Arturo Porazzi and Tim Kashani explain how to keep theater casts safe during rehearsals and performances. Use floor tape and diagrams to show set layout, brief swings and understudies on cues like when to avoid trap doors, and install safety shut-offs on moving pieces like lifts and columns that stop when they meet resistance.
Chapters
Safety is a big element. You always want to show the cast, look, this is what's happening. See, when you're in rehearsal, you only have tape on the floor, and you can show them pictures of the set. You can show them a diagram, a ground plan, and you can say, this is a wall. You cannot leap there. You won't have a career afterwards. You just can't. Then when you get there, they actually see it, it's like, oh, okay. I get it. He wasn't kidding. Yeah, yeah, that's what you were talking about. Yeah, it's an owie. So you show them, this is how the set's going to move, particularly with Memphis. We had a trap, we had a trap that went down, two of them, and we had this when we had the DJ booth when it would come up and these columns, all, you know, this stuff moves. When it hits you, it hits you. And, you know, we have safety measures where when it feels some resistance, it shuts down. But still, you get whacked. Yeah. You know, that hurts. So you have to make sure everybody is very, very clear, and particularly for the safety for the swings and understudies who are not out there on a nightly basis. Right. You know, particularly you have to make sure, are you clear? Do you understand that when the lights go out where you have to go because scenery is coming on or scenery is going off? Trapdoor is opening up, so don't walk down there. Do you understand that? And you have to make sure safety is very important because it is dangerous out there if you don't know what you're doing.
