Scary shit

One of a technician's greatest fears is that something goes wrong and somebody gets hurt. Last night, during the dance concert, it did, and someone did. I wasn't involved and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, but I was the most experienced technician on the show, so I feel a little responsible anyway.

Here's what happened. UNCC has a cyc lighting pit, a trench in the back part of the stage where the cyc lights are recessed into the floor. It's about 4' wide and bout 4' deep and runs most of the width of the stage. There's a shitload of lights in there, usually very hot, and a buttload of electricity, so between the fall and the shit you land on, there's a huge potential for serious injury to someone falling in there.

And that's exactly what happened. Between the 3rd and 4th numbers of the night, a dancer fell into the cyc pit. I'm still not sure how he managed to do it, since we had put shit in the way to try and block off the pit from people falling into it, but he managed. And this wasn't some clueless kid, this was a faculty member from the college, an experienced dancer who was very familiar with the space, so I'm really confused as to what happened.

Fortunately he's okay. Banged up, bruised and scraped, but nothing broken. He has to dance tomorrow, so we'll see how well that goes, because the piece he's scheduled to perform in is very athletic, and he really beat the shit out of himself. But there's really nothing more terrifying than hearing over headset "a dancer fell into the cyc pit." It made me go cold all over, because I knew something bad had happened and there was nothing in the world I could do about it.