As the technical manager of a mid-sized community theatre, one of my duties is to review all proposed special effects for safety. About a year ago I was presented with a situation that reminded me to expect the unexpected.
A local organization that provides an educational alternative for "at-risk" high school students rented our theatre to present an anti-gang themed play created by their students for presentation to other local high school students. The director of the group called me to ask permission to use a pistol in a fight scene. After a brief conversation about rules regarding firearms, I asked him to drop by with the gun so I could check it out. The director arrived the day before their load-in and proudly presented me with a shoebox. I opened the box to find a fully functional, fully loaded .45 semi-automatic pistol. He had also conveniently brought along the blanks they would be using, mixed loose in the shoebox with more live ammunition! I politely reminded him that for approval, all stage guns were required to have a solid barrel or no firing pin and live ammunition was never allowed in the theatre. I told him that this gun was not acceptable unless the firing pin was removed, and to never mix live and blank ammunition. He apologized for the live rounds and said the gun wasn't his and he couldn't get permission from the owner for the modification. Considering the director's proven inability to obtain a safe stage prop, I suggested they use a small starter pistol we had. The director wanted the look of a larger gun, so we settled on a full-sized toy gun painted black, with sound effects through the P.A. system. They brought the prop gun for their first rehearsal, ran the sound cue and it all worked out fine. My job was done… or so I thought.
During the afternoon of the second rehearsal I got a call from our office receptionist. A police officer was in the office telling us to evacuate the building due to a SWAT situation. I went to the stage to round everyone up and we discovered that two of the cast members were missing. They were last seen 20 minutes ago heading to our loading dock. I carefully opened the back door to an amazing sight–multiple police cruisers, eight SWAT Team officers, the business end of way too many M-16s and the missing cast members spread-eagle on the pavement.
The two actors had taken the toy gun from the prop table and gone out behind the building to rehearse their fight scene choreography, which must have been a bit too realistic for someone in the building across the street. They both could have been shot over a toy squirt gun. We sent their stage manager back for retraining and amended our rules about prop weapons: "They are to be locked up at all times when not actually on-stage."
