This post was originally written on October 26, 2008 but left in the archives because I didn’t get around to finishing it. But recently joining the “You know your [sic] a stagehand if…” group of Facebook inspired me to finish telling this story.

I’m lucky to be alive.

I’ve been through a divorce and custody battle, was hit by a car traveling about forty miles per hour, survived a bout with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, have been held at gunpoint on more than one occasion and grew up drinking tap water in Northern New Jersey.

But tonight was the closest I’ve come to losing my life.

Ever.

It’s sort of hard to describe in written form- so to keep things simple, I’ll give you the basics-

The Rockettes National Tour is (in it’s first version, was) one of the largest and most complex stage shows ever built. It’s got all of the elements of the biggest shows…but only bigger. Hundreds of moving lights, giant video walls, elaborate sound, pyro, a big double-decker-bus…and a track which is suspended below a large truss that’s in sort of a U-shape which circles the stage.

The track suspends a Santa Sleigh at one point in the show- it’s used for about fifteen seconds of the entire performance- but it’s there, nonetheless. Picture a curved I-beam suspended below a truss….

And my job at the beginning of the load out was to climb up to the track with the department head (the guy from the tour from a company that I won’t mention…but rhymes with “Toy”) and, while suspended in a square basket around four square feet large, travel the track (around seventy five feet in the air) and begin removing some of the bolts of the track to speed-up the load out process later in the night.

You see, there was a redundancy built into the track. There were four bolts on either side of the seam, top and bottom. So if you took every-other bolt out, the track would still be together. Just not as strong.

We traversed the track and my jittery nerves subsided- and my confidence steadied itself for the task.

Long story short, at the end of the track, we were to remove a few bolts attaching two pieces of truss together. (“Truss” is the large, square pieces of metal you’ll see hanging above a stage which hold lights and other show-related items above the stunned audience)

Normally, there are two “chain motors” for each section of truss. The chain-motors attach to the I-Beams on the ceiling of the arena, then fasten to the truss and raise it up about seventy five feet above the audience. (This particular load-out was following what’s called a “tech”, or, a run of about three weeks when the touring company comes in to rehearse a show before taking it out on the road). For a good portion of this tech, there were two chain motors on this section of truss. By the time that load-out came, however, there was only one. (One of the motors had to be moved to make way for another section of truss that was above the suspended track.)

ANYWAY…

We reach the section of truss that the suspension guy wanted to “break” from the rest of the track.

And I questioned it, immediately. “Dude, you sure about this? It just doesn’t really…feel right.”

“Oh yeah, man. It’s fine! I’ve been doing this for twenty years! I’d never put you in any harm.”

“Okay, then.”

I removed the first of my two bolts fairly easily. But the second gave some resistance. I wrenched away, and it seemed to have an extraordinary amount of pressure on it.

“You’re sure this is okay bro? It just seems to have a lot of pressure”

“Keep crankin. It’s fine”

Five or six more turns and the bolt broke free…and BANG! The truss dropped about four feet, sending the basket we were in rolling toward the edge of the track…seventy five feet above the stage and about thirty other stagehands working directly below us. And before my mind could register what was happening, we stopped…the basket swung out past the end of the track and I realized what had stopped us….

Vicegrips.

A single pair of blue fucking vicegrips that the guy had in the basket and I insisted we put at the edge of the track.

What did I learn that day?

First thing, never underestimate the power of a pair of vicegrips.

Second, no matter how experienced the person you’re working for may be, NEVER underestimate the intuitiveness of your gut.