Variety: In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, should festivals and concerts have a single person charged with the power of stopping a show if conditions grow dangerous? What greater demands will insurers be making since that Texas festival pointed up how an entertainment event can turn deadly? And where does responsibility start, or the buck end, if things go terribly wrong at a show?
5 comments:
A really good point that this article makes is that certain artists will necessitate a more secure/danger-proof stage setup. A more lowkey artist won’t need a cement-secured fence and extra security, but an artist with a huge, young following will need plenty of attention paid to crowd control. The Astroworld tragedy along with the many other examples of dangerous concert situations seem like a storm of lots of different factors contributing to injuries and deaths in the crowd. Near the end of the article Bauer compared Astroworld to Fyre Festival which I found strange; Fyre Festival was basically a hoax with how skeletal the planning and financing was, whereas Astroworld did seem to be fully planned but not necessarily with the crowds in mind that would be coming - at Fyre Festival, the organizers knew exactly how many people would be showing up and the fault wasn’t at all on the attendees.
Ramping up concert and festival safety is an interesting conversation, because on the one hand I believe that the mild danger and freedom that comes with going to a large music festival and concert is a part of the beauty of it. Every festival I’ve been to where there was over the top security and safety precautions, I’ve mildly despised. That being said, it is an absolute tragedy hearing about what occurred at Travis Scotts last concert that resulted in the deaths of 10 people in Houston. The sad reality is that this could have been easily fixed if less people were allowed to attend and there was more crowed control and sectioning. The moshing culture that surrounds Travis Scott’s music is also a bit to blame seeing as Travis literally raps "it ain't a mosh pit if ain't no injuries." In his song Stargazing. Yet, I absolutely love mosh pits as there is a beauty to just smashing around and jumping in a huge crowd of people, but concert venues and festivals need to access how total collapse and stampedes can be avoided like what happened in Houston. Moshing is an inherently dangerous activity, but it should never cost someone’s life.
I went to Lollapalooza last summer. I had never been to a music festival prior, but I spent a fair amount of time close to the rails. I was really stunned by the number of people passing/needing emergency medical assistance. There’s no way to avoid it really given hot summer temperatures, large crowds, and obvious substance abuse that comes along with such an event. There was never a point where I saw an artist stop an event at Lollapalooza. However, I saw Willow Smith have to stop a show in a small crowd at Mr. Smalls in September. Personally, I think it is super odd that there isn’t already a person monitoring for medical emergencies or dangerous situations that would arise. It should never be an artist’s responsibility because they could simply be too busy. At Willow, there were no paramedics, and she could’ve so easily missed that one person in the crowd on the ground. I think we will definitely see a normalized position soon.
I think this is really a question of audience expectations.
There should not be an assumed liability by an audience member at a live event. It is the job of the event coordinators and production company to minimize risk by engineering out things that could potentially harm the audience. Obviously there is no way to upfront prevent the conditions that could cause an event to become deadly via audience members creating unsafe conditions. But that means we need a kind of release valve to release that pressure should it reach a critical point. Perhaps something that acts as a way to kill power and return the venue to a pre-opening condition. Sound and Show lights to 0. House Lights to full, so to speak. There is no reason for this conversation to be happening. I am of the opinion there is no good reason to get hurt as an employee. That goes even further for the end-user, in this case the audience members, who assume they are paying to come see a show that will not cause them to die.
They need a stage manager. The tragedy that happened at Astroworld and the following lack of responsibility by Travis Scott is appalling. As the article mentions, the risk of chaos is higher at some events than others, and security plans are also there to address other issues like weather complications. While I think it is important for the artist to stop the show if they notice something amiss, they aren’t able to catch everything. There needs to be constant surveillance of the crowd to ensure a stop can be called as quickly as possible. Someone who is trained in managing crisis situations should come onstage to help organize the situation and provide reassurance to the crowd, while having the artists simultaneously talking calmly with the crowd could help enormously. It also makes sense to make the decision quickly, so it can be dealt with rapidly. Emergency medical services need to be standing by in the arena.
Post a Comment