Sword Malfunction Sends Student Actor to Hospital

A student play about the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Empire Archduke Franz Ferdinand termed into a medical emergency Thursday night when there was a prop malfunction with a samurai sword.

Students were performing “Shoot the Duke,” a student-run comedy at Wesleyan University in Middletown night when something went wrong and a student was stabbed with the prop sword.

“There was an accident with stage props, resulting in one actor inadvertently injuring the other,” Second Stage, the student-run theater, said in a statement to students.

The theater sent a statement to the student body, saying they comply with safety regulations and are “deeply upset that these measures did not prevent the event that occurred.”

The student was taken to Hartford Hospital with injuries and was released by later Thursday.

The play is a “hyper-sexed, ultra-violent, sweet-hearted action comedy about Gavrilo Princip, the man who inadvertently started WWI by assassinating the Archduke of Austria-Hungary,” according to the Second Stage Web site.  

Just before the assassination, “Gavrilo attempts to woo the love of his life and get along with his dysfunctional terrorist group in the midst of sword fights and shootouts.”

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