On the road

You just never know what’s going to happen on the road… that’s the challenge of live theatre on tour. 
Things, once in a while always go wrong.  Things break, props need repair, electronics malfunction, vehicles break down and fire alarms get set off.

Yup, it happened AGAIN, for the second time in three years of touring we’ve managed to set off another fire alarm at a theatre.  We hold up a pretty good track record, dozens of venues, hundreds of shows, and we’ve only set off the alarm made fire trucks appear twice.  Although every second of the show is planned and all aspects of the performance are tested for faults, accidents happen. 

What caused it?  All the electronics in the show are controlled by a multi-computer system, including the lighting, sound, video and… FOG!
Last night we were at a brand new theatre, newly built and for a change, one we have never hosted the show in before.  Our computer system that controls the lighting and haze (fog) machine had to be run through the theatre’s cabling system in order for the line to reach the stage.  Before the show while our technician was testing equipment, everything seemed to be working fine.

Just as we were getting to the last illusion of the show, the cabling decided to no longer cooperate with us and began sending false signals to our computer controlled haze generator, telling it to boost the output to 100%!  We can only assume there was a short in the theatre’s cable as the machine was not responding to the signal to shut it down!   It BLASTED out fog to the point that the theatre was completely filled and the buildings’ fire alarm system was set off.

Everyone was evacuated from the theatre safely and we had an informal meet-and-greet out in the parking lot with several members of the audience who came to chat with us as the fire trucks were pulling up.  Thankfully there was literally only a couple minutes left in the show, so my friends in Bracebridge ON, you didn’t miss out on much.  But as an added bonus, we made fire trucks appear for you!

Things are never boring on the road.  We live by Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”