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Monday, September 10, 2018
Opening Cirque du Soleil show in Redmond canceled after audience sprayed with liquid
The Seattle Times: The opening show for Cirque du Soleil’s VOLTA show at Redmond’s Marymoor Park was abruptly canceled Friday night after liquid from below the stage sprayed the audience.
I read on another site that the unknown liquid was vegetable oil - whether that is correct however, I do not know. I feel bad for the people in the audience for a few reasons. Firstly, no one wants to be sprayed with something that will stain their clothes (especially when they’re likely dressed up for a show). Secondly, they didn’t get to see the full performance. Cirque lives in such a unique production category, and their shows are spectacular. It’s a shame the show couldn’t be performed in full, and I’d imagine the cast and production team feels the same. No one in the entertainment world likes to cut productions short. The problem is when safety comes into play, cutting a show short to preserve the safety of all parties becomes necessary. I admire how Cirque handled the situation - professionally and with upfront calmness. Their production team did their best to ensure their show could be performed safely and to its full potential.
That’s always a huge fear factor when traveling with a show. The possibility of things going wrong seems twice as likely when you’re setting up one day, performing for three, striking the next, and moving to a new city the next day. Luckily, Cirque de Soleil is such a huge company that they’re able to have a process for ticket holders to get a refund, but some small shows are not so lucky. Losing all ticket sales for an infinite amount of time and then having to repair whatever has been broken is a pain and very costly. Some small shows would probably go under for that. I guess it shows how important double checking and triple checking are to the theater world, if not the entire world. Those poor audience members, being sprayed by hydraulic fluid was not what they were expecting that night.
It is inevitable that accidents do happen. Cirque du Soleil does a great job of making sure all of their equipment is at tip top shape. I was shocked to hear that this accident was related to their equipment. I would typically think that the personnel are the most accident-prone facet of Cirque's operation. The experience of having hydraulic fluid spray into the audience must have been terrifying, but from how the audience member recounted the incident seems like it was not as scary as I imagine it. During the whole ordeal, it seems like Cirque management handled the emergency very professionally. I'm sure they have a whole slew of emergency procedures in place, but that is still very different than the actual response of staff. I hope that the staff of Cirque made a good effort to repair sentiments with the audience members, especially those affected. Those reparations will definitely be easier to make with the insurance and large scale budget of Cirque.
Safety first! Though if being sprayed by hydraulic fluid is the most newsworthy thing that happens to an audience these days we have come a long way from hundreds losing their life in notoriously fire prone theaters. I do know oil spills like this have happened before in theater, especially with all the automation in use. One was the lift they used to levitate Elphaba in Defying Gravity left a huge ring of oil on the stage that caused huge issues. I somehow doubt this was a mistake on behalf of the stage crew as there is a classic story of when Great Moments with Mr Lincoln opened at Disneyland. The default program if something went wrong was to have Mr L sit back down and slouch slightly in the chair. However, what caused the malfunction the most was a hydraulic line that burst in his chest and the fluid was red, so that combined with the default slouching made it look like they had recreated his assassination. Nevertheless, hydraulics bursting is very common, but if this was something much different then that its on Cirque because if it wasn't hydraulic how to you just spray that all over everyone.
Surprisingly, the part I found most interesting about this article was the process of how house management handles these sorts of incidents. I think that the process outlined in this article is very professional, though I did not expect anything less from Cirque who I am sure has audience management and contingency plans down to a science, and I appreciated how direct and accommodating it was to the patrons. If patrons were given pamphlets, they had to have been printed beforehand, which I'm sure is a requirement of all Cirque shows, with the level of complexity and machinery that are present in any given production, which I find to be a very responsible and upstanding practice. I think the author's comment at the end of the article about wanting to go back and see the rest of the show speaks to this level of professionalism with the way Cirque handled this incident.
5 comments:
I read on another site that the unknown liquid was vegetable oil - whether that is correct however, I do not know. I feel bad for the people in the audience for a few reasons. Firstly, no one wants to be sprayed with something that will stain their clothes (especially when they’re likely dressed up for a show). Secondly, they didn’t get to see the full performance. Cirque lives in such a unique production category, and their shows are spectacular. It’s a shame the show couldn’t be performed in full, and I’d imagine the cast and production team feels the same. No one in the entertainment world likes to cut productions short. The problem is when safety comes into play, cutting a show short to preserve the safety of all parties becomes necessary. I admire how Cirque handled the situation - professionally and with upfront calmness. Their production team did their best to ensure their show could be performed safely and to its full potential.
That’s always a huge fear factor when traveling with a show. The possibility of things going wrong seems twice as likely when you’re setting up one day, performing for three, striking the next, and moving to a new city the next day. Luckily, Cirque de Soleil is such a huge company that they’re able to have a process for ticket holders to get a refund, but some small shows are not so lucky. Losing all ticket sales for an infinite amount of time and then having to repair whatever has been broken is a pain and very costly. Some small shows would probably go under for that. I guess it shows how important double checking and triple checking are to the theater world, if not the entire world. Those poor audience members, being sprayed by hydraulic fluid was not what they were expecting that night.
It is inevitable that accidents do happen. Cirque du Soleil does a great job of making sure all of their equipment is at tip top shape. I was shocked to hear that this accident was related to their equipment. I would typically think that the personnel are the most accident-prone facet of Cirque's operation. The experience of having hydraulic fluid spray into the audience must have been terrifying, but from how the audience member recounted the incident seems like it was not as scary as I imagine it. During the whole ordeal, it seems like Cirque management handled the emergency very professionally. I'm sure they have a whole slew of emergency procedures in place, but that is still very different than the actual response of staff. I hope that the staff of Cirque made a good effort to repair sentiments with the audience members, especially those affected. Those reparations will definitely be easier to make with the insurance and large scale budget of Cirque.
Safety first! Though if being sprayed by hydraulic fluid is the most newsworthy thing that happens to an audience these days we have come a long way from hundreds losing their life in notoriously fire prone theaters. I do know oil spills like this have happened before in theater, especially with all the automation in use. One was the lift they used to levitate Elphaba in Defying Gravity left a huge ring of oil on the stage that caused huge issues. I somehow doubt this was a mistake on behalf of the stage crew as there is a classic story of when Great Moments with Mr Lincoln opened at Disneyland. The default program if something went wrong was to have Mr L sit back down and slouch slightly in the chair. However, what caused the malfunction the most was a hydraulic line that burst in his chest and the fluid was red, so that combined with the default slouching made it look like they had recreated his assassination. Nevertheless, hydraulics bursting is very common, but if this was something much different then that its on Cirque because if it wasn't hydraulic how to you just spray that all over everyone.
Surprisingly, the part I found most interesting about this article was the process of how house management handles these sorts of incidents. I think that the process outlined in this article is very professional, though I did not expect anything less from Cirque who I am sure has audience management and contingency plans down to a science, and I appreciated how direct and accommodating it was to the patrons. If patrons were given pamphlets, they had to have been printed beforehand, which I'm sure is a requirement of all Cirque shows, with the level of complexity and machinery that are present in any given production, which I find to be a very responsible and upstanding practice. I think the author's comment at the end of the article about wanting to go back and see the rest of the show speaks to this level of professionalism with the way Cirque handled this incident.
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