Thanks for the A2A.

There are hundreds of stories I could probably share. Most of them are mundane like props breaking etc but I’ll give you some of the more interesting ones.

One venue I worked in had rather amusing incident where a member of an Amdram company tripped over a footlight and ended up falling into the orchestra pit, straight onto the musicians. The entire theatre apparently froze in horror as the stage manager came out to check on him. He ended up with a broken arm and bruised ego but that was about it.

We once constructed a time machine for a panto (don’t ask) which had a shower built in it for the slosh scene (it was a “food machine”) Anyway the dame gets in there with star trek style opening (me behind the truck pullin on hidden strings) One show the doors came off their runners, causing the dame to be stuck inside…

A production of Jack and the beanstalk that I worked on. Couple of incidents. Firstly Jack climbed the beanstalk (well he pretended to as he was hoisted up using a winch). He was told never to grab the actual beanstalk. One show he did and he managed to rip it out of its base, sending him swinging out over the audience. we continued the show and in the interval we repaired it discreetly so it would work as planned for when the beanstalk collapsed.

Same show - there was a giant puppet which had a single man inside of it. He used durastilts to get the height and one day when he put it on, the Velcro came undone - causing him to fall over - with all this puppet weight on him. Had to stop the show as it nearly killed him.

Little Shop of Horrors. One production I worked on, Mr Mushnik was a tall fellow and when he went into the plant - he didn’t come out the secret trap door. The plant didn't move at all. It couldn’t. Turns out as he entered the mouth his mic cable got wrapped around one of the plants teeth - and he couldn't get in or out. He was stuck. Ended up having to crawl into the small puppet myself and cut him out of his microphone so he could escape.

Production of Cinderella. Flying Horse and Carriage runs over its own power cable and kills its own power. Leaving Cinders, Buttons, and coachman 15 foot up in their air with no way to rescue them. And no way to bring in the tabs

On a national tour of Grease when it visited my venue. The stage is raked (sloped) so everything has a penchant to move downstage towards the audience. In a scene set in the school changing rooms, the boys were jumping on and off a shower truck. Which promptly jumped out of its guides and started to move downstage - for it to be caught by the crew standing behind it. We held it in place until the scene ended and we could pull this very heavy thing upstage.

There are probably hundreds more of these I could say but these are some of note!