Sunday, February 13, 2011
Labor Department Issues Violations to ‘Spider-Man’ Over 2010 Accidents
NYTimes.com: "The New York State Department of Labor has issued two safety violations against the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” over accidents last year that involved an actor falling more than 20 feet during the show and two other performers sustaining injuries while rehearsing a sling-shot technique, a state official familiar with the violations said Saturday.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I realize if Spider-Man can afford its production costs, it can afford some fines, but I still think they should be levied. What kind of a punishment is that? "Don't do that again; we'll be watching you carefully." I suppose if anything else happens, there will be hell to pay. Hopefully nothing serious does happen. I also thought it was interesting that they mentioned the actress who left after signing a confidentiality agreement and payment. To me, that sounds sort of like she was paid-off not to say anything, even thought I know those two things may well have been unrelated.
What strikes me about the involvement of the department of labor is that they must having a huge learning curve when it comes to understanding how the theatrical safety protocols work, and especially in a stunt based show where the actors are doing something inherently dangerous.
I thought that this issue was taken care of and old news. Great they go the official noise that the accidents are unexplainable and that they need to keep there new safety procedures in place. I feel that they were totally right that they need more safety procedures but I feel that currently they have enough to be safe. Any more would be a problem and just get in the way of the work be done. Cirque dose not need that much safety procedures as they have and the deaths or injures that they have are not in the media nearly as much as Spider man. They have been almost a year of tech to get all these issues taken care of and before the public will see it. So I feel that they are in an ok place.
It is shocking to me how long it took for the Department of Labor to get involved. There have been so many accidents; why weren't they investigating earlier on? I agree that this is old news. The accidents are being investigated and hopefully, with there being inspections, future accidents will be prevented. I also agree that there must be a lot the department of labor can learn from this experience. I also found this statement quite interesting, "Most of the reviews were negative; the musical so far has been one of the top-grossing shows on Broadway this winter." This says so much, while also demonstrating that as dangerous as this show has been, it makes too much money to be concerned with negative reviews, and, as it has been made obvious, this money far outweighs the potential injuries that could occur by continuing the show. Now that the Department of Labor has stepped in, though, this hopefully will no longer be a concern.
I agree with Kevin is that there probably has to be a large learning curve going on about how theater safety protocols work. Spider-man is doing some pretty crazy things and in some cases, having to figure out how to setup their safety protocols along the way. While most industries have their own regulations and guidelines, theater still falls under a hodgepodge.
It's interesting to me that they will have 2 stagehands checking all rigging now, instead of just one. I would have assumed that, you have the performer and the operator/rigger check their gear before it is used. Now there is 3 people that will be checking everything before a person is sent out to do their bit. I wonder if this means they will need to bring in more staff to account for this need or if they can use the staff they already have.
As a pm, Where would you put in your budget a contingency line for labor dept fines?
It's nice to see other regulatory agencies stepping in to the theatre realm. I get a sense that often times theatre safety is self policed as we're relatively small fish as far as other industries go. I mean, would a state regulators time be better spent on a hundred worker job site on a 30 story building, or show install.
While I have the sense the industry has done a good job of being self regulating it's nice that we're reminded every once and awhile that there are other authorities out there besides the fire marshall that we are subordinate to.
Post a Comment