I'm Mo, a stage manager from Louisville, and I'm incredibly lucky to be able to work professionally in both theatre and opera. I'm relatively new to opera and looking forward to branching out into other arts that aren't straight theatre.
A tale, a tale, let's see... Last summer I SMed a park production of The Tempest, in which our Ariel flew. Prospero uses Ariel to seek vengeance on the clowns by sending her island spirits to chase them down in the form of wild hounds. We choreographed a fast-paced, wide-reaching chase scene that was meant to help us transition into the next scene. Well, shortly after Ariel's latest flight, a fly op accidentally let go of one of the flight cables. As was explained to us, if you let go of both cables, they zip up into the system and have to be manually reset. But nobody said anything about what happens if you let go of just one cable. Turns out, the single cable zips up into the air, the hook on the end prevents it from escaping the pulley, and the slack remains draped dramatically across the entire width of the stage. Not enough slack to step over it, too much to be able to use the stage.
This happened just 60 seconds before Prospero sent the hounds out. I told my ASM and deck supervisor to stand by to go on stage and gather up the slack. I waited for the hounds to chase the clowns off stage right, waited for Prospero to finish his monologue on the above, then delayed the sound cue just slightly to give them enough time to get on stage and gather up the cable. In that time, the actors decided to enter on the other side anyway (as they're blocked to do--but with a sound effect of barking dogs to cue them on), and they suddenly ran into two technicians on stage even as the fairy-hounds began to catch up behind them. There was a huge moment when the technicians looked at the actors, unsure of what to do, and the actors reacted to the technicians, not knowing what was going on but staying in character anyway. Then the hounds caught up and our black-garbed heroes lifted the cable above everyone's heads so they could carry on the chase safely. They hid in the inner-below and held the cable up through the rest of the show (about 5 minutes).
A legendary performance by our actors (and techs!), I'm almost sad it never happened again.