I Love the Smell of Office Supplies in the Morning: A Brief Introduction to Stage Management

Whenever I first tell people I’m in theater, the conversation generally starts off like this:

 Random Person: “How cool Are you an actor?”

 Me: “Not anymore. I mostly stage manage now.”

 Random Person: “Oh. Okay. What’s that?”

 Stage management is definitely one of the least glamorous jobs in theater and, if you’re doing it right, also one of the least visible. There is no Tony Award for Stage Management, and even if there was there would be no one to accept it; all the nominees would be off running shows.  So, I’m going to do my best to shed a little light on the mysterious and shadowy world of life behind the stage.

 A Brief (and Possibly Fictional) History of Stage Management

 In the history of theater, stage management is still relatively new. Since the SMs are usually too busy writing rehearsal reports and filling out building acquisition requests to contribute memoirs to the annals of time, we don’t have an exact date for the beginnings of the position. The concept of a stage manager seems to date back to Shakespeare (hey!) and Molière, although there is no record of what they actually did. (Some suggest their first job may have been as bouncers who kept non-company members from sneaking backstage.) Finally, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, everyone figured out that letting actors and playwrights manage everything as well as write and act was somewhat overcomplicated (especially with the advances in stagecraft and technology that were occurring), and so two distinct positions eventually evolved: the director, in charge of the creative elements of the play, and the stage manager, in charge of logistics, scheduling, and coordinating all the other personnel involved in the production.

 Okay, But What Does a Stage Manager Do?

 Short answer: everything.

The inevitable conclusion
of every stage management
team meeting.

 Well… not really, but some days it feels like it. The stage manager’s job usually starts months before the rehearsal process, attending meetings with the director and designers to take notes and build the schedules that will carry the production through to completion.  Although rehearsals for Hamlet and Merry Wives didn’t begin until June, I began attending production meetings and assisting at auditions in January. Because LSF works in repertory, we have the advantage of having two stage managers (yay!); however we also have the added challenge of having to schedule simultaneous rehearsals in two cities needing the same actors (resulting in many late-night phone calls and early-morning coffee-shop invasions as the SMs played what we started calling “scheduling Tetris”). Throughout rehearsals, the stage manager keeps the room running on schedule, keeps communications open between the director and designers, and of course, keeps notes on the staging, props used, costume changes, and all the other paperwork that will eventually become the master book during the run of the show. (The stage manager also functions as a psychiatrist, pharmacist, shuttle driver, and general handyperson during rehearsals. Unsurprisingly, many of us are also licensed bartenders.) Once performances roll around, the stage manager’s job is still a lot of paperwork – checklists before and after each show, reports on running times, and lists of cues. Traditionally, the stage manager “calls” the show, telling separate light and sound operators when to take cues. However, given the outdoor venue used by LSF, traditional calling is very difficult; the SMs are running their own light boards for these shows, and we’re lucky enough to have fantastic musicians who handle all the sound themselves!

 But Where’s the Fun in Paperwork?

Me, in the "light booth" behind the audience.

 Maybe I’m the exception, not the rule, but for me the fun of stage management is the organization. By taking on the mundane (and yes, occasionally boring) lists and schedules, the stage managers free the directors, actors, and designers to focus much more of their time and energy on letting their creative juices flow. Plus, I get the fun of being the problem solver.  Every night of Hamlet, I sit behind the audience and talk to my fantastic ASM on the radio so we can figure where the letter went (inside the actor’s pants pocket, as we suspected), what to do if one of the fencing gloves ever actually goes missing (conveniently, we have one right-handed actor and one left-handed, so they can share a pair), and of course, how to strike broken, misplaced, or windblown props and set pieces in the middle of a show (very, very carefully). We have a rigged costume, several quick changes, a sword fight (well, two…sort of), live music, a nontraditional playing space, and a half-ton Pageant Wagon that has to get moved just about every other show night.

 If we’re doing our jobs right as stage managers, the audience never sees or thinks about any of those things. They’re too busy being transported with the actors to the Forest of Windsor or the Castle of Elsinore, and we’re there to make sure nothing brings any of them back until the last bow has been taken. So please, pay no attention to the lady or gent behind the roadcase, and enjoy the show.

This piece was originally written for Livermore Shakespeare Festival's 10th Anniversary Blog.
Original Link: http://livermoreshakes.org/2012/07/stage-management/#more-2061

Go check out the rest of the LSF blog posts for some other fun commentary on various aspects of theater from auditions to commedia to baby skunks in an outdoor venue!

Horrifying Conclusions

The other day on my way home from rehearsal in SF, I was struck by a horrifying thought: what if stage management is God's way of preparing me to have children. And it's not like I had a terrible rehearsal or anything; actually, it was great, and everybody was really on top of their game. But as I was typing the rehearsal report I started thinking about all the things I've been doing on my last two SM gigs:

-- Coordinating eight separate schedules to make sure everyone shows up where they need to be on time.
-- Emailing the office to make sure we have a space to play in.
-- Putting everything away when we're done using it at the end of the night.
-- Mediating heated discussions about insignificant details and facilitating mutually beneficial compromises (though this was definitely the last gig I was on, not the current one).
-- Making sure that everyone eats, gets potty breaks, and takes their vitamins, except myself of course.

And of course when we get into the actual performance space I'll be keeping track of everybody's stuff and seeing that everything gets done the way we need it to happen. There's even a good dose of sleep deprivation and kissing boo-boos…it's all the tropes of parenting, but minus having to rent out my uterus for nine months.

And then I realize that I keep doing this voluntarily, and know that I may, in fact, be doomed to procreate. At least I can rest secure in knowing that I will always be able to blame theater for why my kids got so screwed up. My mom does it all the time.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Headset

Last semester, I took two classes in conjunction with stage managing one of the mainstage shows at my university. One of these classes was a class everyone is required to take in order to get their theater degree, and is essentially a crafty way for the faculty to staff all the productions under the guise of teaching you "Leadership" and "Organization". This year the class was taught by our fantastic new Production Manager. He was fantastic for three major reasons

1. He's a damn good Production Manager with a great deal of experience as not only a PM, but also a lighting designer, a director, a musician, a stage manager, and a dad of two youngish kids.

2. He was only teaching the Stage Management/Production Management type classes, unlike the few semesters when we had no PM and so the Lighting Design instructor and the Playwrighting instructor tag-teamed on the class. Don't get me wrong, they're both good PMs too, but they were each teaching a dozen classes, while our new PM was teaching two.

3. He used to be in a punk band in the 80s and would let us diatribe about all kinds of silly things.

So one day we're in class discussing tech week: what it is, how it works, and specifically how the stage manager fits into the whole thing. The Stage Manager is the calm in the center of the storm. The Stage Manager answers all the questions, calls all the shots, and keeps the train on the tracks. The Stage Manager is God, pulling together the universe on a tiny theatrical scale in just six days (and probably passing out with a bottle of Two-Buck-Chuck on the seventh).

It sounds kind of awesome when you talk about it, but being the prime deity in your own private universe isn't all it's cracked up to be. Everybody is running around like crazy. Things are breaking, malfunctioning, and disappearing, and everyone wants your undivided attention to fix their specific area of the production and they want that attention right-fucking-now. And you who are responsible for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that is about to implode must look each person squarely in the eye, smile, and in the soothing voice reserved for babies and puppies tell them exactly what they are going to do next to fix the problem and move forward.

Shockingly, it is incredibly difficult to be the only calm one in the room when everything you are in charge of is in chaos.

It sucks a little bit too, because theater is kind of incestuous. So, 95% of the time you're surrounded by friends, or people you were at school with, or relatives, or that company you hate because their sell-outs but they were the only paying gig you could get, or people who have 10+ years experience on you because you're fulfilling their EOE requirements, and you're trying to make it known that despite all of these facts, from the moment they enter to the moment they exit the building you are in charge. It is scary. It can be difficult. It is probably the one element of stage management that I personally am the least comfortable with, because I never want to step on anyone's toes, but sometimes you have to…and then you politely explain to them why their toes shouldn't have been there in the first place, because you are the stage manager, and you are doing your job, and they need to do theirs. And it's fucking terrifying when you have to do that. But everyone has to listen to and respect the stage manager in order for things to get done, whether they like you or not. (This is assuming that you're good at your job - stage managers who suck at their jobs will be another post or twelve.)

So we're wrapping up all this discussion, and the PM says "So, how would you summarize the job of the Stage Manager? In tech week, in general, whatever you want. Anybody?"

And, still half-asleep and practically drooling on my binder (because this particular day of class is in the middle of tech week for the show I am stage managing and I had been up until 2am doing paperwork before getting up at 6:30am to catch my train), I raise my hand and say, "Speak softly and carry a big headset?"

Apparently being half-dead makes me more snarky than usual, but he liked it anyway.