So I was stunned to hear that some professionals on Broadway have no prejudice against stopping a show dead in its tracks in order to fix something!  Our director attended a Broadway show two weeks ago where this very thing happened!  

 

She was watching the Broadway musical "In the Heights" when one actor's body mike died.  Moments later more mikes went out.  Suddenly the stage manager came over the "God mike" and said, "We are calling a stop.  Actors leave the stage".   My friend said even the actors on stage looked stunned!   

 

The audience sat quietly for 10 minutes.  The crew fixed the sound problems. The show continued.  They restarted that entire scene again from the top!  Apparently, the words missed by the audience were so critical to the story that the staff must have deemed it necessary to "do a retake", like in a motion picture.  (Or maybe it was because they had moving light cues or additional canned music that required "rebooting" from the top of the scene).  I don't know. 

 

Anyway, my director friend admits she did appreciate the restart in hindsight, noting that, "when tickets cost 100 bucks each, it's good to get your money's worth!"  She also said she attended a recent Broadway production of "Curtains" when the show was stopped for technical problems too. 

 

Wow, this is a new concept in my book.  I have always taken pride in the fact that my crew can "solve issues on the fly".  And historically, that's part of the excitement and thrill of live theatre...isn't it?  I have joked with my tech crew that, "the only reason I will stop this show is if someone dances into the orchestra pit and needs an ambulance!"

 

Have any of you ever found it necessary to stop a show? 

 

And what is your opinion on major Broadway musicals stopping to fix something?  

 

Thanks, Dana

Luckily there were a few building sites handy, with used unwanted lenghts of shadecloth in rubbish skips.

We grabbed them & covered the tin roof with the shade cloth. It was about 3M wide in various lenghts upto 50M rolls. Dury rigged it with ropes to pull it over the roof. it was a tempory measure that later became perminant. It cut out the niose of the rain in winter & also reduced the heat effect of sun in the summer time.

 

The only time I actually stopped a show was during a production of "Sunshine Boys". We were at the scene where they had just gotten back together and were talking in the kitchen. I soon noticed there was more talking going on in the front row than on stage and the actors were quite distracted. I stole down to the front row and discovered an older lady having a seizure. I stood and made the announcement from the floor while the house manager called for the ambulance. Ten minutes later, having been removed by the ambulance crew through the side exit near her seat, the show went on again.

 

Most recently, I was concerned that I might have to stop the show during our last year's Christmas show. We were doing the comedy, A Charles Dickens Christmas Carol, A Traveling Travesty in Two Tumultuous Acts. My wife was playing the role of Christmas Past. The scene calls for her to kind of dance/float back and forth across the stage while the clock chimes.  Her comic routine that night resulted in a misplaced foot that took her right of the edge of our thrust stage and into our SR seats were she face first landed on a chair arm. Though it is only about a foot and a half drop, she was going fairly fast and I thought for sure we would be carrying her out of the audience. Trooper that she is, she jumped up, licked the blood from her lip, smiled and carried on like nothing happened. She finished the scene, and not till she came off stage would you know anything had gone wrong as she cried out for a rag to stem the bleeding. her main concern was she was about to go right back on after the scene change! Thats my girl.. Many audience members actually thought it was part of the show..