ABSTRACT
It happened within the last ten minutes of a production of You Can’t Take It with You, in the round. From the booth I could not see the grid. I noticed that the audience was looking up at something in the ceiling. I went into the house to check it out. One of the wooden three-fer connectors had shorted and melted the connector of the instrument. The flame was getting bigger and closer to the ceiling. I rushed back to the booth, turned on the house lights, and announced an evacuation. The house manager pulled the fire alarm. One of the cast members, a volunteer fire fighter, grabbed an extinguisher and shot it into the air to put out the flame. With the audience (about 215) outside, I asked the cast to finish the show, altering the blocking from in the round to in the parking lot. I didn’t actually see it because I was dealing with the fire department. I asked the cast to do a quick curtain call. The audience was very appreciative, even though they could not hear a lot of it, due to the noise of the fire engines and firemen. At the time, it was the worst incident I’d ever had to deal with. I was nervous and scared. We were very lucky. If the flames had gotten to the sprinkler system, there would have been extensive water damage to the theatre.
