SFGate: A Cirque du Soleil technician was killed Tuesday night when he was struck by a lift during a pre-set of the “LUZIA” show near San Francisco’s AT&T Park, authorities said.
The accident was reported at 6:43 p.m., said Officer Carlos Manfredi, in a tent in Lot A south of the ballpark, where the show is being staged until Jan. 29.
14 comments:
It is horribly sad to be in that kind of predicament on an emotional and financial standpoint. There is the standard reaction of grief through empathy but I can't image the pressure Cirque could be facing. Between the mindset of the performers and the monetary loss of an entire audience the managers have their work cut out for them. Not only that but depending on how skilled the operator was replacing them might be a challenge to deal with in the midst of all the other programs. In the end the death is sad but it has way more consequences that just that.
I suppose it is not a crazy thing to hear that a cirque performer died from an accident, just as traumatic and upsetting, but less surprising. The performers are the ones jumping from high heights unsecured, doing daring stunts and amazing tricks, they are constantly in danger if they mess up. However, you do not typically think of a preset as a dangerous activity. The article does not give very much information about what happened at all other than saying the technician was hit by a “lift.” We do not even know if this is a show lift, and aerial lift, or what. We can assume that whatever the activity was, it happens before every show, but even that is speculation because things always go wrong and need fixing during preset. All in all this is beyond upsetting and I hope that the error is found, fixed, and nothing like this happens again. I wonder if it was a procedural error, a human error, or just an “act of god.”
Hearing stories like these always make me stop. We as theatre technicians don't often think that the things we do everyday are life threatening, but many things we do are. Many times people ignore the safety precautions set in place because they unsafe way is faster, but then an accident happens and you learn the hard way that no safety precaution is every too cautious. Theatre is an amazing business that makes magical things happen everyday. We often do things that have never been done before and that provides many hazy situations where every precaution possible to take should be taken. Another thing that makes safety so important is the fact that many times those in charge of enforcing safety precautions are those leading a group of people who are not as knowledgeable as they are. If they choose not to follow proper procedures they are not only putting their life in danger but also the life of others who have trusted them. Like I said at the beginning, whenever I hear a story of tragedy in the theatre it makes me sad not just for the loss of life, but for the person who decided to make great things by way of theatre and ended up loosing their life in that pursuit.
How heart breaking. I wish there were a few more details concerning the mishaps that led to this unfortunate circumstance, but I also understand why they may not have waned to tell every detail right after the event. Maybe it will come out eventually. Since a lot of this is left to speculation it allows the mind to wonder about all that could have gone wrong. Knowing that longevity of most Cirque de Soleil performances run, and considering that this happened in pre show, I feel like this may again fall into the same basket as a previous comment I made this week when a trust fell on young woman at a show. We don’t look at our jobs as dangerous. Especially with pre shows, after 3 weeks of the same show you can become mindless as you do all of the things you need to do. This was a terrible event, but at the very least it can act as a lesson in safety for the rest of the entertainment industry.
Here we are again. How sad that I am able say that. I think Cirque is in a really interesting position and faces a problematic question. Do we keep hearing about these accidents because they are a high-profile, dominant company or do we keep hearing about them because they are happening more than they should? The second half of that question leads me to an interesting conversation I had the other day. Someone said, “well I guess that’s pretty good, how many years has it been since Kâ?” We should not let ourselves think this way. Every major accident should be treated as a catastrophic event and be covered similarly. It’s unfortunate because I can be almost certain in saying that this will not get picked up by major news outlets since it was not a performer during a show. I also learned that supposedly there was a similar accident within the past month that occurred in Australia? I think that Cirque faces a difficult path in how they as a company respond to incidents like this.
Wow. Two articles about deaths related to Cirque du Soliel in one week. It must truly be a devastating time for everyone in the Cirque community right now. Everyone must be on their A game to ensure that the common thought that “death comes in 3’s” doesn’t reign true for this company. It is sad to say that I am used to seeing performer deaths come out of cirque and that it actually surprises me to see a death related to an operator error. My heart goes out to every friend, cast member, and family member that has been negatively impacted by the death of an amazing artist and creative person. Though I wish I could get more information about the details of this horrific death, I am kind of glad that it was kept secret. You have to respect the families of those involved. There must have been so much safety training after these events.
It is so sad and frustrating when someone in the theatre or event industry dies or is severely injured while on the job. While a lot of what we do in these industries is inherently dangerous, it is still unacceptable to have these instances occur. I hope that the OSHA investigation brings forward valuable information to prevent such accidents in the future. It may be because they are a huge company with many high-tech and stunt-filled productions, but it seems like Cirque du Soleil has accidents somewhat more often than you’d expect from such a large and successful company. While it’s hard to develop safety training for new practices and equipment, I hope that Cirque can soon stop having news-making accidents. It’s interesting, and a bit odd, that such a well-respected company has accidents of this magnitude and frequency. It’s always sad to read about such accidents, but this article really struck home with me because one of my coworkers this summer had previously worked for Cirque and I immediately thought of him. To think that these accidents can happen to any of us is why we must stay serious about safety.
This is the first major entertainment accident in which I have been involved enough in the industry to actually know people who knew the deceased personally. Somehow this made it hit home for me that this industry can be really dangerous and it is usually the mundane things that lead to danger, in a way that other articles and stories have not. While there are still lots of details that are unknown, and will likely remain unknown until the conclusion of the CalOSHA investigation, it is safe to say that presetting for a show is an activity that we in theater usually consider exceptionally mundane, and usually very safe. While we might take greater precautions in the space during a loadin or a strike, a preshow seems so stable that it is easy to let our guard down. One thing I noted from the article was about the Firefighters performing CPR when they arrived on the scene. I am currently finishing up a class to become an Emergency Medical Responder, a skill set I partially wanted to pick up for scenarios like these. Since we are working in an industry with a greater inherent risk than many others, I feel better if I am trained to be able to help deal with the most critical lifesaving measures until the first responders arrive.
I feel like I keep hearing news articles about Cirque du Soleil injuries and deaths. I guess it makes sense since they pull so many crazy stunts and have so many technical feats, but it’s still very disheartening to see how much people put their lives in danger to creates spectacles of this scale. I feel like, because of its stature and prominence within the theater and entertainment worlds, that it should be the poster child for safety and vigilance for a production of its size. The article is very vague, granted I’m glad it’s not too graphic, but I can’t help wondering exactly how this situation came about. I feel that often with safety issues that result in such serious injuries or deaths within the entertainment industry, it comes from a lack of communication or some small simple mistake that could have been avoided with one simple check-over. In the case of being struck with a lift I can’t imagine which of these it could have been, or if it was from something else entirely. My heart goes out to the technician and their family. I hope that Cirque will take measures to avoid such tragic accidents in the future.
This is enormously sad to hear but at the same time, even more sadly so, not surprising. Cirque seems to have explored every thrilling trick possible from the performers’ incredible acrobatics to the breath-taking mind-blowing special effect onstage – medias, pyros, fires, and huge automations. Every performance photo of Cirque is stunning and surreal, and when you sit in the audience, you are only gonna be busy in being amazed by everything you see. In fact, there are so many tricks happening at the same time you do not have a single second to spare for thoughts like, “this is severely dangerous”, until tragedies like this happen again, or you have a backstage tour where the technicians or managers call some automation piece “giant monster”, and tell you the speed of the fire shot from a fire wheel, and share some of the near-death moments that the audience would never notice but the entire backstage team almost had a nerve breakdown. The reality is that theatre is dangerous, sometimes even fatal, to everyone from performers onstage to technicians behind the scene. I think we do realize how monstrous it could become so we put constant caution and attention to the work, but when the show has been on for a while, it is easy to get into habit of doing the sequence without recognizing the hidden danger until you have a wake-up call. During the backstage tour I can see that there are really countless safety precautions to prevent terrible alternatives, but still, the nature of their work can never guarantee 100% safety.
This is a very sad instance that occurred on Tuesday. Cirque Du Soleil has a lot of complex components to their shows that make it very easy to make a mistake and have something as fatal as death occur. It is always very scary to hear stories like this because it could happen to anyone, you make one wrong move or push a piece of equipment to it limits and people will get hurt. It is sad that it takes stories like these for people to learn the importance of safety. I would be very curious to hear what the incident that occurred with the lift was. It seems like a lot of the regulation that are placed on equipment is treated like a suggestion. I was never aware of how much people put their lives in danger when on the job until this year. Like my technical management teacher always say. let the change to better safety start with you.
This is very sad news, and we can learn from it by realizing how important proper safety procedures are. The scale of production that Cirque does is massive, and it is essential that all parts of it are working in harmony to avoid safety. The article does not mention exactly how the deceased operator was struck by the lift, so we can't assume if any specific safety errors occurred. Even though this happened at a large-scale company at cirque, the cause of death was related to a lift, which is a common piece of equipment. Accidents such as these are not limited to large, complicated load-ins. They can occur while changing a light bulb in a small building, if the proper safety precautions are not taken. It is, I think, even more important to pay a great deal of attention to safety when working with a smaller company, because the people might not have as much experience. Accidents like these can happen anywhere, so we should always be as safe as we can.
I cannot imagine the pain of the cast and crew on this show, to have lost a member of their team (or to even witness it), but right now my grief is for this man's father, Gilles St. Croix. Mr. St. Croix is one of the founders of Cirque du Soleil, and to me, the thought of your child being killed by your own creation is beyond heartbreaking. Time after time, the company has had to make decisions about safety, and unfortunately some have ended in injury or death. But to make a decision for the company and lose your son as a result, surely that is prompting a cold, hard look at the company and the steps it is taking to keep the whole team safe. To be honest though, I'm not sure there will be much to change. From what I saw backstage and heard from the management teams, there are layers and layers of precautions on these shows. The accidents we hear about are really that- accidents. They're totally unexpected, one-in-a-million chance flukes. I will be interested to hear more about the investigation and what actually happened with the lift.
Everyone's thoughts thus far have been about the realization that technical theater can be dangerous and that we need to be safer and Cirque should be the pinnacle of safety and double check everything. And, of course, I agree with all of those sentiments. It is beyond true that we work in a dangerous environment, all you have to do to remind yourself of that is observe a lighting install or walk into the shop and actually look at what we have in there. Danger is an accepted part of our technical theater "culture". Looking at CMU - how many of the current sophomores went to the hospital at some point last year? How many accidents have we had this year or over the summer? For God's sake, one of us drank rubbing alcohol over Thanksgiving break and made a joke about it in the group chat (everything is fine). We deliberately ignore the procedures that are already in place to keep us safe and, as a result, accidents happen. No matter how many checks and regulations there are, terrible accidents will still occur at all levels of theater. High schools will still be setting things on fire or injuring students with Sweeney Todd razors (or trap doors in the set). Cirque will, hopefully not often, have a close call or a tragedy. Safety will always be set aside to save time (because it's always worked before), convenience and comfort, or spectacle.
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