I arrived to be told we had no power. The city of Burbank and our theater landlord had been called and people were on their way. At 1:45 we got word that a squirrel had eaten a power line and electrocuted itself (squirrels are, apparently, suicidal or very stupid). This had knocked out a power grid affecting a portion of Burbank. The theater guy got there and took over. We had back-up battery power, so the work lights worked but not the electric piano (there's a real one there, too, so we could have used that), no lighting, though, and no sound. Then the city guy arrived and told us IF it was a simple fix we could be up in thirty minutes, but by that time it was already a little after two, and the cast didn't want to do the show in work lights with a real piano (there have been key changes in a couple of numbers that are done automatically on the electric keyboard). So, we did something I've never done in my forty-five years in professional theater - we cancelled the show. There was only a light audience anyway. As it happens, power came back about thirty minutes after we cancelled, but the entire lighting system had to be rebooted dimmer pack by dimmer pack, so there would have been no way to do the show.
