Chicago Sun-Times: A carnival trick gone wrong caused a fire-breathing stilt walker to engulf his face in flames Monday at the dress rehearsal of the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.” The burned performer staggered offstage and fell to the floor.
4 comments:
That's really sad. I am always impressed by live stunts in shows, because they add a certain reality element to theatre that often is missing, especially with the general direction of modern theatre. I hope this mishap spurrs theatre companies to tighten their safety regulations (ESPECIALLY after the article last week about the 30 foot pit). I also hope entertainers are not deterred by this mishap, because I want to continue to see live stunts.
I dont think this is a concern of safety regulations. I have done fire stunts before, as the company said in their statement they were approved by chicago-fire for the stunt. The issue i think is the mix of attempting an already dangerous stunt with an obstruction like wearing a mask. Fire breathing requires a strong breath to expel the breath as far out as possible. Putting something like a mask in the way and as this picture appears it is a full face mask with a mouth hole made slightly larger. the most common injury with fire breathing is people having the liquid drip down their mouth and face or off spray on their face and arms that the fire catches too. So like i said i do not think its necessarily an issue of following safety regulation but people compromising what it takes to comfortably perform a stunt for what the designer wants
This is so horrible. It is pretty hard to tell from this article (it doesn't have too much information in it) but this doesn't seem like it was really anyones fault or even a breach in safety protocol. Just a freak accident. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I just think its so sad when you get so horrifically hurt just doing something that you love. I mean I could see how some people might not have too much sympathy because the guy was breathing fire while on stilts, but as long as he, and the theater he was working for were taking all the right safety measure theoretically he should have been perfectly safe.
This week is jsut filled with tragic tales of fire. Looking at this from a managment stand point i honestly think this would just be a horrible thing to happen. I know managers and stagehands are normally trained encase something like this happens, especially at a professional opera house. how ever i am still confused as to how this happened. Especially with a similar mishap having happened several days before, it seems like every precaution would've been made to ensure it wouldn't happen again.
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