Basics
Name: Ali
Region: Ketucky
Title: Production Stage Manager
I completely believe that Stage Management is a lifestyle choice, and that some of the best parts about our job are the Horror Stories that we acquire and get to tell people we have lived through.
One summer I was working at an outdoor theatre and we were rep-ing 3 shows when a Derecho, land hurricane, came from the great lakes and ran down the United States. My brother, sister, Brother-in-law, and myself were all working at the same theatre in our own technical fields when we saw there was a storm coming. I started helping my brother, the master electrician, move the scrollers that don't like to get wet, from their outdoor homes to their indoor homes. My sister, the Production Stage Manager, called the National Weather Service to see how bad it was going to be and got told to evacuate all 250 patrons and 75 company members off the top of the mountain. My family had just gotten almost everyone on their way home making sure to let everyone know the weather was going to get bad when we started doing our final checks. By the time we all met at center stage when we were done we stopped talking because there was an odd whistle coming from the gorge about 100 yards away. We looked over the top of the house to see odd specks going up the side of the mountain. It hit us all at the same time, it was trees getting thrown so far into the air they looked like dust. We looked at each other and screamed to everyone, "Get the *@&$ inside!" at the same time. out of the 325 people on top of that mountain that day not one person got hurt.
If you want the full story and are driving through eastern Kentucky we can meet up and swap Horror stories.
