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.
