RUNNING: "We have a 45 minute hold for the Obamas."

[planetmike]

President and Mrs. Obama visited New York to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone. And even though "POTUS & FLOTUS" pulled up right at 7:55, stage manager had to hold curtain till 8:45 for added security and the massive (surprise!) ovation that greeted them. (From http://playgoer.blogspot.com/2009/06/barack-obamas-come-and-gone.html)

So, lots of interesting questions: What's the longest hold you've ever had to do? What's the most bizarre reason for a hold? How stressful would it be running a show for the President?

[MatthewShiner]

I had the opposite problem recently, for a performance that Mrs. Obama attended - I had secret service ask me to start the show immediately.  Dealing with secret service can be interesting.

I have held for actors.  (Understudy ready to go on, but the real actor arrives in time to perform - 10 minutes).  Held for technical reasons (dealing with an unruly Foy track - 10 minutes).  And of course, always holding on the house for some reason or another.

Other then that, I haven't had to hold for too many reasons.

[CTsometimeSM]

Concert, and I wasn't the SM, but the headliner went on well over 90 minutes late:  He decided not to show up until 60 minutes after he was supposed to go on, then spent at least 15 minutes arguing that he and his entourage should be allowed to bring their guns in with them.  And 15 minutes to get himself ready.

[missliz]

We had a storm and the power blew! Waited for the generator to kick in, but it was a very scary 15 mins.

We also had the A/C break in the middle of Act I during a Sunday matinee in July. We called the repairman (had to explain why it had to be fixed immediately on a Sunday) and held intermission an extra 10.

[Beatr79]

I've been in two situations where company vehicles full of actors have hit massive traffic enroute to the theatre.  In one case we held about 20 minutes, in another a full 55 minutes.  Thankfully in the second case, the author was present to do a talkback, and we put him onstage for some Q & A.  FOH also opened the bar.

[kiwitechgirl]

- The air conditioning broke down on the hottest day of the summer; we did manage to get it fixed before the show but had to hold 15 minutes to let the theatre get down to a workable temperature before starting the show.
- The sound system fritzed out completely after interval - noise going in but no noise coming out at all.  Happily one of the cast is a great comedian, so he did 30 minutes of stand-up while the noise boys frantically sorted the system out.
- A bomb scare in a building which backs onto us; The Glass Menagerie went up 55 minutes late (which made for a very late finish - not a short play!).

[klcurrie]

I wasn't on production staff for this, but the theater I worked for in Ohio once held curtain on a production of ALL MY SONS directed by Rebecca Miller for almost an hour and a half cause her dad's plane was delayed.  But I guess if you're gonna hold for someone's dad, Arthur Miller is a good choice.  Luckily, she was there and did an audience Q & A to fill the time. 

[SLY]

I worked for a theater that had a poor lighting system. So bad that any actor that wasn't in the current scene had to be upstairs in the loft area where the dimmers were and shimmy the switches if they received a text from me because at random times the lights would all just go out because of a poor electrical job or something. The whole run was like this but I won't go into details.

Anyhow one night at the end of Act One something big happened with the lights. Not sure what. But I knew they were not coming back on. The director and another production staff started working on it during the intermission.

The intermission lasted an hour.
He never apologized to the audience.
He never said anything.

But this was his type of behavior during my entire time there on many different issues.
But that was the longest. A one hour intermission because of some crazy light issue.


Oh...during this same show we had to hold the show for about twenty minutes because I got a call from one of the principals that went like this...

"Hi Sly"
"Hi *****. Where are you?"
"Ummm. I forgot to wear panties."
"What?"
"Yea, I forgot to wear panties. Do you know where I could go buy some?"

(There was a scene in which she strips down her her underwear and song a sung and she was responsible for bringing, wearing, and washing the underwear since she was very particular about it. How she forgot to wear underwear in the dead of winter was beyond me. I directed her to the nearest place I could and by the time she got there, the show started 20 minutes late)

[Tempest]

A hold for panties?  I love it!  Reminds me of a phone call I got from my costume designer on opening night.  "DON'T PANIC!  I have the pants.  *click*"   

I can't recall any TRULY long holds in my career, but I have had to hold a house for fifteen minutes where all the audience was present and seated, and the cast and crew were ready to go.  The person slated to make the curtain speech, and then leave, was no where to by found!  At places, they had been standing in the lobby, and then they just vanished.  I was supremely frustrated.

[Mac Calder]

Most stressful... Whilst in Asia on a smaller ship, we had an aerial acrobatics artist come on board the morning of their show. They bought on 4 different aparatus, after being told lies by the talent agency - namely that we had a performer flying motor that could be used to hang their apparatus from. Not the case. I spent the morning beg, borrowing and stealing a chain motor (that moved at the break neck speed of 6 meters a minute)  It worked for the 10 hours we spent designing, rehearsing and teching the shows. We go to preset the first apparatus...The motor does not move. We yell out to the bar staff to hold doors, I climb up the ladder, cannot see anything wrong on a cursory inspection - and I cannot take the motor to the floor (as we did a sweet job securing it), we cannot just put in a new point as we had custom-built a stabaliser directly below the motor to prevent sway from destroying my rig. We contemplate putting on a production show instead... Nope, half the cast are drunk... We look to see if we can dead-hang each apparatus - but we don't have clearance and we don't have the time to redesign the lighting. We are now at 2 minutes to show start, and we are at crunch time. We decide to bridle some spansets to a few inches bellow the chain motor and hang the aparatus there through our stabaliser, with stage staff coming out in blackouts to change them with a ladder. We open the doors, seat the audience (950 of them) in 2 1/2 minutes, and start the show 3 minutes late.

Longest I have had though was when an actor borrowed a pair of costume shoes (without permission) and left them at home, remembered at 10 minutes and decided to drive home to get them - forgetting it was peak hour and the traffic was hell, in the hope that he would not get a written warning for taking the shoes. He arived 11 minutes after we were meant to start (and he was critical for the opening number and was wearing the costume, so the understudy could not step in), he left the theatre 11 minutes after the show without a job.

[hilarysm]

It was opening night for Our Town at my university, and I was the SM.  While pre-show music was running the sound computer turned itself off.  The sound op turned it back on quickly and started the music again thinking it was just some weird fluke.  No more than 2 minutes later the computer turns off again.  He turns it on again, and the computer does this about 4 more times.  We ended up holding for about 20 minutes while a tech person backstage ran and got another monitor from the other booth to see if that would fix the problem since Our Town is a VERY sound heavy show!  It worked, thank God, and that got us to intermission. . . when it happened all over and we had to get yet another monitor!