New Poll - OUCH!

I am loveing this line of discussion, some of these war stories are hilarious!

But I want to comment on Andy's post. He's probably the one out of all of us with the most expertise in this area. He said at the end of his post that in his long career in the theatre he's never seen an injury that couldn't have been prevented. However, the worst one I've ever seen and the worst one I've ever sustained I think were just a result of plain bad luck.

Worst one I've seen; to the proud members of the cast of a certain GRADS production (Hi guys!!!) this story will be indelibly etched on the mind. At the very end of Act One, an actor had a line and a point. Just a simple line and a simple but moderately emphatic gesture. However, this simple gesture was enough to dislocate his shoulder, right there on stage, in front of God and the audience. The end of Act One blackout after his gesture was immediate (as was the ensuing chaos) so the audience never realised what had happened. But to quote another cast member upon viewing the video of that performance; "Wow...we could send that in to Worlds Funniest Dislocations....". To this day I've never seen anything braver (or more gross) than that actor relocating his shoulder, then finishing the show.

Worst one I've sustained; we were using a wooden bench, kind of like a church pew as a multipurpose piece of the set. In my scene it was a bed. I had to sit on the bed and be given a mug from another actor. I would then collapse (gracefully) sideways from my sitting position upon the bench/bed so I was lying sideways on it, with my feet still on the floor. The actor who had given me the mug (which was... gasp!... drugged!!) would then move to sit beside me on the bench. This had gone swimmingly the whole way through rehersals and for several performances. Then one night, when I had fallen in a slightly different position and not left enough room for the other actor on the bench, she pushed me very slightly out of the way so she could sit down. Just a gentle push. But in the position I was in, it tore my intercostal muscle, leading to a very painful recovery period and a set of ribs that still aint quite right.

I think some injuries on stage are just a result of a collection of bad coincidences. More or less unavoidable. The above two productions were not ones where anything that happened on stage (apart from one or two choreographed and rehearsed to death fight scenes in the second one) in the general interaction scenes could be seen as dangerous.

Sometimes these things just happen.

Leah