Sunday, November 29, 2009
Learning to fly
Foxboro Reporter: "When 17-year-old Nicole Cayer of North Providence learned that she had landed the title role in 'Peter Pan' at the Orpheum Theatre, she was beside herself with excitement."
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7 comments:
I thought this article helped show non-theatre people a good backstage glimpse of what goes on behind the stage. It made them intrigued to see the mechanisms FOY put in. What caught my eye the most is that they are having ADULT handlers for the flying people. This was a good contrast to the article we had a few weeks ago. Hopefully everything will go as planned.
Despite how far rigging has come, it never is not inherently safe to fly things, especially over people's heads. Riggers just make it look easy. Sometimes people forget how much though goes into items that are flown. If they knew that maybe flying children around in inexperienced theater companies would raise major red flags for more parents and hopefully presidents of the drama club. This article is a perfect example of the care that goes into not only flying but flying people. People need to stop feeling so safe in the theatre. They need to learn how to make it safe.
I haven't yet worked with Foy on a production of Peter Pan, but I did work with the illustrious ZFX. It was really incredible to see how well the flight instructors knew how to train the actors to fly, and how comfortable they were in that position. Not only were they great technicians, but they knew how to speak to the actors to make even the little children feel comfortable up in the air, which can be quite the undertaking!
What a great contrast to the article a few weeks ago about horrible flying disasters. Like others have said, I'm glad the article spoke a lot about the backstage side of flying and now just the spectacle. People need to realize the danger associated with it and how important the technical side is to achieving the magical look on stage.
Seeing scenery flying is dangerous enough, but flying people, not to mention children, is even more dangerous. Showing us how care and precautions are being taken into account when flying people should make everyone feel lots easier--especially the parents.
It's great that this article is communicating how hard it is to fly actors properly, especially after that article about flying disasters in amateur theater. This article captured several perspectives--technicians, actors, trainers--that all stress how important it is to be well-trained, practice often, and stay very aware during every performance. Although this was a fairly light-hearted article, it might have also been good to reference some of the more disastrous consequences of untrained flyers, just to further stress the importance of rigorous training.
This article provides good contrast to the article 2-3 weeks ago about all of the accidents that can happen when doing "Peter Pan." While I realized that it takes a lot of work to do a flying effect, this article made me realize how much work the actor in the harness has to do while they are flying. In comparison to the previous article, it's good to hear that they are using Flying by Foy, and they have someone (hopefully) responsible running the effect.
Theater is a dangerous profession. Hopefully, the industry's fixation on safety will help combat most of that, but there are definitely those effects where everyone involved are well aware of the risks, but decide that they are too important to the show to give up. Of course, the group proceeds with the up most amount of caution. Flying people is one of the more dangerous things we do, not only because there is a person hanging up to 40 feet above the deck, but because there is so many things that can go wrong, and often, there are new people at the ropes and someone inexperienced in the air. There is so much to worry about when flying an actor from their costume and wigs to the rigging to their balance and the scenery under their landing.
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