Heather Headley Reveals What Really Happened When Her Broadway Set Collapsed

Heather Headley Reveals What Really Happened When Her Broadway Set Collapsed Saturday night, November 13th, 1999. Chicago. A packed theater is watching the final moments of a brand-new Disney musical. Two people stand in a huge boxlike tomb that hangs above the stage. They are the last image of the show. The music is swelling. The lights are perfect. And then the sound starts. A creak. Another one. Then a heavy, violent thud. Silence. The tomb tears loose from its support and drops around eight feet to the stage floor. With both stars still inside it. The audience does not clap. It does not gasp politely. It just sits there, stunned. One of the two people inside that tomb was Heather Headley. She was twenty-five years old. And she has said the fall knocked the air right out of her. Here's the part that should bother you: that was not the first time this show tried to break her. It wasn't even the first time this show broke itself in front of a crowd. There was an opening night where a giant piece of scenery simply quit, with one of the biggest names in music sitting in the audience.