painting set for Oklahoma

My neighbor Michelle was in charge of painting most of the set of Oklahoma. The school director, Sharon, believes in going all out for the set. One of the guys have a mill machine and he milled 12 sheets of corn. It was a HUGE amount of painting. We spent hour upon hour painting. I think Michelle put in over 80 hours and I put in close to 60 in two weeks. We also had a paint party where one Saturday some of the kids in the play helped us.  We were both so beyond sick of seeing green and corn but I have to admit it looked way cool up on stage.

The day before the play opens they do two dress rehearsal performances for the grade schools. The morning performance went pretty well the afternoon not so much. The corn was bolted together five pieces three different sections. Two of the sections were on stage at all times the other section had cables and they would "fly it" in and out between scenes. So the corn ended up 20 ft in the air. For some reason they decided to use different cables and during intermission they were flying the corn and the cable broke. Thank goodness the curtains were closed and there were not many kids on stage. The thing is Michelle's daughter was on stage and had just moved a saw horse under the corn to get out of the way. The cable broke and corn came down, hit the saw horse, broke it in two and then hit KassaDee in the back. She got knocked down and hit the stage face first breaking her nose. Her mom and I were both in the audience and Michelle's other daughter KennaDee ran out to get us. There was blood everywhere. Mr Hames was on stage and carried Kass to the dressing room. Because we were using real guns on stage it was required a police officer be with the students at all times. He would check the guns, hand them to the students and as soon as they were off stage they were required to give them back to him for the students safety. He called an ambulance and they showed up. Because Kass hit her head and really didn't remember much they recommended she go to the hospital. She never lost consciousnesses so her mom decided to drive her instead of ride in the ambulance. I went with them because I knew Michelle was upset. Kass was a champ and didn't cry or hardly complain. Sure enough she fractured her nose but luckily it didn't make it crooked so she didn't have to have it set. Just ended up with slightly bruised eyes and swollen nose and missed the first two performances of the play. According to Kass the best part (and totally worth it) was the kid she really likes carried her out to her moms car for the hospital and then came to see her while she was at the hospital. He felt horrible because he was standing by her and saw the corn come down and dived out of the way but didn't know she was right there so he felt like he should have seen her and saved her (awwww). Two days later he was playing rugby and tore his foot all up and had to be in a walking boot so he was all gimpy on the stage, poor guy. Honestly Kass was very blessed if the saw horse wouldn't of broken the fall and the corn would have hit her full force it probably would have killed her. It weighed several hundred pounds and coming from a 20 ft drop is just a disaster. The men behind the scenes felt horrible. They work out at the INL and are all about safety so to think people got hurt. A few adults got minor scrapes and cuts from breaking pieces of the corn. Amazingly they were able to put the corn back together and it looked pretty decent from the audience. All the kids still had to finish the dress rehearsal performance and from what i understand did quite well with the stress they were under worried about Kass.