by Richard Cadena: There’s a thing that happens during the build of a show when it comes time to take a break. Someone, usually the crew leader, announces a break by saying, “Make it safe, go wash up.” The part about making it safe is important because there are hazards involved in building a show, and one of the most persistent is gravity. Gravity never takes a break.
4 comments:
Recently a lot of content concerning safety hazards in the workspace in theatre have been popping up in multiple places. I’ve seen articles about it in my ‘for you’ feed, I’ve heard about it from various professors, and it is constantly on my mind as I work the evening crew calls. I think this article in particular highlighted the importance of being firm and standing up for yourself in these kinds of hazardous situations. In the unfortunately all too common circumstance where workers find their supervisors neglecting their safety, it is essential to be able to beat the fear that there will be repercussions and voice their concerns. As someone who might work in these types of environments in the future, I follow these stories closely, but I hadn’t heard about the incident that resulted in the death of Misael Aguirre. I wonder whether the workers were unionized, and if that would have made a difference.
This was such a sad story to read. The Camping World Stadium is 20 minutes away from my home and to hear that somebody died there last week is awful. His name was Misael Aguirre and he was from Texas, and he was working on a load-in for a festival. I can't imagine what must have gone wrong to result in his death. That's so horrible. Stuff like that makes you think about the bigger picture. Entertainment is great, but this man lost his life trying to help set up a three day festival. And nonetheless, the show goes on. Of course they're not going to cancel a whole festival due to the loss of a worker, but consider how that might be different if it was a performer, even with a small role. It's something interesting to think about.
I really enjoyed reading this article because it served as a good reminder to me for when I’m working in places that are not as strict about OSHA and other safety protocols as CMU is. I have always been told that I can say no to whatever I’m uncomfortable with but sometimes, even knowing that, actually saying no is different when working in the real world. Reading this article gave me some good tips to get out of sticky situations and I learned some of the subtleties of saying no. I feel like everyone should read this article because it is a good one to have in their back pocket for whenever they land themselves in a sticky situation. I know that this article would have been super helpful for me when I was working my summer jobs that had little to no regard for workplace safety and labor concerns.
Having as much collaboration as theater does often does not means that people are actually making everything they do into public knowledge. While there are obvious dangers in any theatre, I think the article does a good job in saying that there are a lot of hidden dangers that even people working nearby might not know about. I did enjoy that they mentioned gravity is ever present, and that it is one of the largest sources of danger. I think the "make it safe" trope is good when calling for breaks, but it also usually takes more than a couple of seconds to make something safe. It is important that near a break time you are never actively doing something that could cause major harm if you were to walk away from it. I think the article makes a great point that we should always be trying our best while working to make sure the environment is safe even if you are still working on it. Accidents happen, and there is no way to avoid every possible accident that might occur, but it is in everyone's best interest while working to make sure that anything you do should be safe enough for a random person who walks into a theatre not be in immediate danger.
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