Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Tue, 09 Feb 2010

The Positive Benefit of Negative Dreams

I woke up from an anxiety dream this morning, and found that I couldn't get back to sleep. It wasn't a normal anxiety dream, in which there's just a vague feeling of tension. This one was definite, and quite realistic.

It was after a performance of Penguins, and several people were walking away from the theater, talking about the show. There were some actors from the show, and some of their friends, and myself. At some point, one of the friends is describing a part she particularly liked, which included a prop gun. Only, instead of miming a gun with her forefinger and thumb, she actually pulled out the gun itself as we walked through this public square, and started gesticulating with it.

My reaction was swift, and had none of the moving-through-molasses quality that dreams sometimes have. I swiped it out of her hand, and pulled the slide back to check that it was empty. I ejected the magazine. In the midst of this, I also fumbled it, and it dropped on the ground, breaking several large chunks off. While doing all this, I was also asking in a too-loud voice and with rather too many expletives who had let her have this thing.

The commotion brought over a police officer, and then the dream branched into a bunch of different exploratory endings as the cop A) pulled her own gun on me; B) started waving around some kind of magical gun-sensing wand that looked like a boom microphone; C) sauntered slowly over to talk to me; etc. None of them ended particularly badly for me, as I just reacted calmly and laid down the now-broken blank gun and kept things mellow, all the while casting dirty glances at the person who'd brought the thing out in the first place.

Of course, the anxiety part of this dream is that this is the exact situation I've been worried about for as long as I've been helping productions as armourer: someone brings a fake gun out in public, and Bad Things happen. In real life, it's pretty reasonable to guess that this situation would lead to someone causing a panic, getting shot, getting arrested, etc. I give each cast a speech filled with dire warnings about this kind of thing happening.

The value of the dream is that I had not, up until this morning, considered what I would do in a situation like this. I think that in the dream, I reacted partly right, and partly wrong. The right reaction was to get the pistol away from the person waving it around, clear it, and ensure it was safe. The wrong part was to make a commotion about it. I should have just dropped it in a pocket and immediately headed back to the theater, saving any loud speech for later, and in more private circumstances.

On this topic, I wanted to relate a story which directly bears on this situation, and illustrates perfectly what can happen. I wasn't involved with this particular show, and heard about it second-hand from one of the people involved.

A theater company, which shall remain nameless, had a temporary rehearsal and storage space in a light industrial part of Seattle. It was mostly warehouses and industrial businesses, but there were some consumer businesses there, a gym across the street, etc. For the show they were rehearsing, they had these wooden rifle props, which were approximately shaped like AK47s.

What a real AK47 looks like

On a smoke break, several of the actors were standing outside the door, goofing around, as actors do. They had brought a couple of the wooden rifles out with them, and were presumably play-acting shooting at each other. A few minutes later, smoke break over, they went back inside, and continued with rehearsal.

About 20 minutes later, everyone looked up in surprise as the door banged open, and a dozen SWAT officers poured in the door, assault rifles up, and shouting, "DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! HANDS UP!" Real SWAT officers. Real assault rifles, capable of shooting real bullets that would go through a bulletproof vest like butter.

The actors, fortunately, dropped the wooden guns and stood there with their hands in the air, as Hollywood had trained them to do in a situation like this (note: this is a fine reaction to have in this situation). Fortunately, no one thought he'd be a joker and aim his stick at the SWAT guys. Fortunately, the situation was quickly defused, and everyone had a hearty chuckle as the SWAT van trundled off. No arrests, not even a fine for calling out the van.

What had happened was this: one of the gym patrons across the street had seen the actors, questionable looking fellows even in good light and close up, playing with AK47s outside a warehouse. The patron's mind being full of 24 and airplane hijackers, he naturally hopped it to a phone, called 911, and reported a group of suspicious men with assault rifles in a warehouse.

As the police, this is not the kind of call you half-ass. You don't send a couple of patrol officers in a cruiser to check it out. You call out the anti-terrorism troops you've been training for just such a situation: terrorist cell in Seattle. I'm sure the chief could see the headlines scrolling through his head about his cool, overwhelming and successful response to the situation.

Not only the SWAT van and many SWAT officers arrived. There must have been dozens more normal patrol officers. They shut down a 2 block radius around the building. The response was huge.

Fortunately, as I said, no shots were fired, and no one was hurt. However, all it would have taken was one joker, and it would have been a very real tragedy. A dozen edgy guys with machineguns turn into a wall of molten metal death very quickly.

The moral of this story, of course, is that theater props stay in the theater, and they're not for joking around. You use them for your scene, then you put them back on the prop table. The AK47 props were plainly not AK47s up close, but from a distance, it's hard to tell unless you know what you're looking for. My greatest fear on any of the shows I provide prop guns for is that someone's going to get hurt or killed because they didn't take my warnings seriously. I now use this story as part of my gun speech, just in case anyone thinks I'm joking.

Posted at 07:18 permanent link category: /misc

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.