Pollstar: Capt. Charles Hollowell of the Westfield Police Department said all of the students injured in the collapse Thursday evening were “doing really well,” including one who initially was reported in critical condition.
Authorities said a large group of students was on the stage during the grand finale of the “American Pie” concert at Westfield High School when the floor of the stage collapsed into the orchestra pit below.
5 comments:
This is absolutely terrifying. So often we hear about safety failures on rock n roll tours and related entertainment events. High school venues often go often forgotten I feel like in terms of inspection and safety. At my high school, I was never aware of an annual inspection of all of our equipment. Now that may because I just didn’t hear about it, but I think students should have a right to know what the equipment that they are performing on is safe and will not collapse. I cannot even imagine what those high school students are thinking, better yet if they will ever want to perform on that stage again. The school’s auditorium now has a reputation of not being safe and people will not want to be active in the performing arts anymore. I think that a simple mandatory inspection for high school theatres and performing venues would solve this issue and make kids feel safer.
This is a terrible event. I don’t know, but I can guess a high school technical crew build that stage that collapsed. It surprises me that the whole thing went down though and its not just the plywood broke in some spots. I mean, platforms, while not as strong as real floors are still pretty damn sturdy. I can’t imagine a whole stage of platforms just collapsing. Maybe it was built in a different way where the stage was constructed as one really big platform, like a deck, and the whole thing just went down. That wouldn’t really make sense to build as a temporary stage. And I am pretty sure it was a temporary stage since the article mentioned it was covering an orchestra pit. The other options is the stage could be built like my high school where floor that makes up the apron of the stage is removable to expose the pit. If that is the case, I can see how some supporting members could give way and the apron would cave.
I agree with Ben this is terrifying, but not surprising. When you speak to technicians and actors who were active in their high school's performing arts programs, they often speak unconcernedly about how decrepit some of the staging material was. For some reason there is an air of nostalgia around the idea of almost dying in a high school production. I remember several times in high school where everyone thought it was funny that we had been cited by the fire marshals almost every time they came to inspect. The idea that our theater was so dangerous that at halfway through a school year they had to do a complete overhaul of the space made such a great story that everyone forgot the grander implication. I hope that this makes high schools around the country more cognizant of safety for the sake of the students who have to work in the spaces.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve read an article on this page about a high school stage collapsing, but it’s always upsetting to hear about these things happening. Thankfully in this instance no one was killed, and everyone in the accident is doing fairly well. The interesting things about these sort of events is that it seems like the cause is typically something related to infrastructure, such as the cover for an orchestra pit that is a part of the theatre. Of course, high school theatres are notorious for violating, or just not being aware of, the guidelines for the safe operation of theatre equipment. Things like traps, pits and rigging systems that we deal with responsibly here because we’re trained to use them may not be used as cautiously by high school students who don’t know better. I’m curious as to whether this accident was due to a problem with the platform related to its construction or a problem with its installation, and how much weight it is rated to safely withstand. Follow up article next week?
Well, not to stereotype, but "that's so high-school"... I'm really impressed by how catastrophic the deck failure was. One second people are jumping up and down on a deck of dubious construction, the next second they all just vanish. I would love to see detailed pictures of what was actually going on with that "orchestra cover". Ultimately, I'm just glad nobody was more seriously injured in this event.
It is so frustrating when high-schools have the budget for theaters, cafe-toriums, or cafe-gym-torium, but not the money for a qualified technical theater staff member. Is asking for one staff position really all that much to ask!? Maybe that would have prevented this kind of event, maybe not. Sometimes I feel like high-school technical theater and performing arts is just one of the those no win situations. Everybody has plenty of stories about equipment failure or near misses from high school, but nobody has great suggestions on how to resolve those kind of scenarios in a sustainable way going forward.
Post a Comment