{"id":517,"date":"2009-08-17T12:57:07","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T16:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=517"},"modified":"2011-10-10T23:48:55","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T03:48:55","slug":"the-hazards-of-musical-theater-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=517","title":{"rendered":"The Hazards of Musical Theater in the 21st Century"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Andy Hertz<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nSaturday night, as I was music directing the opening night production of <em>The Fully Monty<\/em> for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.revisiontheatre.org\">ReVision Theater<\/a> in Asbury Park, I (along with everyone in the theater) was reminded about the dangers of live performance:\u00a0not a flubbed line, not a missed lyric, not a wrong note.\u00a0 The power went out.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nIt occurred in the midst of a song.\u00a0The band has two guitars,\u00a0one keyboard, a drummer, two horns and two reeds.\u00a0Naturally, when we lost\u00a0power, the non-electric instruments kept playing.\u00a0And they, in fact,\u00a0finished the song quite well despite losing the bottom half of the\u00a0orchestra and nearly all of the rhythm section.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nAt first it seemed like it was just the band that lost power.\u00a0Then the\u00a0stage microphones went out and the lights went last (theater lights contain\u00a0residual power that can keep them going for a little longer before they shut\u00a0off).\u00a0After emergency crews tried unsuccessfully to remedy the situation,\u00a0we assumed\u00a0the show was done for the evening.\u00a0 Fortunately, someone ultimately found a\u00a0box with a switch (yes, one\u00a0switch) that restored all power to the theater.<\/p>\n<p>A remarkable thing occurred as the show continued:\u00a0It was\u00a0better than it ever had been.<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nWhy?\u00a0I believe that everyone realized that the worst thing that could\u00a0possibly happen in live theater (save injury) had happened and that somehow we all lived through it.\u00a0So it took the pressure off all of us,\u00a0including\u00a0myself, to move forward with a freedom and confidence we hadn&#8217;t had before.<\/p>\n<p>So, what could have been a financial and artistic disaster\u2014the need to refund\u00a0thousands of dollars, to sooth bruised egos,\u00a0apologize to\u00a0patrons, etc.\u2014turned into a positive and artistically affirming experience for all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:34px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=517\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Andy Hertz \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Saturday night, as I was music directing the opening night production of The Fully Monty for ReVision Theater in Asbury Park, I (along with everyone in the theater) was reminded about the dangers of live performance:\u00a0not a flubbed line, not a missed lyric, not a wrong note.\u00a0 The power went out. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2717,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/2717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}