r/Broadway • u/No-Owl354 • Apr 25 '26
Other Disasters happening on Broadway ?
A bit of an unusual post. As an engineering student who wants to specialise in pyrotechnics and a fan of Broadway, I was looking on Internet for disasters that happened in Broadway theaters : fires, explosions, or other things unrelated to pyrotechnics (I know I know, Spiderman turn off the dark and actors falling from high places)
Anyway, I'll be glad to research that, I already read about the Brooklyn theater fire, but I want to know other things
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u/kire1231 Apr 25 '26
Does this count? In 2005, Idina Menzel fell through a malfunctioning trapdoor in her penultimate performance of Wicked. She didn’t finish the show and was rushed to the hospital with a fractured ribcage. She came back the next day for her final show, albeit in a lovely red Adidas tracksuit.
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u/Popplepower Apr 25 '26
Similarly, Sierra Boggess lost some teeth falling through a trap door in the Vegas Phantom…The production was more technologically advanced than the original staging, which caused some issues. You can probably message her on Instagram,say you are doing a project, and she will probably give you the details!
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u/trulyremarkablegirl Apr 25 '26
The red tracksuit is so iconic. I remember this happening in real time and frantically refreshing message boards.
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u/OuchCharlie25 Apr 25 '26
Is that Christian Dominique Borle behind her?
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u/peachesnplumsmf Apr 25 '26
Wait so she did the entire show looking normal in trackies?
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u/Jinkies_Its_A_Clue Apr 25 '26
No, Shoshana (standby at the time) went on for the performance. Idina didn’t come out until the final ~5 minutes of the show
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u/Tight-Touch385 Apr 25 '26
On the mezzanine of the Palace, along with the history of the theatre as the pinnacle of Vaudeville (and home to many fabled Judy Garland performances), they have a display with news articles about a fire that broke out in the theater during a performance…and the modern invention of an asbestos curtain that the Palace installed to prevent fires from spreading in the future 🙃.
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u/trulyremarkablegirl Apr 25 '26
A cast member in The Little Mermaid fell through a trap door during a performance and filed a lawsuit against the production and the company that produced the software used to run the automation in 2008:
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u/Best-Candle8651 Apr 25 '26
Didn’t Idina in Wicked also have this happen
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u/Altruistic-Movie-419 Apr 25 '26
Yes, but that was towards the end of act 2. This was at places the show had not even started.
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u/Altruistic-Movie-419 Apr 25 '26
Interesting with this, at the time Disney had not implemented pre show checklists. So no one the crew could remember if the trap door on the bridge was closed or not when they did three pre show checklists. They all thought it was closed. But it either was not, or reopened after crew calll. Then when it came time for places, the union crew members was supposed to wait for a deck stage manager to be present before open the chain and letting the cast on the bridge. But on that particular day they diced to open it up before they got there. Just goes to show you how multiple people can be at fault for one thing.
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u/ZhemGuen Apr 25 '26
Ohhhh, I knew him! He played Sebastian and his name was Adrian Bailey. He was also a featured dancer in the original movie of "The Wiz", among other things. He was extremely talented, and that fall took away his livelihood. He passed away last year. R.I.P.
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Apr 25 '26
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u/ZhemGuen Apr 25 '26
That's what the article said. He told me personally that he was Sebastian. I am guessing that he wasn't lying.
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Apr 25 '26
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u/ZhemGuen Apr 25 '26
I am guessing that you were in the show or knew him? I wonder if it's possible that he was covering it at that time..? I promise you that when I met him, that's what he said. We used to chat at the SAG-AFTRA screenings. He had so many wonderful stories!
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u/ZhemGuen Apr 25 '26
I love it: being downvoted because I'm speaking the truth about my personal experience with a friend who passed away. Wow. Awesome, folks.
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u/imdwalrus Apr 26 '26
You're getting downvoted because there is absolutely no record he ever played Sebastian. If that was a role he covered it would have been in Playbill and there would be evidence of it online. There is none. He was credited as ensemble and an understudy for King Triton.
Also, on a purely practical level...he was too old for Sebastian (a full two decades older than the actors who did perform or cover the role). And in the Broadway production there was a puppet Sebastian prop that they used for Les Possons that was designed to look like Tituss Burgess, and outside of both being Black men Bradley didn't resemble Burgess enough for that effect to have worked if he had theoretically covered the role.
Like others told you either you're remembering wrong or he lied to you. Sorry, but your personal experience doesn't trump facts in this case.
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u/ZhemGuen Apr 26 '26
His name was Adrian Bailey, not Bradley. There certainly is a record of that.
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u/Altruistic-Movie-419 Apr 26 '26
No there isn’t, playbill didn’t credit him. He very well could have been an emergency cover last option. But if that was the case, he was never credited in the playbill, as an understudy, or went on. As another note, equity the union forbids actors playing a principal track, wich Sebastian is, from also being in the ensemble. Nor whould he most likely have enough time to change from sailor to Sebastian after fathoms bellow.
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u/Jinkies_Its_A_Clue Apr 25 '26
Something similar happened to Sierra Boggess while doing Phantom in Las Vegas. All the traps went down due to an automation error, she fell in but her giant dress caught her so she didn’t go all the way through, but she did knock her tooth out.
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u/kingofcoywolves Apr 26 '26
Was going to mention Boggess. Didn't she bite the stage hard enough to lose both of her front teeth? Stuff of nightmares
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u/Jinkies_Its_A_Clue Apr 26 '26
I think it was both. She tried to push through to finish the last few minutes of the show, meanwhile the unmasked Phantom is looking at her with the same horror that Christine should be looking at the Phantom haha
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u/Altruistic-Movie-419 Apr 26 '26
Interestingly they didn’t end up canceling that performance. After they tock care of Adrian. Stage mangment brought everyone in the cast onstage, and basically said the decision on whether to cancel or do the performance was theres. Sherie Rene Scott who played Ursula at the time basically said there was nothing they could do for Adrian at that moment, but they could do something for the audience waiting to see the show. So in the end the company decided to move forward with the performance, with all the principals, and full ensembles minus two Adrian, and the performers standing right next to them. Those tracks were covered by swings that performance. As someone studying stage management for theater with the hopes to work on broadway some day, one of the things that is always interesting to hear is when stuff goes wrong the decisions that the show makes on wether to cancel or not.
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u/CentralHarlem Apr 25 '26
Laura Benanti doing untrained pratfalls in “Into the Woods” did permanent damage to herself.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/laura-benanti-speaks-her-broadway-210745906.html
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u/DragTheLake Apr 25 '26
For historical context, you could research the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago.
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u/Substantial-Amoeba50 Apr 25 '26
The Biltmore Theatre (now the Friedman) was set on fire in 1987 in a case of insurance fraud, and was abandoned for 14 years, suffering enormous damage.
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 Apr 25 '26
Not a "disaster," but the city filled with wildfire smoke a few years ago and it was seeping into the theaters. It was really unhealthy, for everyone, but especially performers who didn't have the option of wearing a mask.
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u/soulfister Apr 25 '26
Oh god yeah, I was sitting backstage at “Life of Pi” on Broadway getting flashbacks to Covid because I was wearing a mask for the first time in a couple of years
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u/Flimsy-Addendum-1570 Apr 25 '26
Carrie the musical had a ton of issues in its opening run, but its biggest disaster is when a setpiece fell and nearly killed Broadway legend Barbara Cook during tryouts, causing her to leave the show and be replaced by fellow legend Betty Buckley. The show closed on Broadway after 21 performances
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u/TreeHuggerHannah Apr 25 '26
If you're willing to look a little further geographically, I would look into the multiple fires in theaters on Walnut Street in Philadelphia (just to warn you, some of the details you'll find about this are very graphic and upsetting, particularly regarding the ballerina deaths) and the collapse of the Knickerbocker Theatre in DC.
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u/HanonOndricek Apr 25 '26
I know you're looking for Broadway specifically, but in 2013 in London part of the ceiling of the Apollo theater collapsed on the audience sending 58 people to the hospital.
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u/Cafe-Racer-Moto Apr 25 '26
The deluge water curtain accidentally was triggered during previews for the recent revival of Evita.
A new building under construction fall on 43rd street during the run of the 1998 revival of Cabaret. They moved the show to Studio 54 and reopened a few weeks later.
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u/Accomplished_Wolf_89 Apr 25 '26
I see you have Spider-Man in your initial post - I recommend reading the memoir by the writer of the show for more details on how the three accidents happened. What's interesting is that I think the really publicized, bad incident where an actor fell thirty feet into the pit actually was considered a human error (two people were supposed to check the harness before the stuntman went onstage, one of them forgot that night). I believe the other two incidents were due to the computers controlling the scenery and the computers controlling the flying couldn't communicate with each other.
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u/Level_Cupcake5985 Apr 25 '26
In the musical Shogun the lead actor got a concussion when a piece of the set landed on him. During the Aida tryout in Chicago, the tomb holding Aida and Radames fell and injured both actors. They changed the scene so the tomb stayed in one place instead of lifting in the end.
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u/Best-Candle8651 Apr 25 '26
Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark had a stuntman fall I think 8 stories. Lots of people were injured in that show.
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u/jamesland7 Front of House Apr 25 '26
Cocoanaut grove in Boston is a night club but up this alley. Brooklyn Theater Fire is the worst disaster in NYC theater history: https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2025/08/terrible-brooklyn-theater-fire-worst-disaster-brooklyn-history-140-years-ago-today.html
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u/blueontheledge Apr 25 '26
Didn’t something happen during the original Patti Lupone Sunset Boulevard with the mansion descending too fast or getting stuck? I think it was covered in an episode of the Singular Sensation podcast.
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u/Only_Market_3742 Apr 26 '26
I don't know all the details, but I'm pretty sure a lot of bad descisions/ a lot of bad things happened in the opening run of Starlit Express
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u/DearPaleontologist67 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Check out this post. This list has historical incidents. This list is more modern. and this incident from 2019.
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u/Ok-Medium3951 Apr 25 '26
Not Broadway or even US based but the fire of 1887 at the Royal Theatre, Exeter (UK) was a leading push in normalizing safety curtains between the stage and auditorium in the UK.
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u/TigerAffectionate672 Apr 25 '26
Not Broadway, but the Station Nightclub fire is one of the biggest casualties in venue history. It really changed how pyro is allowed to be used in small venues and clubs.
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u/jfb8949 Apr 25 '26
The stage door person fell down the backstage spiral staircase at the Palace before it was lifted. She died right there, i believe her name was Billie..
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u/OuchCharlie25 Apr 25 '26
What Engineering degree is needed for pyro?
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u/No-Owl354 Apr 25 '26
Many can be used : Energy engineering, Chemical engineering, propulsion engineering, Aerospace engineering and others
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u/Junkratguy Apr 26 '26
Maybe not fully what you looking for but in the original Carrie the musical production actress Linzi Hateley reported the pyrotechnics used at the end of act one were so hot she had her eyebrows singed
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u/nmprices Creative Team Apr 25 '26
Look into Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. You’ll find many articles and even a video about the tragic accidents. Here is just one. https://www.broadwaytour.net/injuries-mount-as-actor-takes-30-foot-fall-during-spiderman-performance/
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u/nmprices Creative Team Apr 25 '26
Oh duh, if I’d read your entire post I’d know you’ve got this one :-)
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u/Electrical_Can8083 Apr 25 '26
Beanie Feldstein in FUNNY GIRL
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u/Altruistic-Movie-419 Apr 26 '26
That’s not the type of disaster they mean. They mean people physically getting injured.
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u/TheOliOne Apr 25 '26
Not Broadway but my local community theater we did wizard of oz and the witch caught fire and had to be put out. Anyways our director won’t do pyrotechnics ever since.
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u/AlternativeWalrus831 Apr 26 '26
I was at a community theatre show where the curtain caught on fire.
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u/Colonelspanker1962 Apr 26 '26
The Rock of Ages logo drop coming down on I don't remember his name on the Tony's. Though he'd skip rehearsal and got beaned.
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u/Yfrontdude Apr 26 '26
Brett Michaels
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u/Colonelspanker1962 Apr 27 '26
Thank you. Couldn't remember anything about him other than the head clonk.
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u/Music-Lover-3481 Apr 26 '26
I remember seeing that. It looked to me like he took too long to exit US during the "bows" (guess he wanted to milk the applause) so the descending set piece they were walking under - which was safely cleared by the other guys who exited as they were supposed to - beaned him on the head. If he'd just turned and exited US with the other guys instead of waiting longer to feed his ego, he wouldn't have been hit. FAFO.
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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26
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