Malta's Thea Garrett was the unfortunate participant to suffer a technical glitch during her first rehearsal this morning. She was the victim of a smoke malfunction, affecting her and her backing singers. She took the incident in good humour and continued to show a maturity and professionalism beyond her 18 years.
As part of the Maltese stage performance, a smoke effect using dry ice and a wind machine is used on the stage. The smoke machine went into overdrive, surrounding the young 18 year old in smoke. As she disappeared into the cloud, she had to stop singing and used her arms to flap away the smoke. Unfortunately, it is her backing dancer that has the bird's wings, as used in the winning national final performance rather than Thea, who could have made good use of them.
The smoke also affected the backing singers early in the rehearsal, as they were forced to stop singing and cough. The problem was soon fixed, and Thea took the incident in good faith, laughing and performing another run through impecably.
Speaking to esctoday.com after the rehearsal, Thea talked about the smoke incident. You can watch the interview here:
You can watch one of Thea's best rehearsal run throughs here: