Played horn in a Christmas show a few years back. A costumed character (think Disneyland-style costume) was to place a large nutcracker (over 3 feet hight) center stage right at the edge of the pit. Their big gloved hands didn't allow for much accuracy in placement and the head piece didn't give them a wide field of view, so they couldn't see that the nutcracker wasn't stable when they let go of it. The nutcracker toppled over into the pit and was decapitated on the clarinetist's music stand. Thankfully, the clarinetist was unhurt. Oh, the same thing happened the following year... Now that I'm conducting the show, we've cut the Nutcracker scene!
On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 5:50 PM, dershem <ders...@cox.net> wrote: > On 5/24/2010 4:19 PM, Ryan wrote: > >> I love hearing these "horror stories" from musical theater. I'm getting >> ready to conduct Fiddler on the Roof and the director has told me he's >> considering putting the orchestra on stage (partly in the wings), so that >> we >> can become the "wedding band" at the end of Act I. I don't like the idea >> of >> having 15 musicians trying to perform during a brawl... >> Christopher, I wonder if we've worked with the same choreographer. There >> always seems to be one like her involved in every show I've done! >> > > Having the orchestra on stage can be easy, or can be a nightmare, depending > on the production. I did a production of HAIR a number of years ago where > the band was on stage throughout, but there were just 7 of us. > > And sometimes the pit can also be dangerous - I played a production of 7 > Brides a few years ago where things were all but certain to fall into the > pit during one scene. After the final dress rehearsal, we got the drummer a > hard hat for that scene. > > But if you want brawls mixing with the musicians, some of the rock bands > I've played with were always that way. :) > > cd > -- > http://members.cox.net/dershem/index.html > http://dershem.livejournal.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
