Olympic-sized technical difficulties

[BlantonRK]

Like millions of others, I enjoyed the opening ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympics last night. My stomach twisted in sympathy during the glitch with the lighting of the flame (one of four giant "ice" beams which carried the flame from the deck to a central cauldron did not rise out of the floor).

Large scale pieces can result in large scale problems. What is the largest set piece/element that you've had malfunction during a performance?

[dallas10086]

Not me personally, but I will never forget the first time I saw a catastrophic technical fubar onstage: I was a senior and we were attending "Beauty and the Beast" at the Schubert in L.A. When the scene change for the father's cottage to the interior of the castle came, something happened with the timing because the drop came in too soon and both set pieces collided, bringing a shower of wood down with it. I - and my group - were instantly mortified and ecstatic at the same time...when you're in high school you think the pros never mess up like you do and to see it happen was like having a front row seat to "...this is what you do when..." They continued since neither of those pieces were used again, but you could clearly hear people yelling obscenities from backstage. Afterwards everything seemed to be back on track until it came time for the villagers to storm the castle, the castle doors wouldn't open. So Gaston just yelled, "Come on everyone, we'll go through the back!"

It helps from time to time to know that even hundreds of thousands of dollars in technology, talent and manpower doesn't insure a flawless performance.

[Eyrk]

This is show was nothing huge by any means but I was running sound and theres a part where pre-recorded lines pause and a sfx play, the auto play into sfx was happening and with out that running the next lines cant play. I managed to fix it in a few seconds and the actor did a great job playing it off as normal. Also later during the same show the next scene started to play while some other music was going, I just hit the all stop button and apparently no one noticed.

On a unrelated note this show had no sm or director running the cues during the show. It was all up to the tech to know what to do.

[PSMKay]

Mine was covered elsewhere - the first student challenge about the power outage takes the cake for me. 

[maximillionx]

Fortunately, mine was not recent (I would like to keep it that way), but in HS.  A flat (approx. 30 ft W x 12 ft H) with multiple doors was flying in during a blackout while another flat of approx. the same size was flying out.  One of the doors on the incoming flat caught the flat that had just flown out.  All of this occurred during a BO between scenes....so we managed to fly both in, squeeze between the two flats to dislodge the door, and fly out the old flat.  It was a gut wrenching few minutes.

[Celeste_SM]

I worked a musical with a full stage turntable set (about 34' diameter). One night, during the show, the turntable broke. The axel actually failed, with a 3' steel rod broken in half. After a few awkward moments we had to bring in the main as the set was in a mid position and we simply could not continue as it was. We ended up making an announcement to the house that the show would continue in "concert version" and we quickly costumed the crew to bring on/take off as many free set pieces as could be used without the turntable. The audience was given the option of a refund, which none took. An exciting and challenging show, followed by work to 3am on repairing the turntable, and a 9am call the next morning to complete repairs, thanks to a machine shop that was able to manufacture a new axel first thing in the morning.

[Mac Calder]

My favorite large technical fail was on the Independence of the Seas.

Top of "Invitation to Dance" - based off of one of those "So you think you can dance" type shows in England which included guest participation based on a dance competition earlier in the cruise. Anyway, one of the presenters from the show had done a bunch of videos for this event, and it was decided to change the format slightly, so we had her on board to re-record them. So the show day comes, she gets up on stage and mentions how proud she was of this show, and about the collaborative works between her and RCCL, the Cruise Director warms the crowd up and the lights dim for show. The automation system completely cacks itself. The main is stuck at half mast, the orchestra is playing away the dancers don't know what to do. 10 seconds later, call to stop the show comes through, CD comes out on stage in a followspot, and he says:

"Sorry folks, the hampster has fallen off of his wheel, our technicians are now behind the curtain trying to get him back up and running. So I am going to stand here for 10 minutes, let him catch his breath and we will get on with the show".

8 minutes later we had declared the automtion system cactus, and the Cruise Director handed me a PPT slide, showing some images of a hampster, he got on stage and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart that I announce Hammy the Hampster passed away. Unfortunately our cast and crew are too distraught to continue with tonights show, however we will be docking tomorrow, and will find a new hampster and try again tomorrow."

The audience left chuckling, and everyone was happy. I guess with any disaster, it it how you handle it.

[kiwitechgirl]

One (student theatre!) show I did we had a revolve mounted off-centre with three walls at 120 degrees built on it - there was a fixed wall running OP-PS so that the revolve walls essentially formed a corner when they were lined up with the fixed wall - gave us 3 different offices which worked really well.  We'd had a nightmare of a load-in - the guy who had designed and built most of the set lost his voice, so was busy writing instructions on pieces of paper for us, and installing the revolve took way, way longer than we had planned so it threw our scheduling.  Anyway, opening night arrived and somebody put a piece of furniture on the revolve in such a way that it couldn't turn 120 degrees clockwise, as it needed to for the next scene change - the desk would have hit the fixed wall.  So, with great presence of mind, the revolve operator said "no problem, we'll just go 240 degrees anti-clockwise and I'll go a bit faster" - it was a manual revolve.  What we hadn't noticed is that a piece of timber had come loose off one of the revolve walls - so when the op revolved it, it caught the fixed wall and pulled the whole thing down on the operator's head....fortunately it was very light and he was unhurt!  We had an unscheduled interval while we frantically pulled out the driver drills and stood the wall back up!

The worst one I've seen was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the West End - the car behaved itself (which from what I gather was quite unusual!) but the Childcatcher's cart did not....he rode it on, jumped off, sang a song and leapt back onto the cart, flicking the reins as he sat down....and nothing happened.  I thought "hmmm, that's odd...." as he flicked the reins again.....and nothing happened again.  Then two stagehands appeared and quite calmly grabbed the cart and pulled it off into the PS wing, completely unconcerned by what was going on - made my night!

[dallas10086]

Mac - I love how he handled it. Nothing like humor to bring it down to earth 

[vsm315]

I had two malfunctions happen during the same show.

A few years ago I was working at a high school and they were performing Beauty and the Beast for their spring musical. The school had just installed the automated Vortek rigging system and it was a very poor install job. During the first show we can't get the castle door to fly out so Gaston and the other villagers just had to keep bagging and yelling on stage until I could run back stage and trick the system to raise the baton.

Then before the final performance I was doing a check of all the programmed fly cues before warm up and I can't get the village to fly out. Finally after about 15 minutes and several rebootings of the system I get it to fly. So I go to the director and tell him that we won't have a village for this show because if we bring it in the whole show might have to change location to the town square. Lets just say he was less than pleased and within a week we had every driver in the rigging system replaced.

I am always weary of the Vortek system now but I have talked with the guys at the Kennedy Center's Family Theatre and they have never had a problem. Ours must have just been a bad system mixed with a cheap/crappy installation. 

[Rebbe]

I worked on a show that began with a big pink cloth stretched tightly across the stage, floor to ceiling and SL/SR.  At the top of the show, an actor stood US of the cloth, then pressed her hand toward the audience through the cloth, so that it looked like she was grabbing it and tearing the whole thing down.  Releasing the pink cloth was actually an automated effect timed to look like it was done by the actor, but the audience usually didn’t know that.  Unfortunately, a couple times during the run, the effect failed, so only part of the pink cloth released, and the rest of it was stuck hanging from the batten.  When this happened, the SM made an announcement to the house that we were pausing for technical difficulties, we would lower the batten, crew would go onstage to unhook and strike the curtain, and then we could raise the batten and move forward.  This was one of those tech difficulties that no one in the audience could miss seeing, and it was disappointing to have the very first moments of the show go so visibly wrong.

[BlantonRK]

I loved how the closing ceremony opened with a clown "fixing" and raising the missing fourth column and then having the athlete who had been scheduled to light that column at the opening finally get her chance to bring the flame back for the night. Wonderful sense of humor, eh!

[dallas10086]

I loved how the closing ceremony opened with a clown "fixing" and raising the missing fourth column and then having the athlete who had been scheduled to light that column at the opening finally get her chance to bring the flame back for the night. Wonderful sense of humor, eh!

Good for them! I missed it bec/ of rehearsal but I'm sure I'll catch it on YouTube.

[Cedes]

On a production of "Ragtime" the gates for Ellis Island weren't weighted correctly, and almost came down on an actor.  I also saw a production of Phantom when the chandelier stalled halfway up into the theatre during the opening concerto.  The whole show was held for about 15 minutes until they could fix it.