Scary experience during matinee this week...

[wildparty20]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:16pm

I'm doing Damn Yankees right now and last week we had an elderly woman in the audience pass out. Someone at her table (it's dinner theatre) came half way up on-stage during "A Little Brains..." and told the actor playing Applegate that they needed help. He left the stage and went and got the house manager. We had to stop the show and they wheeled her out. The whole cast thought she was dead, she looked gray and was slumped over. They took her to the hospital, and I guess she had just passed out from over-heating. She had all her winter clothes on and coat and scarf and didn't take them off in the theatre. It was scary and we had a hard time doing the rest of the show thinking that our show killed someone! We were glad to hear that she was okay the next day.

Anyone else have a scary audience experience? I know someone who was doing MAN OF LA MANCHA, and someone had a heart attack and died during the show. They didn't stop the show, the house staff just carried the dead man out while the show kept going. Can you believe that!

Updated On: 10/11/04 at 04:16 PM

[Unknown User]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:39pm

Mine was as an audience member...Finally after 30 or so years of attending live theater, heard those dreaded words, "Is there a doctor in the house?"...it was during Car Man out here in Los Angeles..I was sitting in the balcony...they stopped the show, sent the entire audience outside and took care of the heart attack victim. Weird experience, as the show was going on, and a general commotion started. I thought it was a fight over seats, but then people starting shouting for help, but no one could hear over the orchestra...and the dancers didn't know, so they kept on dancing...creepy. Finally word got backstage and they stopped the show.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:40pm

wildparty, house staff SOOO don't get paid enough to be dragging a body out of the theater!!!

[Elphaba3]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:44pm

oo LA! i want to go there! but yes.. i fainted during our preformance of Footloose.. luckly i waited til i got off stage and fainted in the wing!

[lovettespies]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:56pm

I was doing a halloween play in middle school and we had some sort of line about a hangman's noose. One night after that line we heard a huge sob and we saw someone running out of the theater crying. Most of us were pretty confused, but we continued. At the end of the show, the director found the other kid in my school and sat us down in the green room alone to explain what had happened.
The girl was a friend of mine who had been convinced by her mother to go the theater to forget what had happened the night before. She had walked into her best friend's bathroom and found her friends little brother (a seventh grader) hanging from the shower curtain. He had been in our class. We changed the line, but I remeber that show extremely clearly. It was an extremely tough year.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:57pm

Oh okay. That is a HORRIBLE story!

[RadioTV2]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 4:59pm

Before a performance of Golda's Balcony I was seeing, I was standing underneath the awning of the Hayes, and a man next to me collapsed has a heart attack and died. Needless to say, the show was delayed, but this was one of the most terrible experiences of my life. Although I did love the show, I was depressed and shaken up when I went inside.

[Elphaba3]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 5:16pm

OMG! someone just DIED! right there beside you? thats horrible!

[bially082]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 5:25pm

yeah, tahts would be very wierd. Hard to watch a show after that.

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 5:58pm

These are really sad stories.

When my aunt saw TBFO this past summer, three people fainted at three different times during the show and the show was stopped all three times.

[Kelliexo90]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 6:13pm

I was doing a concert in the singing group I'm with, and the show was taking a reallly long time to start. We finally heard the emcee say "Is there a doctor in the house?" and we were informed that someone had passed out, possibly had a heart attack, in the audience. They said it was an elderly woman. I was panicked backstage because my grandma had been having heart problems and she was there to watch me. I spent the whole show with a forced smile until after when my mom told me that it wasn't her, and that the woman who it was was alright.

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 6:37pm

Didn't something happen at Fiddler's opening night?

And this did not happen in a theater, but it was scary, even though I didn't know the person. I went to the grocery store with my mom and went off by myself to look. As I walked by one of the aisles, there was a guy already collapsed head-first on the floor! There wasn't a huge crowd, and I believe he was being taken care of, but I got teary eyed as I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone I know.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/11/04 at 8:33pm

Quite a few years ago I was playing Harry Roat (the Alan Arkin part) in a regional production of WAIT UNTIL DARK. Of course I had that famous "leap from the dead" in the last act and some poor woman in the back of the theater was so shocked by it that she, too, suffered a heart attack. We learned the next day that she had had a history of heart problems, but was recovering at the local hospital. From that point on the management posted a message in the lobby indicating that anyone with similar health problems should reconsider seeing the play.

[capnkidd]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 1:59am

millie,
yes,someone(orig choreograprher's sister?)got sick/died @ fiddler...but think about it....given the odds,people dying @ broadway shows is not terribly uncommon...I've seen it personally twice...really shouldn't allow it to affect you personally,though,radio...though no man is an island,it wasn't you or yours that died....

[DesperatelySeekingStranger]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 12:16pm

My horrible experience happened in college during our production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was our final day of performances and we had Scott Ellis coming to the evening show to receive an award of distinction. The horror began 10 minutes to curtain of the matinee when an elderly alumni had a heart attack outside the theatre and died. Shockingly, the show went on. We were nearing the end of Act 1 in the song No Good Can Come From Bad when there was a shout of call 911. An elderly woman in the audience passed out. The show was stopped, the paramedics came, and then we continued on. We finished the show and had our dinner break. We got chinese food and I kid you not, my fortune cookie said "Prepare for the best, expect the worst." I laughed off the fortune when the final performance went off without a hitch. The curtain came down and we were preparing to present the award when the fire alarm went off. It turns out, one of the coffee burners at our post-show reception was left unattended and set a placecard on fire causing the entire room to go up in flames. I know this sounds truly unbelievable, but I swear this all truly happened in the same day. I figure I can handle anything now...

[Unknown User]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 2:28pm

I forgot another one: Regional production of Jesus Christ Superstar, during Christ's death on the cross, someone in the audience freaked out, ran up on stage to try to "save" Jesus.
It was such a bizarre, surreal thing to watch, as the cast was positioned in the audience for the big finish. There was screaming, crying and controlled chaos. Fortunately the actors playing the guards had the presence of mind to subdue the misguided soul and take him off stage. Half the audience thought it was all part of the show. Go figure.

We did manage to continue on until the end without stopping the show.

[BrdwyThtr]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 6:07pm

I was doing a regional production of A Christmas Carol in 2001, when at one of our student matinees, a homeless man stumbled into the theatre and had a heart attack. Luckily, one of the children who was in the show had a nurse for a mother.

[BreakingTheCircle07]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 9:17pm

I did a community production of "Hello, Dolly!" and our Dolly was about 75 years old, which actually mad for a great show. Yet, during her last performance, old age (mixed with the fast her best friend died that week) and she forgot all of her lines barly into the first act. We had to stop the show. Luckily our Dolly double was there and we threw her into costume to finish off the rest of the show. Such a scarey time; playing Barnaby and not know what the heck to do.

[CapnHook]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 9:29pm

During a performance of THE MASTER BUILDER (high school), a guy screamed out "We need to stop! We have a medical emergency!"

This was in a huge black box, but the audience and main part of the set was not too far apart, so the actors heard and stopped.

An elderly woman had passed out, and turns out she was there ALONE! No family, no husband, but ALONE. She awoke shortly so we didn't call the paramedics. Another woman in the audience took her outside for some air.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 10:32pm

At A Theater I woirked for once we had a woman die during the show and no one knew it. It was a dinner theater. She was sitting in her chair and just looked like she had fallen asleep so no one knew it until the lights went on and they went to wake her up. She was from the rest home up the street and was like 90 years old or something.

Another time... during a children's show the fairy godmother came out in a puff of flash pods and it lit her dress and the stage curtain on fire..... The kids FREAKED OUT.

[ElphieDefiesGravity]

Posted: 10/12/04 at 10:41pm

CapnHook- You took mine! Slight correction, the Black Box isn't huge. However, it is true that the stage was extremely close to the audience.

[thespian geek]

Posted: 10/13/04 at 12:05am

Last year during opening weekend of a production of Jekyll & Hyde I fell down an entire flight of stairs backstage. I swear I thought I was going to break my neck or something. I just ended up scraping up my left arm and whacking my shin really hard. I cleaned up, made sure I didn't harm my costume any and went on stage for my cue. The things I do for theatre...

[pab]

Posted: 10/13/04 at 12:16am

I went to see a Broadway preview of "Six Dance Lessons In Six Weeks" and they had to stop the show because a man, in the front row, was having some kind of attack and the woman with him was screaming for help. The ambulance came and took him away and then the show continued. Unfortunately, that it what I remembered most about that night since the show was not memorable at all.

[JakeB]

Posted: 10/13/04 at 5:40am

The Witches of Eastwick in London is my only experience of that. We had no idea what was going on, but the show was delayed 45 minutes and at the curtain call Ian McShane said that the cast's thoughts and prayers were with the man's family. (I think he may have said 'the man and his family', I'm not sure if he died)