CMU School of Drama


Sunday, October 28, 2007

Anticipated Akon Show Axed Following Stage Collapse

Celebrity News: "Plenty found out yesterday at Emory University as a stage that was to be used by R&B star Akon collapsed, injuring 3, and canceling the school's highly anticipated Fall Band Party."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how the whole structure of stage and rigging looked like. But this article says, the weight of lighting would be the cause of the canopy's collapse. It sounds the canopy and lighting shared the same truss and towers. For the concert's lighting, there is always a bunch of stuff hung, and in particular, the moving lights are heavy. Finally the truss was unable to support the total weight, and the accident happened. This gives me a lesson. If I have chance to work on a production having this kind of stage and rigging, I'll raise head and pay more attention on the stuff in the air.

shupcey said...

This seems like quite the technical mistake. It's hard to believe that they could just completely miss some part of the engineering of this stage, and that the stage wasn't strong enough to hold what weight it needed to support. I would be interested to see how it was set up and what the real fault was - whether just a foolish mistake or some sort of fluke - probably the former. Safety is always the prime concern when it comes to theatre and our setups - let's hope we never overlook something like this.