Variety: Brennin Hunt has had a whirlwind weekend.
Hunt was set to play musician Roger Davis on Sunday in Fox’s live version of “Rent” — a role that he says “feels like home to me” because he, too, is a singer-songwriter and he knows what it feels like to try to write a powerful song. But the night before he was set to go live on that nationally televised stage, he broke his foot, which drastically changed plans for the telecast.
4 comments:
The incident of the broken foot before Rent Live reinforces the importance of understudies. This article notes that the reason they weren’t any was because the actors were so specifically chosen, and their big names attracted many of the viewing audience. While Brennin Hunt, who played Roger, injured himself towards the end of the filmed dress rehearsal, it could have been a lot worse. If it had occurred earlier on, he might not have been able to even complete the performance. Additionally, much of the blocking and choreography might have had to have been cut from the piece. While the injury is unfortunate, it was somewhat conveniently placed in the process. An incident like this would have been a major issue in live theatre, thus supporting the idea of the swing and the understudy. It also makes me the think of the necessity of a contingency plan, and how those vary across entertainment platforms.
I completely agree with Sidney that understudies and swings are important but sometimes there is a financial or other reason that live theatre can't have an understudy. Look at the theatre here, the actors are tightly booked on shows that there aren't enough actors for having an understudy in a show. The contingency here is that the director or assistant director will go one. I think something that should be in place that this article highlights the need for talking about a contingency plan but really just highlights the need for a contingency plan to get communicated to everyone. The producers seemed to have a contingency that they use the footage from the dress rehearsal. Though this wasn't communicated to the performers till it was needed. From reading the article it seems like these injuries are common. The article talks about Aaron Tveit spraining his ankle during Grease Live. There seems to need to be something to help protect performers from foot injuries, which seem very common. I don't know a solution but there must be one that someone more medically inclined would know how to solve.
As Sidney said, the accident that occurred over at Fox during Rent Live truly does show how important an understudy's job is. Most people think that the understudy is just the "less good" actor or the actor that came in second place for that role, but that isn't necessarily the case. The understudy has to be one hundred percent ready to jump into a show at any moment. If there had been an understudy for Brennin Hunt, the understudy would have had less than 24 hours to be ready to make the show go on, in front of millions of people worldwide. That amount of talent that must take seems incredible to me. All that being said, the choice to not have an understudy definitely stresses how much each an every actor meant to this specific version of Rent. If there had been an understudy, the question still stands, would they have used him, or would they have played the dress rehearsal as they did?
I give Brennin Hunt serious credit for having such a good sense of humor about this whole thing. To echo Sidney understudies can prove to be vital to a production and this is a key example. I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that the ‘Live’ series has run into a very similar issue before when Aaron Tveit sprained his ankle; he just had to push the pain. I understand having to do your job but I’m disappointed that was the expectation for him. Something seems wrong that pushing through intense pain is the standard and it seems like Hunt was ready to do this before the doctor warned him against it at the cost of surgery. Personally watching Rent *almost* live I wondered why they chose use all the pre-recorded scenes that Hunt wasn’t in. I felt there was little justification for using those pre- recorded scenes. Maybe there were logistics that aren’t readily apparent. I was also consistently not able to hear the vocals over the audience, due to no one knowing this would be the real one. Overall the show was not bad but was missing the pow.
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