Friday, November 20, 2015
What If I'm Attacked at Work? A Crew Primer, Part 1
JOL: In Paris last Friday, 13 November 2015, a few jihadi cowards stormed into Le Bataclan and murdered scores of people with AK-47’s. At FOH, the house lighting tech, Nathalie Jardin, took rounds and died form her injuries. Merchandiser Nick Alexander died from his gunshots onsite. They were just at work, doing what they loved, making the almighty dollar, but mostly digging the journey that we call Entertainment.
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Just like during 9/11, people are getting all worked up about keeping themselves safe because they are scared. It’s been 14 fucking years people! We already know the answers to these questions. The answer is you cannot prepare to be shot at during work! You know why? Because it’s not something that normally happens on a daily basis. If we lived in a warzone then maybe there would be well known strategies, but we are lucky enough to live in one of the safest damn countries in the world. All I can say is if you are scared to die at work, then take some self-defense classes, carry a knife or mace with you at all times, and get very good at running or pretending to be dead. Hello world, and welcome to being a woman! I was taught all of these things as a small child because it is not a safe world for women. A large majority of women I know are trained by their parents on how to avoid getting kidnapped, raped, or killed by age 16 because our society is still highly against women. So if terrorism makes people scared, welcome to my world.
This was a pretty rough article to get through. I think, no matter what the situation is, we should be preparing emergency plans for our theaters. This doesn't just apply to an active shooter situation- it can also apply to natural disasters, bomb threats, etc. Although the likelihood of one of these tragedies happening at our theaters is slim, it is our responsibility to have plans in place for our employees and patrons in case of any sort of emergency. While this is especially important in big cities like New York and DC, it really should be done everywhere. I also think coming up with plans is not enough. Speaking with employees and walking them through procedures is also a necessary step. Otherwise, employees may not remember the written plans in the moment of an emergency. As stage managers at CMU, Tina gives us a piece of paper that explains what we should announce if we need to stop the performance. The sheet explains that, in case of an emergency, stage managers should let house management take the lead in getting the audience to safety. Do we think this would work in all emergency situations? Should stage managers be taking some sort of lead on announcing what audiences should do in an emergency?
I’ve sometimes thought about what I would do in a situation that had someone causing mass terror with weapons. What would I end up doing? I’ve always thought of myself to be the one to help others, but I know people say there are times when you should act smart and not stupid. The attacks that happened in Paris are truly devastating, there are people out there who are meant to make our lives more miserable. There isn’t much that can be done against men with high powered rifles. Why someone or for that matter a group of people want to cause harm against others is truly messed up in the head. What they believe is just not natural. How broken are people like this to not really understand the consequences if they end up killing themselves. There is nothing noble in what they might consider a sacrifice, and we consider a slaughter.
This was a sort of overwhelming article for me, because as much as I have been totally distraught over the events of November 13th, this is the first article that I really identified with. It is extremely hard to think of yourself as someone who worked at the Bataclan for a few reasons. The first is that when these things happen, and I get extremely scared and nervous, I tend to reassure myself with things like, "What are the odds that I would be in the right theatre on the right night in the right city?" But when you're a permanent face in a theatre, it turns into a "when" and not an "if." Truthfully, I hate the world that makes me have to think about these things. It makes me sick that people's hatred is so great that they could kill scores of people for the passion of it. And sometimes, it makes me genuinely afraid to think of living and working in a city that could be a target of violence. But the fact of the matter is: we can't stop living our lives. Every day, we're going to get up with a fresh mind that is ready and excited to see the world and really LIVE in it. We're going to go to work and we're going to laugh with our friends and we're going to do what we love and love who we love and we're going to do our best to be happy. And as much as it absolutely wrenches my heart out to say this: if we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, there isn't much we can do but follow our instinct to survive and pray that we (and whoever we came with) makes it out alive. It is terrible. So, so terrible and absolutely horrifying, but unfortunately, when someone has decided that they want you dead, and they have an automatic weapon...you can only hope. Even if there is a plan.
The attacks on that Friday were horrifying to say the least. After having watched real footage from the tragedy now, I can only say it is now more horrifying and real to me than ever. Seeing people hang out of windows for safety, people drag their injured friends from harm, and dead bodies pile up in the door way and house floor... it's all incredibly terrifying and unspeakably sad. I must say though that the videos reminded me a lot of the same horror and tragedy that took place during the station nightclub fire that I've seen videos of online. That incident caused many regulations that govern fire safety codes in the theater industry, so it makes sense to ask how the implications of this event will affect regulations moving forward. Will audience safety from potential threats with firearms become a common precaution in theaters? Sure, anyone with strong enough intent to kill will find a way, but should we create regulation to ramp up security and minimize the chance of a rare occurrence? It's sad to say but really whats stopping anyone from taking a gun to a theater and shooting up the place? What has ever stopped them other than being an everyday decent citizen? Sure, this event was different from a fire, it was an attack carried out by people with malicious intent, but is it something that we could of prevented from metal detectors, or someone trained with a gun on staff, or are those otherwise too extreme precautions? Its very hard to tell. What I think is most important in the face of such a tragedy is not to jump to conclusions, but rather give time for rational thought to digest the true implications of the attack and find the right path to move forward.
I read all three installments of this article. I was wondering how long it was going to take for somebody to start this conversation.
What we do is relatively safe. Sure, we engage in activities that are high- risk, but we do it relatively safely. But the nature of what we do puts in into situations and locations that have large concentrations of people, usually people having a good time. That makes us a target for terror situations.
The point made in the 2nd part of the article indicates that the FOH staff may have been the first people the shooters saw. This is something that is likely to be true in a lot of venues. While the venue should make efforts to protect all patrons, I feel like the FOH staff should be receiving special safety considerations. I think the unfortunate truth here is that the venue should have a particular concern for the safety of it’s staff, especially if the staff are the first people a potentially violent intruder could encounter, with likely a limited amount of cover and escape routes.
It’s a sad an unfortunate true that our industry has come to conversations like this, but I guess that’s just one of the downsides to working in the entertainment business. There will (hopefully) be large crowds of people at your gig (hopefully) having a good time, and unfortunately these days that makes you a target.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the premise of this article, this idea that somehow one can be prepared for senseless and utter violence to enter their world without any warning. Now I'm not saying that we can't set up evacuation plans, and train ourselves to be more aware of our surroundings, but this tragic incident cannot push us to create fear-based policies such as carrying arms to a gig or setting up your console area so that there's something to run to cover to... These men targeted the Bataclan, but it could have been anywhere else, any other kind of public place. Simultaneous attacks took place at restaurants and cafes, do we think that their industry ought to put safeguards in place too? My point is, you can never be ready, and writing an article about the idea that you could somehow be prepared is harmful. It was good to see that the people he interviewed stressed that there's really not much you can do other than run and hide.
Of course we don't want a tragedy like this one to repeat itself. It was horrible. I still start shaking when I think about it, because it hurt me deep, at my core. But I think that arming concert crews and giving production folks military training is a step in the wrong direction. It feeds into the violence and the hatred, and this type of fearful reaction is what terrorists are looking to accomplish; we need to rise above that, and look to the real issues causing these crimes.
I always encourage everyone to be safe, and if your theater or venue is in a particularly dangerous place, then yes you should have plans in place to deal with violent emergencies. But we just can't start arming every tech at every metropolis performance venue. Because when an attack like this one strikes, nothing short of an audience made up of entirely of members of the military could avoid such a horrible carnage.
Unfortunately, I have grown up in a world where gun violence is not rare. I remember hearing my parents discuss Columbine. Several years later, during the month the Beltway sniper was active, I remember asking my parents what to do if a sniper should show up at my school. Their answers were dissatisfying, but entirely true: "It depends". There is no absolute foolproof way to survive an armed attack, especially one utilizing a fully automatic weapon. But the advice in this article - though common sense - is worth repeating, and there is impetus now more than ever to implement principles like keeping your head on a swivel. Because alertness and awareness are a clutch step in prevention, not only during an ongoing attack. As for the breaching of the safe space of the theatre, I cannot fathom what it would be like to be forced to transition from show mode to outright survival mode like that. I truly hope that I never do.
This sense of needing to know what to do in case of a gun violence or terrorist emergency is pretty scary to have to think about in today's world. Even at my old high school theater, my tech crew has had these types of discussions about what we would do if a shooter came into the school, either during a performance or during the school day. Like the article said, however, we could have made as many emergency response plans as we wanted, but ultimately none of them would have actually mattered if the real thing ever arose, because our response would have had to vary based on the actual situation at hand. Obviously, in a public high school or collegiate setting, no one should be packing heat on the job to attempt to prevent against these situations, but I was reassured that the people being interviewed also generally did not see any value in bringing guns to work in any type of entertainment work. If someone on the crew were to have a gun in this situation, it could very easily lead to a shootout, which ultimately has much more potential to go wrong and as the article said, can lead to being mistaken for an attacker.
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