not involved in the post-appearance interview processes to determine such things with full accuracy.

But from my lofty vantage points I'd speculate strongly that at least three of them were of the "female" persuasion.

Based solely on my limited, personal, experiences and a very sketchy understanding of anatomy...


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## Rob

I love this thread. Here's my "show delay" story. It's a bit long, but I've told it many times during training sessions, but I've never written it down. So... for the record:

I was one of the board ops on the Sydney 2000 Olympic opening ceremonies. After four weeks working in a custom-built WYSIWYG lab, we finally got to the stadium and work with the real rig - at night of course. As with most Olympics, the lighting of the flame is a very secretive event - who and how will it be lit. Sydney's flame, conceived by Ric Birch, was very clever because nobody could see the structure of where the flame would be. We rehearsed the lighting 5 times, each at 3:00AM with a no-fly zone enforced by the Australian air force. We're talking TOP SECRET here. It was very exciting. When we first saw the mechanism that was involved, we were amazed. Here's a rundown of how it worked.




At one end of the stadium was a huge stage which seated the orchestra and many of the dignitaries (speeches and welcomes and such). Unbeknownst to the crowd, there was a large 30' diameter pool upstage centre. Behind the stage, build into the stands, looked like an aisle of steps between two sections of seating. Ahhh... but it wasn't. Although it had lights in the steps, the steps themselves were water proofed and during the lighting ceremony became a torrential waterfall ending in the pool.






The next section I'll just copy and paste from here as the significance of the flame's trip and the athletes involved heighten the tension.

_The flame was carried by various means of transport across the world to Australia. In Australia the torch followed a circuitous 27,000 km journey around the country visiting many towns and communities. The final lap of Stadium Australia with the torch offered not only the opportunity to for the 110,000 crowd to salute a magnificent medley of six Australian women who had between them won 15 gold medals. There was a "kind of crossing-off process" in solving the identity of the person who would light the Olympic Cauldron. The relay had begun with young indigenous woman Nova Peris, and ended with another in Cathy Freeman. The Freeman culmination, at the end of a ceremony that had emphasized Aboriginal heritage and addressed the issue of reconciliation, amounted to a quietly eloquent statement about the kind of nation Australia aspired to be. It underlined itself boldly as a significant moment in the nation's history.

Freeman ascended four flights of stairs carrying the torch, then walked [seeming walking ON water] across a shallow circular pond to an island in the centre, where she dipped the torch low, then swept it around her to ignite a ring of fire. The pond concealed a submerged cauldron, and the circle of fire consisted of 150 nozzles around the rim of its gas-burner.


_

At this point, the first of three separate machines lifted the huge aluminum flaming and dripping wet cauldron out of the water, encircling Australia's gold medal hopeful.




What was supposed to happen was the second machine would take this apparently floating monstrosity from above Cathy's head and move it up the water fall. We had lighting cues to go along with this. But it stalled. The machines talked to each other wirelessly and were supposed to verify all the safety latches and locks were working properly before the mechanism "handed the cauldron off" from one machine to the next. Dropping this beast on Australia's gold medal hopeful was clearly not in the best interest of anybody.

The music track ended (Side note, I was sitting beside Tony, the FOH sound guy, and I remember him frantically looking for a CD to put in place as the Fairlight served track ended.) We were at a miss as to run our next lighting cue - the one that 'blew' up the stadium for the fireworks finale. Stage management and the show producers were in the booth behind us. We all stood up and wondered what the hell was going on. It didn't go like this in rehearsals. But then again, TV broadcasters from 45 countries with microwave trucks and wireless cameras and 100,000 cell phones weren't in the stadium at 3:00 in the morning. All that wireless technology falls down a bit and you can't rely on one machine talking to another with all that noise.

The fact of the matter was, mechanically, the machines were working; the safeties were fine. They just could not talk to each other. We were worried about Cathy. One saving grace was she was wearing IEMs so SM told her not to move. She stood there montionless as Peter Tait and Rob Ironside rebooted the control computers. Finally, one of them made that call that the mechanicals were sound and they should just proceed.

I, on the other hand, had another fear. After the flame had traveled around the world, traveled 27,000 km around the country and four times around the stadium, the whole thing was fueled by a small propane tank embedded in this floating cauldron that is now somewhere between machine #1 and machine #2 on the way to machine #3 - it's final resting point on a 100' tall mask at the one end of the stadium. If it didn't continue on its journey post-haste, it would soon snuff itself.




Eventually it started the painfully slow crawl towards the top of the stadium and made the hand-off to machine #3 which raised it up on a mask which had a huge LPG supply from the city.







Another quote: _Despite the temporary glitch, the television footage of Cathy Freeman lighting the cauldron was declared "the sporting image of the year" by Sportel, a major international sports television convention held annually in Monaco, which awarded its coveted "Golden Podium" award to the Sydney Olympic Broadcasting Organisation for the cauldron lighting sequence._

And this is my lesson on when and where you can trust wireless technology.


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## Rob

The view from my console position. 



Tony, the FOH engineer. 




Hog Land during the day.


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## Ancient Engineer

Man, I have a Hog II in my living room... (it's not doing anything but accepting dust...)

What a great story and lesson about wireless in critical situations...


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## seanandkate

Ancient Engineer said:


> Like: Q-lab screwed the show, I screwed the show (about one tenth the number of times as Q-lab over my career: 62), Actor missed performance NC/NS (No Call/No Show), Lighting console screwed the show, Musician missed performance NC/NS, Sound console screwed the show, Above the line NC/NS (producer,director,SM,TD,Conductor), Power failure screwed the show, Weather screwed the show, Rigging failure, Scenery failure, Audience riot screwed the show (4 times), Total PA system failure, Rig spot op fell during show (3 times), Sleeping crew screwed/delayed/made interesting the show, Camera failure (4 times), Crew failure, White foam coffee cup left in scene on the best take (16 times!), Crew in scene on best take (3 times), No film in camera on any take (6 times!), Unexpected explosion screwed the show, Pyro landed hot in audience space (8 times!), Feet of film exposed (49,762,304'), Minutes of videotape captured (10,923,234min), On set determination that we'd "Fix it in Post, or FIP" (584 times), Actor/Crew perished during performance (7 times), and my favorite: Naked person randomly appeared during performance. Only four times during my brief experience in the performing arts...



This made my day. I can't decide whether the reasons made it for me, or the number of times associated with each reason. Now I wish I could go back and start this...


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## macsound

Super interesting behind the scenes. Also amazing that if you watch any of the videos on youtube, they've editied them to not show the error.
Found this interesting article https://thehub.agl.com.au/articles/2019/07/from-glitch-to-glory-lighting-up-sydney-2000


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## Rob

very cool. I’m glad my 20 year old recognition of events jives with this.


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## Jay Ashworth

Rob said:


> And this is my lesson on when and where you can trust wireless technology.



With all due respect to the relevant vendors here, that goes in inverse logarithmic proportion to the cost of the staging and the number of eyeballs watching. I not only wouldn't have done this one wirelessly, I would have had *three* *diversely routed* wired connections.

The cost isn't even epsilon; what was the budget for *just* that torch presentation; 7 figures?


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## Jay Ashworth

A number of these ought to be in Stern; does anyone know anyone who's on the editing team or works at the publisher?


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## STEVETERRY

cdiamondz said:


> I've searched around a bit and didn't find a thread of stories of stopping shows, so I'm now creating one. Since I'm suggesting this, I might as well put my story here and let the rest of the community share their stories.
> 
> We were showing Suessical the Musical spring 2017. Since it was a school show, we skipped intermission and such to keep the running time shorter. What had happened was a student had a seizure the scene after "intermission" (a blackout extended by 30 seconds where we still had house lights come up dimly so school staff could monitor the high schoolers). One of the spot ops called it out over the headset when he saw some teachers moving towards a student laying on the ground. This lead to an immediate show stop, worklights and house lights going to full and curtain closing, all mics were muted, and a short announcement stating the the show was on hold for some time. EMS showed up a couple minutes later and took the student to the hospital. We then skipped some slow songs due to loss in time and finished the show on time.
> 
> What's your guys' stories of show stops?



I might possibly have the best one. How about "The audience stands up and stops the show due to technical failure"?

It's 1979. "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" starring Alexis Smith. Second stop on the National Tour at the Miami Beach Theatre for the Performing Arts. Yours truly is the sound designer.

Ten minutes into the first act, the first 20 rows of blue-haired ladies stands up en masse and shouts " WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!". 

Alexis Smith breaks character, walks down to the footlights, and asks "What seems to be the problem?"

The problem, as later discovered, was a 1/4" standard phone plug connected to a ring-tip-sleeve patch bay on the house sound system. It backed out slightly, and Voila!---no console feed to the house system.

That was the moment I went back to lighting. I often reminisce with Abe Jacob (who gave me the job) about this story. He agrees that my move back to lighting was probably best for all concerned. 

ST


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## Rob

Jay Ashworth said:


> The cost isn't even epsilon; what was the budget for *just* that torch presentation; 7 figures?


The rough number I was told was it was A$10M. Now the Auzie dollar was in the toilet at the time of the show, but none-the-less, it was expensive. We all asked during rehearsals (specifically about the order of our cue stack) "What if it doesn't work?". The answer was always: "It has to work; it's a $10,000,000 gag!". To be fair, 20 years ago anything digital over wireless was pretty new. We all know a lot more about it now. If anybody knows anybody at Tierney and Partners, I'd like to get more details of what actually happened. I was getting my information over coms, and it was a LONG time ago.


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## almorton

My show stop is nowhere near as dramatic. It was a Windows 10 machine (you're way ahead of me here, aren't you) which had been configured to apply its updates at 10:30 am when needed. This machine wasn't even connected to the internet at the time, but had been some days previously, and evidently had an update in its locker. 30 minutes into the show, the update started of its own accord, and we were a victim of the (then) common problem of updates resetting the preferred time to apply subsequent updates to the default, which happened to be 8:30 pm local time. The PC was running SCS, so had all our sound effects for the show. The show being Ladies in Lavender, which relied pretty heavily on its effects. Needless to say, to add extra spice to the mix, the update didn't apply cleanly and instead of a 5 minute interruption, which would have been manageable, the machine wouldn't restart. Being a volunteer run amateur theatre, we didn't have the "luxury" of parallel redundant systems, so that was that show cancelled.

The iMac and QLab arrived that month.


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## TimMc

Today's installment - "First review in: Mother Nature zaps show in Act One"








Crown Uptown Theatre performance ends early after lightning strike causes small fire

Theatre workers found a small fire in a breaker box in the basement, which they put out with a fire extinguisher.



www.kwch.com





No injuries. Not sure about damages beyond the linked report.


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## themuzicman

I can't compete with the Olympics, but the most terrifying show stop I've ever been a part of made the NYTimes...for those that get pay-walled, Julius Caesar at Shakespeare in the Park, Central Park, in 2017, protestors stormed the stage. Truly one of the worst/most terrifying experiences of my professional life. This was the one that got the most press, and maybe the only full show stop of the run (the rest I think were just "pauses"). Due to insane press, and a radio host in the midwest offering a bounty for anyone who could fully halt the show the venue was being protected by a few dozen NYPD. We had a few hecklers every night, and if they broached plaster they got tackled by the NYPD but eventually there was a rhythm to it and the actors would just pause a little, wait for the police to get off the stage, and continue with the show.

For show stops that were moderately my fault - A one-nighter tour stop in my early touring career in a random city. Did my pre-show checkout, house opens, and I go do whatever I do when the house is being sat. Show starts with the show's main rag in, and on the first beat it flies out. I see it go up a little, then it grounds. I see it go up a little more, then it grounds. Then I see it go about 10' up, I hear a crash, I hear some insane noises come out of my FOH racks, battery backups kick on, and full-scale noise comes out of the PA. The producer on this tour sent me out without an A2 so I bolted backstage, see my PD on its side, and I hard-cut the power.

Long story short, the Props department in this city had a new member and they had been instructed to mop the stage. After checkout we'd fly the main rag in and we'd mop the show deck once the crew had stopped walking over it. They took their job VERY literally and what I didn't know what that after checkout they had moved all of the amp racks and my PD in order to mop under them, and they had never slid the PD back into place and some of the connectors had gotten caught in the pipe as it flew out. I don't remember how long we held for, at least 20 minutes because that particular audio console had a 10 minute boot time, but I somehow had enough spare cable to get the show back up and running. Anyhow, now I make a habit of walking by Ampland at places call just to make sure everything is in the same spot, even if I have a rockstar A2.

I've had a few other notable show stops, nothing that made the press though. I did a large musical a few years back that had a few dozen insane strobe lights scattered through the set (I'm no LX person but these strobes were more intense than anything I've ever seen), despite intense seizure warnings in the lobby we'd induce a seizure about once a month. The first one caused a full on show stop until management developed a seizure protocol. I did a musical a few years back in a foreign country and the city we were in came under rocket attack during Act 1 and we briefly considered holding as air raid sirens went off in the venue and on all of our phones but the local promoter was very adamant that it was "routine" and we shouldn't pause. The promoter told all of the actors that it was a fire alarm, the crew all had phones so we saw the alerts coming in, and once the actors found out they had been deceived there was a lot of drama at intermission - but a show-stop close call doesn't count for this threads purposes!


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## tjrobb

My most memorable near-stop was during Grease. Our TD / carp forgot to cover the smoke heads in our studio and was prepping that space. They tripped the alarm and we evacuated. After 20-odd minutes of milling about outside, we got the all-clear and the best hashtag: #greasefire


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