Today's Topic: what happens when someone gets sick during the show?
If you're an actor, this is an easy one. Your understudy goes on. Each actor has at least 2 people that can fill in for them. The 5 swings (3 male and 2 female) carry pagers with them during the show, so no matter where they are they can go on. This is a great system. Now, if you're a musician you find out there's no system.
Take last night's show for example. We started out with a malfunctioning keyboard. While the keys 1 players rebooted his machine the keys 2 player took over the first part and as much of his as he could do. This task proving to be not as easy as it sounds since the keyboard he was playing on only has the sounds for the 2nd part. After 10 mins the 1st keyboard was rebooted and we were good to go.
Well almost..........this is the point where Steven started feeling sick. He had a chicken subway sandwich before the show and well things just weren't sitting well. He was getting the sweats and looking quite pale but made it through the first act. I got him some Pepto during intermission and he spent some quality time taking care of the stomach issue, but as the second act approached he was still not well. I let the conductor know and then slid over into the 1st horn chair. The trumpet player took the 2nd horn part when he was resting and added some flugelhorn harmonies. About 10 mins into the 2nd act, Steven returned and my short stint as horn 1 was thankfully over.
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