Author Topic: CALLING: Stop The Show!  (Read 47201 times)

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ERK

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CALLING: Stop The Show!
« on: May 22, 2006, 06:38 pm »
I had an experience in January where I had to stop the show not once, but twice.  Once when a lady in our 90-seat, incredibly intimate black box had a stroke in the first act and then again when the light board failed and we had only one lamp to provide light on a set that included a very steep staircase.

In both instances, I let the crew on headset know we needed to stop, then used the god-mic to ask the actors to get offstage and ask the audience to clear the house (so the EMTs could get through) or stay in their seats until we had lights.

Has anyone else had these kinds of situations?  What makes you decide whether you need to stop the show or find some way to keep the show going?  What's the first thing you do when you decide the show needs to stop?
« Last Edit: Jun 09, 2009, 01:28 am by PSMKay »

prizm

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2006, 08:10 pm »
well we stopped the show yesterday how odd is that. We had 2 lights pop over the deck spraying glass everywhere and the actors were all onstage barefoot. So we stoped brought out their slippers swept and mopped the stage and started the scene again. The actors fought with me because they wanted to go back out barefoot and we wanted them to wear shoes. Well they went on without shoes and no one got hurt thank god!

smejs

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2006, 10:07 pm »
Well, the times I've personally had to stop a show were obvious...once, a fire alarm ("Please remain calm" came over a loud speaker that we couldn't stop), once the lightboard dumped to complete darkness, and once I lost all power to my pit in the middle of a musical.

I got on the god mic and calmly reassured people - the fire alarm we we knew had started in another part of the building, and basically was ultimately caused from a lack of water pressure in the building (and a water main break downtown)...we were in radio contact with other parts of the building.  

Another show where I was an assistant, we had to stop because of the knife/tracking system, and the SM stopped the show (god mic) and brought in the curtain while we dealt with "technical difficulties".  The audience had also seen a fly get caught up flying out - they thought that was the issue....but they were in a great Christmasy mood (it was December) and the audience actually started a Christmas singalong on their own.  Scrooge even came out and asked them for a request of his, they all laughed, and then proceeded to sing it.

That said, there are many, many times that we've NOT stopped the show, despite small "disasters".  If safety, etc are a concern - or loud speakers you can't stop and fire alarms - then yes, the show doesn't always have to go on...

Erin

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stoping shows
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2006, 10:44 pm »
1) Early in my career I had a light board go out.

2) I stopped a performance of Mice and Men due to the fact the light board crashed.

3) I have had to stop about 12 performances due to fire alarms.

4) I have had to stop about three shows do to automation stopping.

5) I had to stop and cancel a performance of Othello (right after Othello smothered Desdemona) due to an enermous leak on stage that was deafening, dangerous and just annoying.  We could not finish the last 15 minutes.

6) Had a production in a 4000 seat ampitheare stop due to a black out.  Could not continue.

(Here's a little piece of advice, if you have to stop a show and can not continue, do eveything in you power to do a qucik curtain call.  Everyone will appreciate it.)

7) I had to stop a show due to an actor breaking his leg backstage.  M(late to an entrance, tried to run.  Bad idea)

8)Had to stop a show I was ASMing because an irrate patron was yelling for house management . . . an actor stopped the show.

9) Had to stop a musical I was working on when the sound board crash 30 bars into the show.

It is interesting, once you do stop a show in you career it becomes a game to try to see how far you can go in a bad situation before stopping.  But sadly, on complicated shows, there are times when you need to halt.
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Anything posted here as in my own personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer - whomever they be at a given moment in time.

Mac Calder

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2006, 11:55 pm »
I think every stage manager will eventually have to stop a show.

There are a few different reasons I have had to stop shows, however the most notable was a drunk man who snuck a bottle of gin into the theatre and upon finishing it, threw it at the stage. I have no idea how he got in, but we did press charges and thankfully no one was injured.

Erin_Candice

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #5 on: May 23, 2006, 12:26 am »
The last show in our theatre had to stop after the first scene due to a full stage curtain getting caught half-way open on the track.  They brought house lights up, got out a ladder, fixed the problem, and picked up where they left off.
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Kimberly

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #6 on: May 23, 2006, 10:13 am »
Ummm yea......I've been working in lowly community theatre for 6 yrs now and this past weekend at our opening of "NINE", during the overture, not more than 3 minutes into the show, someone yanked the fire alarm in the lobby and ran! I am ASM'ing this so I was backstage, while the SM was out in the house calling cues! I jumped about 10 feet in the air and just about wet my pants! This has never happened to me before.......the actors kept going though and I gave a signal and stopped the actress who had spoken lines immediately after the overture ended. WHEW!! The entire building had to be evacuated while the fire dept. did a walk thru etc etc, reset the alarm, we were back up and running from the top of the overture within 20-30. But, never until then did I know that fire alarms TALK!!!  8O

Scary, but educational I must say....... :roll:
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Jessie_K

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Show Stopper
« Reply #7 on: Jun 12, 2006, 02:52 pm »
I have stopped shows bunches of times.  Usually on tour.

Here are some reasons:
-malfunctioning CD player/ sound system (during concert dance, can't dance if there's no music)
-fire alarms (once did a tour where it happen in three separate venues all during the same piece, weird)
-once worked on show when we had to stop because an actor broke his leg onstage
-my favorite has been that a couple of times on tour, the light board op managed to somehow turn all the lights off and not be able to bring them back up.  Luckily, on both occasions, the house lights were controlled separately and we were able to bring in the curtain and get light in the house while we addressed the problem.
-I have also done outdoors shows.  Sometimes you can sense the rain coming and stop and make a formal announcement, sometimes the skies open up with no warning and everyone knows it's over.  All you can do then is try to make sure everyone safely gets out.
-ok, I lied, my real favorite was when an Italian crew went on strike.  I didn't actually stop the show, but I count it because we were at places when the strike happened.  We had to make an announcement to the audience seeing as how, they were all sitting there waiting for a show to happen.

Stopping shows is certainly tense, but when it has to happen, you just do what you gotta do.  Usually you can pick back up where you left off.  Sometimes you can't, that 's what rain dates are for.

KC_SM_0807

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #8 on: Jun 12, 2006, 04:24 pm »
The first musical I ever did back in 2000 was The Wizard of Oz....

We had this revolving circle, where Glinda came out on one side (a pretty, fluffy side) and the Wicked Witch came out on the other side (the darker side that had a fake ring of fire around it)...

Whenever the Wicked Witch would come out, we would use a fog machine for the infamous smoke and fog effect.  Tons of people do this every day with no problems, right?

Well, not for us.  One night the fog machine busted, and the fire alarms went crazy.  I immediately had to bring down the main rag and mop up all of the fog machine liquids that had run down the stage.  The whole audience had to evacuate the building since the fire alarms had went off, and then we had to make an announcement that everything was ok and everyone could come back in and be seated!  

We started up the show again and everything was smooth, but we did lose a bit of our audience that night!  Needless to say, this was one of the funniest experiences that I've had and my friends and I still laugh about it.
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PSMKay

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #9 on: Jun 12, 2006, 10:38 pm »
While I've never had to call the stop myself, I've been involved with two halts.  

The second one was during my internship year, I was on deck crew for the world premiere of "Berlin Circle" by Charles Mee.  The show involves a large truck that had to be pushed around the stage by a couple of  actresses.  We would hook the truck into a very large turntable to mock this effect.  Everything had gone well during techs but during the first preview we only got one of the two hooks into place during the shift.  When the deck chief went to start the 'table, the truck wouldn't budge and started just spinning in place.  Stopped the show, hooked the truck in, and restarted.

The first one was many many years ago (back when I was still acting) and was far worse in terms of PR.  This was back in high school.  My high school had mounted a production of "Playing for Time" by Arthur Miller to combat several arrests for anti-semitic behaviour on the part of our varsity athletes.  We were trying to demonstrate that just because some of the kids in the school were a bunch of bigoted idiots, it didn't necessarily carry over to the rest of us.

Now for those of you who don't know the play, it tells the story of the women's orchestra at Auschwitz and required us to turn the auditorium into a concentration camp.  The play features a funeral  scene with a coffin placed on stage, draped with the Nazi flag.  It was in the middle of this scene where some twit decided to pull the fire alarm, sending us all out into the parking lot to wait for the FD crews.  It took years for us to live down the sight that greeted the firemen upon arrival -- 30 kids in the parking lot dressed either as Nazi soldiers or concentration camp prisoners, and the whole scenery setup that was left on stage when we had to evacuate.

BalletPSM

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #10 on: Jun 13, 2006, 12:51 am »
Never had to stop a show, but I shudder to think of the day when I will have to (and I'm sure I will at some point...)

How have you smoothly stopped a show?  Bring in the grand drape and make an announcement over the god mic?   Or maybe I should phrase the question, what are the different ways that you all have stopped the shows?
Stage managing is getting to do everything your mom told you not to do - read in the dark, sit too close to the TV, and play with the light switches!

Mac Calder

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Stop The Show!
« Reply #11 on: Jun 13, 2006, 01:11 am »
If I have the luxury to stop the show gracefully, I bring in the house tabs, fade up house lights to about 20% and use the god mic to say something like

"Ladies and Gentlemen. In the interest of health and safety we have had to momentarily stop the show. Whilst we sincerely appologise for the break in the flow of the evening, we take safety very seriously. We hope to resume the show in X minutes. Whilst you wait, please make use of the theatres facilities and we will alert you when the show reconvenes. Again, on behalf of the <<SHOWNAME>> Company, we appologise for this incident."

Then I bring up the house lights to full. Often I will get sound to put any preshow music on, or the band to play some of the music they have already played in the show.

However often you do not have the luxury of using house lights or flying in the tabs gracefully. In cases like this, I like to leave it in black whilst I make the announcement (again, along those lines) and THEN I shove a nice state on the stage, and turn on as many house lights as I can.

I NEVER say technical difficulties if I can help it - I did on my first 'show stoppage' and was unlucky enough to have a reviewer and in the review I got "The show was half baked and could have done with more time to sort out the technical difficulties which interupted opening night. Whilst the acting was superb and the set fantastic, it is a shame that it was let down by the backstage crew" - The technical difficulties were actually an actor who was being stupid kicking over the drum of water based hazer fluid, which shorted out the hazers and 2 dimmer packs. Not my crews fault. I was ropeable, as were my crew (understandably).

smsam

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Re: Stop The Show!
« Reply #12 on: Jun 17, 2006, 07:55 pm »
When I'm a DSM my normal show stop procedure would be:
  • Notify Crew of Incident & Radio FOH
  • Bring in House Tab/ Grand Drape/ ... & Raise House Lights to 75%
  • FOH:"Ladies and Gentlemen it has become necessary to temporarily suspend this evenings performance. Thank You for your patience and we will return to this evenings performance as soon as possible. Thank You
  • B/S RELAY: "Ladies and Gentlemen of the "Show Name" Company. This evenings performance has been temporarily suspended due to [issue] reasons. [Any Special Instructions]
  • Liase with relevant departments and keep crew updated on cans
  • Once Issue Resolved; "Ladies and Gentlemen of the "Show Name" Company. This evenings performance will now continue from [place to continue from]. This is you beginners call to continue to performance from [place in script]. Thank You
  • Radio FOH & 1 Min Bar Bell & "Ladies and Gentlemen please take your seats as this evenings performance will be continuing in one minute. Thank You
  • Talk to Crew on Cans and Stand-By for Cues from place. If relevant Stand-By MD to play a short entre-act type piece
  • When Company Set : House Tab Out & CUE's GO!
  • B/S Relay: Ladies and Gentlemen of the [Show Name] Company. The performance has now resumed. Thank You


A detailed show report (with timings of the show stop, audiances reactions, info from FOH and concerned depts.) would obviously be done.

Sam x
« Last Edit: Jun 18, 2006, 08:34 am by smsam »
Sam x

philimbesi

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Re: Stop The Show!
« Reply #13 on: Sep 25, 2006, 09:24 am »
I've been involved with two show stops.

I had to stop when we had a theatre wide power outage.  Only the battery backup asile lights were working and the emergency lights.  I came out on stage, as we had no power for the God Mic and asked everyone to remain calm, reassuring them that the power would return and we would resume soon... you guessed it, it never did, so fearing the emergency lights might start dieing, we cleared the theatre and sent everyone home. 

The other was to replace an actor who was injured when a fight scene went wrong.  Commuity theatre doesn't have the luxury of stand bys so when an actor broke his ankle jumping down and landign horribly wrong during a sword fight, we needed to replace him with a wide eyed and very nervous ASM who amazingly has never worked with me again  ??? He accutally wasn't bad and he only had a scene or two left. 

stagemonkey

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Re: Stop The Show!
« Reply #14 on: Sep 25, 2006, 03:02 pm »
Luckily I have never had to stop a show yet (knocks on wood).  In college I came close.  It was the last section of the last dance number in the show.   The lights had just faded down for the transition in the music and I heard a loud crash, so over headset I said "someone find out what that was and let me know when I ask in a minute" (we were in a standby at the moment."  well just as I called the lights to come back up I saw a large chunk of something fall upstage center.  What had happened was a PAR lamp had cracked and falling into the gell and since the glass was so hot it melted through the gel and fell onto the stage.  The dancer continued dancing (he was always downstage) and since I was new to the SMing then then the TD for the show who was a new grad student got on headset and was like "you know you can stop the show now if needed."  So i replied "yeah but there is 30 seconds left and he is always downstage, no need to stop fix it then restart the piece as the show is about to end."  So I just carried it on to the end, luckily the dancer saw the problem so he was able to stay away from it and as the piece eneded the dancer would turn upstage and walk as lights faded out, so I just faded the lights sooner.  Unforteuntly the dancer wasnt very smart so once the lights went black he picked up the chuck of glass and threw it offstage right, luckily it didnt hit anyone or shatter everywhere, but it did mildly burn his hand.  In the end it was found that all the small chucks of the glass had been safely melted into the gel so we just had a large chunk on the stage which melted a little bulge in the marely floor.

After that I have a print out that I keep on my tech table for ever show to give me a step by step process if I have to stop a show.  When I see the problem I tell all my crew "we appear to have a problem everyone standby." Bring in curtain, bring up some house lights, and stage lights, have my asm assess the problem.  Get on the god mic and say  “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are experiencing a delay in this evening’s performance.  Please be patient while we determine the cause of the delay.  Thank you very much.” Once the problem is resolved i get back on and ask everyone to take their seats as we will be starting again.  I was told its easier not telling the audience the nature of the problem as in some cases it could cause some to panic, however if we have to evacuate the building i would inform the audience.

 

riotous