Call the Hold: Protect Your Cast, Crew, and Crowd

by Chris Peterson

I saw a clip from a production of Newsies making the rounds on TikTok, and my first thought was pretty simple: Why is this show still going?

The production appears to be outdoors, the wind is absolutely tearing through the set, pieces are moving around, a door comes loose and the actors are still trying to perform through it.

And I get it. Theatre people are conditioned to keep going. We actually take a weird amount of pride in getting through things that probably should have derailed a performance.

But there has to be a line.

When the set itself is being affected by the weather and pieces are moving in ways they're clearly not supposed to, you've crossed that line. At that point, somebody has to call a hold.

I don't know everything that was happening backstage during this particular performance. Maybe there were conversations happening that we can't see in the clip. But from what we can see, it looks unsafe. And that's enough for me to say I would have wanted that performance stopped.

Especially because the actors onstage aren't really in a position to make that decision themselves. They're trying to do their jobs. They're saying their lines, hitting their marks and probably assuming somebody else is watching what is happening around them.

That's part of why stage management exists.

Years ago, I worked on a production where a large prop piece had been reset incorrectly and started slowly moving toward the edge of the stage during a performance. The audience didn't notice it. Most of the actors didn't notice it either.

The stage manager did. House lights came up, an announcement was made that we needed to pause for a safety issue, the crew fixed it and we started again.

That was it.

Nobody stormed out demanding a refund because the sacred theatrical experience had been interrupted. In fact, people appreciated that we weren't going to risk dropping something into the audience just so we could say the show never stopped.

That's the part I wish we talked about more when we teach stage managers.

Yes, your job is to keep the performance moving. But sometimes doing your job means stopping it. If an actor is hurt, stop. If somebody in the audience is having a medical emergency, stop.

And if the wind is blowing pieces of your set around while performers are standing underneath them, you probably don't need another sign.

“The show must go on” has always been one of those theatre sayings we love repeating.

Sometimes the show shouldn't go on. And somebody needs to be willing to say it.