Flammable fabrics, and a lack of fire safety education. The full stories of many theatre/costume/gown fires speak of people running around while on fire. The

Flammable fabrics, and a lack of fire safety education. The full stories of many theatre/costume/gown fires speak of people running around while on fire. The first instinct is to try to take the burning costume off, often not a simple task in the complex clothing of the time. A teenage ballet dancer in the 1800s, and the people around her, would have reacted very differently than we would today. Upon seeing the fire she would have wanted to get out of the costume, which would require her to run off stage before undressing. That is possibly the worst thing one could do. Stop Drop and Roll is no joke. It works. Grabbing someone and rolling them on ground, preferably with a heavy blanket or such, puts a fire out much faster than trying to get out of a burning costume. We teach kids about this so much that it has become modern instinct.