Steve Diamond (l) as Gynt and me as the Buttonmoulder -
before I lost my eyebrows
We are experiencing technical difficulties...Five personal theatre catastrophes
by Gaëtan L. Charlebois
I have been to all sorts of theatre over four decades and have seen my share of technical problems on stage (mostly in the kind of shows so wacko you wonder if they're "part of the play"). Each time something went wrong in a play I was watching, a flood of memories would do a little zing-zing-thing in my brain. Been there...done that...the horror...the horror.
1) The Crucible
I was playing the Buttonmoulder in a production of Peer Gynt at theatre school. As I conversed with Gynt, I was to be melting buttons in a crucible which flamed away as I spoke. It was a metallic bowl with a small jar of Sterno at the bottom. At the end of the scene, I was to pop in a pinch of flash powder causing a small and colourful explosion, scaring Gynt and making the audience go, "Oooooh! Aaaaah!" Problem...the residue of several performances'-worth of flash powder had formed over the days and during one show the explosion was considerably less small and considerably more colourful. It nearly blew my motherfucking head off. As I walked off the stage, wobbly-legged, I could see and hear the orchestra laughing their asses off as my hair and eyebrows continued to smoke.
