Friday, July 24, 2009

The Winds & Woes of Outdoor Theatre

Yesterday started out as a normal rehearsal day: Wake up, check the weather (twice), and then head to site for the day. The forecast included a 30% chance of thundershowers, but with light winds and almost no rain, so we pushed forward. About 2 hours into rehearsal the winds began gusting - we're estimating about 80 km/hr and we began to scramble to get the site secured so it wouldn't get wrecked.
The winds were so strong that our fencing was blowing sideways, and after getting pushed around trying to keep it upright, we finally gave up and lay it down on the ground and began to focus on securing the tents which were trying to take off. At the same time we were being hit by gusts of wind that started to knock over the front rows of seats.
The wind did not want to stop there though! It decided that tree branches should no longer be remaining in trees, and once the large branches started falling on stage, we decided that for safety's sake we all needed to leave the site and head to safer grounds. The dust was flying and getting in everyone's eyes, and if the tents did pick up we did not want to be under them.

Today's forecast is for thunderstorms again, so hopefully we don't have to cancel opening night.

1 comment:

D-slayer said...

The winds and woes of outdoor theater sounds about right. I've done three outdoor shows. During one of them, the weather report was decreasing in chance of rain all day so we decided to take a chance. It dumped rain right in the middle of the performance. We wound up leading our audience of more than a hundred people four blocks to our rain location. It's one of my best theater memories.