I survived

Made it through the massive load-in, now drinking a beer, trying to catch up on life.

In other news, I was recently asked to give an example of a time that a show tech went horribly awry. I explained to the asker that once, I worked on a show where not only did we break a neon light sculpture, but also all the transformers for the neon were busted (that week I learned more about transformers than I ever wanted to know), and there were motorized wheels whose motors couldn't handle the weight of the wheels, which pulled downward at a 45-degree angle. While we tried to fix these motors (for hours), a super-dramatic soundtrack played over the PA at full blast. There were also walls that were built to meet our 22-foot grid, and we had to chain up our fly pipes (which are just sandbag-to-ac cable-to pulleys) to accommodate that, and never quite got them back in working order again.

So let's hear some of your tech stories- describe a time when everything went wrong, and what you learned from it!

Most Popular Posts of 2009

Here are the three posts that drive most of the traffic to this site. If you're a newbie, perhaps start with these.

The winner, by far: SUMMER STOCK JOBS

Like a train wreck: PROP GUN KILLS STUDENT

We loves us some YouTube: LAUGHABLE COLLEGE THEATRE ADS

Oh. Ugh. A Safety Story.

This was posted over at Control Booth by MNicolai.

"A few years ago a guy was focusing lights from a one-man Genie. In a futile attempt to have an added safety measure, he wore a harness while in the lift, which he secured to the electrics he was focusing from. My guess is that his harness gave him a false sense of security and so he acted more dangerously while in the lift.


So with his false sense of security, this stagehand is leaning out of the bucket ([sarcasm]remember he's safer because of his harness[/sarcasm]) when the lift tips over. When the lift went over, his legs were caught in the bucket and both were snapped like toothpicks. As the lift came crashing down, he was suspended with his harness still, some 30' in the air gushing blood with what's left of his legs dangling, bones completely visible. A bad situation gone horribly worse, nobody had the key to operate the motorized winches supporting the electrics so it took some 5 minutes to get the key, meanwhile he's still bleeding out."

Meet Mr. Tippy

Welcome, techies!

Hey there folks- I've just created this as a space for general theatre nerdiness and discussion. Topics will include recent technical theatre news, personal observations on production life, and a liberal dose of schadenfreude. Please email me with any submissions/pictures at karen [AT] karenwalcott [dot] com!