Stage Directions: In June of 2013, during the climatic battle scene of KÁ at the MGM Grand Resort in Las Vegas—where performers are suspended on wires far above the ground in front of a vertical wall representing a bird’s eye view of the battle—Cirque acrobat/aerialist Sarah Guillot-Guyard suddenly plunged 94 feet to the ground. She died from injuries sustained in the fall.
In December of 2014, Calum Pearson, vice president of the resident shows division of Cirque du Soleil, held a press conference giving a full accounting of what happened technically to lead to the incident, and announced that the show would be re-integrating the battle sequence. Shortly after that conference he sat down with SD to discuss what happened, emotionally and technically, to lead to that decision.
1 comment:
This is obviously a great tragedy. It is always unfortunate when such a talented performer dies at a project or company so well respected and enjoyed. I think OSHA dealt with the problem thoroughly and I trust that the cirque team has made measures on measures of precautions so that this will not happen again. That is the many qualities of show performance though, there is always a risk. There can be an actor that falls and gets hurt, there could be a scenery piece that doesn't move which blocks the rest of the movement. There will always be the risks concerning safety and the risks of anything going wrong. I've found that often these reasons happen due to the 1 in a million chances that "this" goes wrong. When reading the reason why she fell it definitely seemed like one of those situation that someone though of slightly but said what are the chances.... Even here on the Wiz, the sand bag ended up wrapping around the Pully system due to the moving automation. It then locked up and pulled the projection out of the moving house. These things happen unfortunately and fortunately we will keep on improving our ways of delivering spectacles in a safe way.
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