TIFU by 'blowing up' the theatre during a production.

This happened quite a few years ago, but after the year we've all had I thought you might appreciate a funny story.

I was a second year drama student at Birmingham Uni and had to take my sound and lighting assessment which wasn't my strong point. I was assigned to work on the major production of the year which was Ibsen's Peer Gynt directed by a member of staff rather than the students, so it was quite a big deal. It involved a load of sound and lighting effects including a live string quartet, Grieg's musical score and lots of sound effects on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

My job was to operate the tape recorder up in the sound box at the back of the auditorium and I had a copy of the script with all the sound queues marked on it. All I had to do was queue up each effect, press start/stop and use the faders on the desk if necessary, while my friend did everything else because she knew what she was doing. It was quite complex but everything went smoothly in rehearsals...until press night.

Press night was a big deal. There was an invited audience of journalists, lecturers and other university big wigs plus all the director's friends and family. The pressure was on and we were all feeling it. Everyone backstage had headsets on so we could communicate. The first half went well - until the last scene before the interval. In this scene Peer Gynt comes home from his travels to find his mother on her death bed. It was a long and emotional death bed scene and in the heat of the moment both actors were really going for it, milking it a bit more than normal with extended sighing and crying. Consequently the music that I was playing in the background started to fade out before the end of the scene. So naturally I compensated by slowly pushing up the faders..to the max. The scene ended and it was brilliant. Peer Gynt's mother is dead, he's crying, we're all crying and sharing a moment of epic theatre. Except that I forgot to press stop on the tape recorder.

The next sound effect was an ocean liner blowing up in the mid Atlantic. It was the loudest explosion you've ever heard! Peer Gynt's mother fell off the bed. Everyone in the auditorium below the sound box jumped out of their seats and all I could hear in my head set was panicked screaming - followed by the director racing up to the sound box taking the stairs three at a time. He was furious.

The only thing that saved me was the fact that everyone, including myself, was in helpless hysterics of laughter by the time he got up to us. I swear he would have killed me otherwise.

The final irony was that I passed my assessment, probably because I gave everyone a night they wouldn't forget. Did I go on to work in the theatre? Er, no, although Peer Gynt did go on to star in Torchwood and Dr Who.

TL;DR I ruined a theatre show by accidentally playing an explosive sound effect at max volume during a death scene and causing all the actors and audience to scream, duck and cover.

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