While most Central Coast residents were scrounging around for a flashlight the evening of June 23, audience members at PCPA Theaterfest in Solvang were treated to a candlelit, a cappella rendition of “Sunrise, Sunset” by the cast of Fiddler on the Roof.
The actors were just walking on stage for the wedding scene near the end of the first act when the lights went out.
“After holding for 10 minutes, we realized that the generators would not support the show and we would need to see if the city would be able to return power to us,” stage management noted in a post on PCPA’s Facebook page.
Resident actor Erik Stein, who plays proud patriarch Tevye in the production, told the audience what was going on. Management called for a brief intermission, but soon learned that the blackout was region-wide and that power would most likely not be restored any time soon.
“It’s really quite odd,” Stein said of having a performance stopped by a blackout, “because, as actors, we’re trained from a very young age that the show must go on.”
Stein said audience members were “absolutely wonderful—very patient and understanding” throughout the ordeal—so much so that the cast decided to leave them with a special gift.
“We had candles backstage so we came out and sang ‘Sunrise, Sunset’ for them. The response was very positive,” Stein said.
PCPA is offering complimentary tickets to another performance of Fiddler on the Roof to patrons of the June 23 show. Tickets can be claimed by calling the box office at 922-8313.
The June 23 blackout left approximately 149,000 Central Coast residents without power. PG&E spokesman Blair Jones told the Sun it was most likely caused by an equipment failure at the Morro Bay switchyard.
Blair called the incident a “transmission-level outage” because the equipment failure caused two large transmission lines to go offline.
Power was out for about three hours, from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., in most neighborhoods stretching from Lompoc to Atascadero. Blair said PG&E crews worked through the night to restore power to the area. By 12:30, most residences had electricity again. The remaining PG&E customers—about 12,000 homes—had power by 1:45 a.m.
Theories about the cause of the outage swirled on social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, into the early morning hours, with many people wondering if something had gone wrong at the Diablo power plant.
Jones told the Sun the “incident did not involve the plant,” which he said continued to function normally throughout the night. The investigation into the outage is ongoing.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 4, 2013.