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Over the past six weeks at Disney World, a 21-year-old monorail driver, a 47-year-old actor portraying pirate Captain Jack Sparrow's henchman "Mack" and a 30-year-old stuntman practicing for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular died in on-the-job accidents. Nothing links the deaths except the fact that they all resulted from incidents at the theme park, but the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, along with the local sheriff's department and the Actors' Equity Association, is investigating nonetheless. Disney spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez told TIME this week that the three deaths, separated...
...friend Jeffrey Breslauer, Priest - just before he died - said he was performing the sword fight on a new stage for the first time and slipped on a wet spot. The third death occurred on Aug. 17, when stuntman Anislav Varbanov broke his neck while practicing a tumbling roll at Disney's Hollywood Studios for a scene in a 20-year-old show based on stunts from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maria Somma, spokeswoman for Actors' Equity, said Varbanov had just signed his equity contract the week before his death. (Read about Orlando and its theme parks...
Among Orlando's tight-knit theatrical community (which includes Disney World as well as other theme parks like Universal Orlando, SeaWorld Orlando and a long list of medieval, western and Arabian Nights dinner shows), performers were inclined to view the deaths as freak accidents rather than negligence by Disney. "It would actually be unfair to say that Disney doesn't know what they're doing and they're lax," says Breslauer, a former Disney actor...
...depth of the acting community's grief is apparent on their Facebook pages. "We lost another one of our own at Disney. Too many, too young. Just wish it made some sense," posted Krista Miller, a Disney improv comedian. Rather than losing spirit over the losses, Kenny Babel, a Disney performer and close friend of Priest's, says he and other performers have been inspired by Priest's legacy to offer even more of themselves to the process of creating the Disney magic. "Mark lived for that magic. That's when Mark was most Mark," Babel says. "One's person...
...TIME's Disney covers...