GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Members of a metro Atlanta theater company say a ceiling partially collapsed in their rehearsal space as they prepared for their upcoming musical.
It happened over their weekend at the Lawrenceville Arts Center, where the Aurora Theatre is set to perform its production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights.”
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Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen spoke with the theater group’s co-founder for Channel 2 Action News at 5:00 p.m. While it was a frightening experience, the co-founder says the show will go on.
“It’s really great when you have a sold out house in here," Anthony Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez says a little drama is good. A lot can be very bad.
“We were like, get out! Get out! Everybody get out!” he said recounting the moment the ceiling partially collapsed.
The Aurora Theatre is a resident company at the Lawrenceville Arts Center. Over the weekend, the company was rehearsing “In the Heights” in the center’s basement when they noticed a leak in the ceiling.
“Pretty much by the time I got out one door, and Tyra, our stage manager, had gotten out the other door, we heard everything fall,” Rodriguez told Petersen.
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City officials say the leak happened above a drop ceiling in the 2,000-square-foot rehearsal hall.
“We’re looking at why the pipe separated. It was a fire sprinkler system separation. We have engineers looking at that,” Chuck Warbington said.
The Lawrenceville city manager wants to know how this could happen in a building that isn’t even five years old yet.
“We need to make sure that doesn’t happen anywhere else in the building,” he said.
Crews were on site Tuesday to clean up the debris. Art Centers insiders complain it’s not the building, but mechanical, electrical and plumbing problems.
Rodriguez said he hates to think about what was happening at the theater a few weeks ago.
“We had 50 little girls auditioning to be the next Annie. Had this happened then and faster, who knows what sort of tragedy we would have been facing at that time,” he said.
While the rehearsal area is now closed, the show will go on with “In the Heights” opening on May 28.
“We’re theatre people. We’ll keep moving forward and figure out a way. We have alternate spaces to rehearse. We’ll get it done,” Rodriguez said.
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