Life in the Pit

Ann mentions a couple of things concerning pit covers, and that they had theirs removed midway through a Nutcracker run. I can understand her objections to the scrim: claustrophobia; erratic temperature; frustration about the snow machines. Pit covers should not interfere with proper ventilation, though that’s a difficult task in older theatres. And the snow machines just sound like a bad idea that should never have made it past the design stage. Those expensive mistakes sometimes happen.

In our orchestra we get really antsy if the production staff wants to remove the pit cover. We’re in a new house this year and have no objections concerning the cover since it’s set higher than in the old house. (Our cover is a two-ply model – the bottom is one-inch weave of cargo line and the upper is a scrim.) Besides, we’ve had too many large objects fall in to seriously consider working without it. We have agreed to its removal a couple of times in the past for special circumstances, but only if there are no props involved.

As far as temperature goes, we wear ‘pit black’ so that the men never wear suits and ties. We negotiated that into our agreement about 5 years ago but don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep it that way. Our music director hates it and so does the artistic director but temperature fluctuations in our old venue were unbearable. In the new house we are completely visible to the audience and the climate is better controlled, so we’re expecting fresh discussion soon.

Just another word on pit covers. I believe we should be using them all the time. You never know when someone on stage will have a brain cramp and drop something, or maybe overact and cause something to fall. Dancers sometimes forget that we’re not watching them, so we can’t react to protect ourselves.