My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else have one?
My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else have one?
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else have one?#0
Posted: 3/10/05 at 1:16pm
I've got a power outage story that is almost too perfect to have happened, but I was there.
I was in London in the summer of 2001 with some friends from HS. Actually it was the 4th of July, a very strange day to be an American in London, and out of the 8 people on the trip, 3 of us decided to skip whatever silly club they all were going to so we could celebrate America's freedom by getting drunk and wearing "Canada" t-shirts to go see STARLIGHT EXPRESS.
So already it was a crappy show that night. Understudies were on for every principle role except POPPA and DINAH, and the actors onstage were clearly phoning it in, possibly because most of the audience were American tourists who clearly just needed somewhere to go and were now dumbfounded at having wound up at a musical about trains.
All is chugging along ridiculously as it does, and the fellow playing ELECTRA is actually doing a nice job of AC/DC, a showtune about electricity delivered in the story by the character representing electricity and sung in the show mostly by electrical noises. He's flaming as can be and is clearly having a great time with the song. Vogueing a bit, he goes in for his big finish, sticks the pose centerstage and sings "I CAN SWITCH AND CHANGE MY FREQUENCY! CAN SWITCH AND CHANGE MY FREQUENCY! CAN SWITCH AND CHANGE-....."
And on that very word, the entire sound system went dead, and what could be heard after 30 minutes of nonstop synthesized noise, was the poor understudy ELECTRA's tiny unamplified voice floating out from the stage with the high sustained note on:
"......my frequencyyyyyyyy!"
This big finish is meant to be amplified and souped-up through the sound design, as well as punctuated with a few power chords. Without any of that, it musically had an effect that sounded a bit like he had stopped the song mid-chorus and decided to end with that. There was about 5 seconds of dead silence and stillness, followed by scattered applause from a few audience members who maybe thought it was part of the song's effect or maybe they had missed something clever in the lyrics or choreo and wanted to seem cultured. It would have been an easy mistake. I had seen the show several times before in Vegas and on tour, and I didn't realize what had happened until everyone else started to put it together. The actors were no exception. About half of them were understudies, many Swings, who weren't prepared for such an event. So as this tiny applause trickles around, about a third of the actors stay dead frozen another 20 seconds, a third stay posed but frantically turn their heads looking around and off the stage for an explanation, and the other third of the cast (ELECTRA included) stick their poses just long enough to show that they know them and immediately book it offstage in different directions.
There was still no official announcement for another minute which felt like at least 90 seconds. By now there were babies crying and husbands forbidding their wives to ever choose their vacation again. Since you really can't do this show without the sound system, the 10 or so ensemble trains still onstage just kinda relaxed and paced a bit with the house lights at half and audience members starting to stand up sporadically. Top it off with the fact that all of this onstage confusion was being executed on rollerskates. It was one of the most surreal and ironic theatre experiences of my life, and I was so full of Venison meat pie and too much ale, all I could do was stare at the action and thank god this hadn't happened the previous night at "The Woman In Black".
Finally they brought everything to blackout so the actors could exit, and a man's voice rose from the darkness to make an announcement by yelling at the top of his lungs (no sound system, remember?) that there was a small sound issue and the show would resume in 15 minutes.
And so it did. The actors resumed their positions as if the song had ended properly, and they received a massive applause from what audience was still there. We were on their side the rest of the night- which in the end turned out to be an excellently-performed remainder of the show now that everyone was on their toes. In the end, though, it's a musical about trains and we should all have been ashamed. Instead we were proud- proud to be Americans!! (it was back before 9/11, a time when we were just seen as a little arrogant, and not the reactionary militant cowboys we've now become.)
So yours doesn't need to end with an arbitrary point about anything, but if anyone else has stories of power/ sound/ trapdoor failures at inopportune moments, I'm curious to hear how they were handled. This is what live theatre is about!
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#1
Posted: 3/10/05 at 1:35pm
Funnily enough I was in England and Scotland at the exact same time. We didn't get down to London until about 10 days after the fourth though. It was a little surreal being in another country for the fourth of July. We ended up seeing Fame which I really enjoyed (forgive me it was my first professional show), but I wish I could have seen what you saw instead and I wish it would have been on a raked stage. 
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#2
Posted: 3/10/05 at 1:47pmWell, if not for that incident, STARLIGHT isn't a whole lot better than FAME as far as London show choices. and doesn't every country but the U.S. love FAME? In fairness, we only went to SE because the discount tix at Leicester came to around $23 US, and we did get to see "The Woman In Black" which scared the crap out of everyone, and "Witches of Eastwick" which didn't. But I'm more jealous that you went to Scotland, I've always wanted to visit. I bet that was a cool place to be on the 4th. Earlier that day we toured the Tower of London, also weird, and wound up ending the entire Europe trip in Paris, with no knowledge of the language, for 1 day which happened to be Bastille Day. We ate at Quick Burger then saw an authentic drag show in Montmartre before retiring to the hotel to watch some really weird free hotel porn.
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#3
Posted: 3/10/05 at 3:30pm
My friends and I collaborated on a new musical and built a 13-seat theatre in a one-car garage to showcase our project. At the premiere performance, during the opening chord, the power went out for half the block. The house next door still had power, so we ran extension chords for the keyboard and gave the audience members flashlights which they pointed at us during the performance. Thus, Unhappy Buddha premiered and The Little Room Downstairs was born.
Later, the theatre expanded to two 60-seat houses and became Houston's first theatre company for the gay/lesbian community and won several awards. It was quite the Cinderella story. Unfortunately, it did not have a happy ending...
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/17/03
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#4
Posted: 3/10/05 at 3:56pm
HA I love it! That's guerrilla theatre at its finest, by any means possible.
sorry to hear the story didn't end happily for your company. that's something all too common unfortunately when you're involved in the non-profit theatre world. but it's also these little non-profit startups that give us stories like that about how theatre always seems to find a way to happen somehow against the circumstances, unless unions are involved.
"The last train out of any station will not be full of nice guys." - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
"I wash my face, then drink beer, then I weep. Say a prayer and induce insincere self-abuse, till I'm fast asleep"- In Trousers
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#5
Posted: 3/10/05 at 5:50pmThe theatre ran for several years and would still be running today, but it was managed poorly, which is putting it mildly.
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/20/04
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#6
Posted: 3/10/05 at 9:50pmWe performed the last 20 minutes of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM during a power failure. Power went out duing the Funeral scene. There were emergency light, but non pointed to the stage. The ushers all got flashlights and pointed them at the stage fropm the aisles. We did the very intricate chase sequence and the finale with nothing but the flashlights. The audience loved it!
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#7
Posted: 3/10/05 at 9:54pmAt the old "theatre" I designed the lighting for, every opening night for every show, the power would go out and come back on at the last minute.
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/3/05
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#8
Posted: 3/10/05 at 10:01pmI saw the Last 5 Years last weekend and at the end of "I'm a part of that" the power went out. Everything was black (there were no mics though) and you could still here the girl playing Cathy singing "aren't I". Then the announcement came... Show resumed shortly. It was pretty funny though. Went out at a good time, the end of the song.
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/8/05
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#9
Posted: 3/10/05 at 10:13pmDuring a showing of Thoroughly Modern Millie at the Marquis, the show literally stopped for 10 minutes, I'm guessing they were having LOTS of difficulites. During a scene change, they were raising part of the "hotel" and when the lights came up for the next scene, it was stuck in mid air. It was hilarious! But they had lots of problems. For those of you who have seen the show, when Mrs. Meers goes to flip the switch to "VACANT", that sign didn't light up, so the audience didn't laugh, but i had seen it twice before and i was cracking up! Also The lights in the speakeasy kept going on and off during the dance solos....I'm guessing the tech director didn't get paid that night...hahah
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#10
Posted: 3/11/05 at 7:43amIt wasn't a full blackout, but the light and sound did something screwy for a while during a performance of "I, Nephi" I saw (yes, it is a Mormon Musical). Plus on top of that one of the kids had a seziure of stage. She managed to recover and actually rejoined the show later on, but it was kinda freaky all the same.
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#11
Posted: 3/11/05 at 8:35amThere were various problems at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane during the run of the RNT's My Fair Lady. On Opening NIght there were technical difficulties and props had to carried on and off by hand. Later in the run, the power went completely at the end and they had to do the curtain call with spot-lights and candles!
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#12
Posted: 3/11/05 at 10:29amThere's always the classic CAMILLE CLAUDEL opening night in Connecticut story.
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#13
Posted: 3/11/05 at 10:47am
I had designed the lights for our high school production of 42nd Street. We thought we were really pros, because the choreographers son was in the Broadway version, and came up to teach us "borrowed" choreography. Of course I thought my lighting design was better than even their version. I digress...
The night before our first show, the auditorium was struck by lightning, and something about that fried all of the building's circuitry. All of the carefully numbered and ordered plugs in the grid no longer corresponded to their sliders on the board. I could do nothing but climb into the grids, and unplug the lights that were way off, and try to rehang the lights that were "close" while radioing back to a spot op... "OK, push up number two, and pull down number one" and so on.
re: My Extremely Odd Story of Power Failure during a Show. Anyone else hav#14
Posted: 3/11/05 at 9:59pmWell, the night I went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectaular, the Rockettes' track (that had the backup tapping sounds on) went off and the show was stopped for a few minutes. But I've never seen anything like that happen at a play or musical...
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