Lead Actress Natalie Mendoza Departs SPIDER-MAN: Turn Off the Dark? — Page 2

I was in the car, listening to the news on the radio here in DC, and they reported that America Olivo is taking over the role. Spiderman is getting a fair amount of coverage down here, its very interesting.

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She's not leaving the show because of her injury, though that may very well be how they plan on spinning it in the press. She's leaving because of safety concerns that were only exacerbated when Chris Tierney (one of her best friends) was hurt even worse than she was. There's a reason she hasn't performed since his fall last week.


If that's the truth, then she doesn't deserve a cent of exit pay and should be treated like anyone else who breaks a contract. She knew the risks of performing aerial stunts and singing while hanging from a wire on a nightly basis. She knew that two people were severely injured performing stunts from the show before there was even a single performance. And if she's using medical excuses to curry favor and come out smelling like a rose, then that's even worse.

I am not fan of Taymor or this production, but I get the feeling that Mendoza is running the short grift on them.

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AC---obviously you aren't aware that an employer needs to protect the employee. I'm sure the entire cast expected the stunts to be safe, not causing this much injury to the performers. Yes, there are risks involved with stunts like this, but when there are this many injuries it definitely says something about the safety of what is being performed and Natalie might get a pretty penny from this production from them failing to protect her, the employee.

what is natalie's real facebook? I kept reading that she wrote this and that on her official facebook and yet everytime i do a search i get some clearly fake ones.

Let's face it:
"she booked!"

May her journey onward be safe of harm, and swinging ropes.
Now the two understudies can duke it out.
T.V. (interesting initials) and
ILTBI America Olivo, may the best Diva win...

Mr Roxy, please update... did ANOTHER person just get injured? holy ****.

"On Sunday, Ms. Mendoza wrote on her Facebook page that she was grateful to be down to two nausea tablets and four painkillers per day to cope with her concussion. 'Thank goodness I had such a brilliant neurologist who made sure I recovered properly,' she wrote. 'Nice to be almost back to normal.... almost anyway haha! Thanking God for peace, real friends, love and health and healing.'

I've had two concussions, and this sounds like bull to me. Four painkillers a day nearly a month after the incident? That's not normal. And if this is true, why are the producers not just blaming her being out on the concussion instead of vocal rest? How was her concussion not serious enough that she could perform the next day but serious enough that she still takes six pills a day to cope with the pain it has caused four weeks later? None of this makes sense.

Truly, love...no one is talking about a broken nail.

If you are talking MAJOR injuries, then no, most shows don't have those.

I even dare you to find a major injury in 10% of all Broadway shows in history.

And finally, a few weeks is NOT an extended run. In fact, the run itself hasn't even started.

You want to use the word naive? I think that all comments stating that performers who got injured should have seen it coming are just plain horrible.

I want to see you go onstage, get hit on the head by a fresnel falling from grid and have everyone around you say "What are you bitchin' about? You're in theater, you should have known these are risks associated with going onstage!"

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Since many people ignored or trashed the show before it opened, many probably (even those who saw it) didn't realize that A TALE OF TWO CITIES had the FIRST ever free-fall fall.

The fall was 2 stories from the top of the set into the elevator in the middle of the stage by Walter Winston-O'Neill. To my knowledge, he never once got hurt. So I don't think people are always getting hurt from high-risk stunts.

Here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpj1RaSaquE

Not as much as Spider-man perhaps, but a two story fall without a wire is a dangerous stunt... any fall for that matter is.

A child could do that fall - while you say TWO STORIES as if that had some basis in reality what you mean and what is TRUE is TWO LEVELS - and the top LEVEL is not that far from the HUGE HOLE he is falling into where a nice comfy and HUGE padded thing awaits him - it's all there in the video.

I think you understand when you SIGN A CONTRACT and are PUT INTO A HARNESS and then DANGLED THREE STORIES ABOVE THE AUDIENCE that there may be risks involved with what you're doing. I received a concussion on stage... but I was throwing someone ten feet in the air and then catching them, so I knew there was a possibility that I'd get hurt. I didn't "see it coming" but knew it could happen. So no... no one, not even me, is saying that she should have "seen it coming." You can stop putting words in my mouth to make yourself look better or more witty or whatever you were aiming to do.

So, if you are not saying that she should have seen it coming, you ARE saying that the moment she signed the contract she did it with full knowledge that once she was hanging up there things SHOULD go awfully wrong? To the point of having injuries that could be life threatening?

What I'm arguing here is that an accident of this magnitude can be the exception, but in here it has become the norm. At this pace, it's almost that in this show one must expect things to fail as a rule, and shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, being that it is by now so common. To be honest, I'd run out of there as soon as I could if that was the case.

Can you really blame any of them for wanting to get out of there?

Yes, please call me naive. While I don't doubt,as I've said before, that these stunts are performed but with the performer's health and safety in mind, I truly think they did not have a good grip of what it took to perform them safely, at least not yet.

So, I don't think it's outrageous for a performer to step out if they don't feel safe under these extreme circumstances. I doubt Tierney "knew it could hapen" when he hit the floor that night. He could have easily died, can you argue that this show's cast go up every night with the understanding that any of them could perish any night because of the high risk of the stunts?

I think the discrepancy here is the difference between the time when Spider-Man was left hanging from the audience while a few stage hands tried to correct the problem and keep the performance going(EXPECTED) and concussions, broken ribs and risking their own lives (NOT EXPECTED).

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That 'high fall' look to be all of about 7 feet.

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