Instead of taking a final bow early, the cast and crew turned a technical failure into a “the show must go on” moment that audience members are calling unforgettable.
The Moment the Lights Went Out
The blackout struck at roughly 9:00 p.m., during one of the rock opera’s most climactic sequences: the song “Gethsemane.” Chad Sell, the actor portraying Jesus, was in the middle of the powerful lyric where his character accepts his fate when the theater was plunged into total darkness.
- The Cause: Lakeland Electric later confirmed the outage was due to a piece of equipment reaching the end of its operational life.
- The Response: While emergency floodlights provided a dim glow, the amplified orchestra and stage lighting were completely dead.
“Unplugged” Perseverance
Rather than canceling the remainder of the performance, the LCT team improvised a stripped-back version of the show:
- Acoustic Transition: A singular upright piano was wheeled onto the stage from a rehearsal room.
- Improvisational Lighting: The audience and crew used cell phone flashlights to illuminate the stage.
- Symbolic Staging: Without the usual set pieces, Sell used the top of the wooden piano cabinet as a substitute for the cross during the final scenes.
Community Impact
The show continued with heightened intensity, with Music Director Patrick Fleitz noting that the cast “sang out stronger than they have before.” Audience members took to social media to praise the performance, with one attendee noting that experiencing the show “without electricity” felt even more powerful than a standard production.
Power was successfully rerouted by Lakeland Electric in under an hour, but the memory of the “flashlight performance” has become a highlight of the 2026 local theater season.
These “power outages” are destroying my home’s electronics. Flakeland Elecrtic.