Warning: theatre can be hazardous to your health

When you think about it, the physical conditions themselves are full of health-and-safety hazards. For example, in just one scene, we walk, dance and even run very close to a five-foot drop into an orchestra pit full of pointy instruments, in dim light, with smoke everywhere, and a black veil hanging in front of our faces. At any other place of employment, there would be a guard rail by the drop or safety equipment attached to the employee, but in theatre the normal rules are suspended for the sake of art.

Then there's the pyrotechnics that are set off three feet away from us, the drop-off at the back of the stage, the ramp that we run down at full tilt in black-out, the wires snaking everywhere offstage - loads of potential for accidents. So far everyone is still in one piece, more or less, but it doesn't help that recently an actor was in the news for nearly killing himself on stage.

A week ago, back in the relatively safe environment of the MADC clubrooms, our major problems were injuries that were either long-term and pre-existing or which emerged recently, perhaps due to all the extra exercise. These we struggled with during the intensive dance rehearsals. On one night in particular, the chorus laboured with two injured backs, a busted knee, a damaged shoulder, and a trapped nerve (very painful) - and that's just the ones I knew about. It was quite alarming to be dancing next to a guy who used the loud music to cover his shouts of pain - actually the grimaces might have been amusing, had I not had matching expressions on my own face (I was one of the injured). At least having injuries flare up during rehearsal helps us to learn how to treat them and dance through them, in preparation for when we are on stage.

Here at the theatre, we are accumulating even more injuries due to accidents. Only one person has had to be taken to hospital (she's fine, but had to be checked as a precaution) and the rest are minor cuts and bruises. There's one scene in particular which seems to be particularly hazardous, partly because there is a piece of scenery that is hard to see and people keep tripping over it, and partly because there are twenty-eight people on stage, brandishing heavy wooden weapons. In typical fashion, I got hurt due to a combination of these two factors - the person behind me tripped in the scenery, and bashed me in the head with her weapon as she stumbled. I had a bump, some blood, a fright, and a director calling me names for holding up the scene. Fun times.

My other 'injury' was a bit bizarre. I was in the (unheated) toilets, changing into my tights, when I sneezed and got a nosebleed. Strange, because I can't even remember the last time I had a nosebleed, maybe back when I was a child. From first-aid training I knew that I'm supposed to lean forward and pinch the bridge of the nose until the flow stops, but that didn't seem like a viable option given that I was half-naked and heading towards hypothermia. So I stuffed my nostril with toilet-paper and got on with trying to put on the tights without dripping blood all over them. The bleeding kept on for a couple of minutes until one of my dressing-room-mates came up with a solution - she held some cold metal scissors to the back of my neck, and the flow dried up within a few seconds. Very cool. Performing with toilet-paper up my nose would have been a bit strange.