chicagotribune.com: A fire-breathing stilt walker burned when flames flared up on his face during a dress rehearsal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is expected to be released from the hospital Thursday, his father told the Chicago Tribune.
“It’s horrifying,” said Clifton Truman Daniel, 55, who was in the audience watching his son Wesley when the mishap occurred late Monday afternoon. “You don’t believe it. At first, everything’s fine. You’re proud of him. You’re amazed at what he’s learned to do, and suddenly he’s in trouble.”
7 comments:
I find it odd that two such incidents, supposedly accidents, happened so closely chronologically. It seems that this should be looked into a little more closely because of that. I'm glad that Daniel is recovering, he has a bright future and it would be a shame if he had permanent scars from a strange, freak accident.
I find the writing of this article to be edited rather poorly; it is just a compilation of sentences with facts, many of which don't fit together very well in the order they're placed, and which don't seem to have much to do with the story in general. For example, his father claims to be Harry S. Truman's grandson. What does this have to do with Daniel getting his face burnt during rehearsal? It just doesn't seem quite right.
I couldn't help but think of Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark whilst reading this article. At least this director stopped after two mishaps; Julie Taymor did not get the message and kept casting new Spidermans. At least Daniel's injuries weren't too severe.
This article is not written very well. The author seemed to just put together every fact, relevant or not, they found on this story and published it. Also, the grammatical editing of the article is pretty poor and detracts from the author's credibility.
I agree with Emma this article seemed more like a publicity stunt than anything. I understand often times when events like this occurs venues release information to calm the public but as Emma said the relation to anyone notable is completely irrelevant.... I also think it is ridiculous that OSHA has decided to get involved after seeing the story in the media. I HIGHLY doubt OSHA has a policy for firebreathing but I could be wrong. All in all the article seems very false in nature.
Its honestly not very surprising that an incident occurred with fire breathing as it is a dangerous activity and is a bit difficult to predict. I myself have had some experience with fire breathing and while neither I nor the people I was working with received any injuries it is easy to see how one could happen very easily. It also seems like fire breathing with a mask on would also increase the possibility of an accident because not only is your vision limited but there is a possibility of fuel getting on the mask and then having that catching fire which may have happened in this instance.
Ah! This is terrifying. While the actor seems to be a good sport, I wonder what kind of culpability there is for the theater. How was he trained? Was he trained? As a young actor, I can imagine he will take the job to have a job, even if it's placing him in a precarious position.
OSHA would have to be involved as it is a workplace safety issue Alex. Also they need to ensure that the theatre is following the correct procedures for having live fire onstage. The reports state that the mask didn't catch the fire, maybe it is the liquid that is the problem. I don't know much about flame spitting, but I know many people who do it and that some fluids react differently in certain atmospheres. Maybe the fluid had a flash point that was too low. Thankfully they cut that aspect from the show, but I still think that they should investigate what went wrong.
I hope the theater doesn't catch any flack for this, it doesn't look like they will. It's not really a hard trick to pull off, my friends and I do it in the backyard all the time. If the costume didn't catch fire at any point then it looks like it was the fault of the actor. The actor didn't seem to disagree either. He knew the risk and didn't seem to be all that bothered by it. He probably just messed up the trick. Hope he makes a full recovery!
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