(submitted by J. Lada)
My most horrific moment as a Stage Manager came during a sold-out run of a community theatre production of A Chorus Line.
The director set the show on a bare stage. No soft goods in at all - the audience could see everything - including me at my
station stage right. That took some getting used to. The show was chock-a-block full of light cues (almost 200)- a
challenge to tech & lots of fun to call. One night, during Paul's monologue; one of the 2 sections of the show where we
were in the same light cue for more than a page (On headset we called this one the cigarette break cue), the house lights
come up. No cue had been called- I instructed the board op to manually bring down the lights - I confered with my ASM stage
left; mindful of the fact that the next page of cues was rapidly coming up - we finally figured out that the show had been
over sold & the House Manager had allowed patrons to sit in folding seats directly below the House panic lights. The
gentleman sitting there leaned his head against the wall; hitting the panics. I sent my ASM out to instruct the House Manager to remove the
patrons & the folding seats from the back of the House (in addition to causing me problems - it was a violation of local
fire code). All taken care of - NO. Of course not. During the section of the show, after Paul's injury, where the dancers
answer the "what do you do when you can't dance anymore" (the drinks & hors
d'oeuvres cue to us) up come the House lights again. I was not a happy SM - I was colorfully
vacillating from English to French to Italian as I tried to reach the House
Manager by telephone. She wouldn't answer - the Producer finally did pick up the lobby phone. I sent him into the House to
guard the panics. After that, prior to every performance, I personally inspected the House before it opened and strongly
reminded the House Managers to not seat anyone , anywhere but in a bolted to the floor House seat.
Oh yes, the best part of this story is that was the night the local theatre critics & my boss were in the audience.