Building Your SM Kit: First Aid, Part 1

I've been bleeding a lot lately, as it is winter and my hands have decided to resemble Charlton Heston's lips after he's been dehydrating in the desert for weeks in The 10 Commandments.

And when they bleed, they look like the scene in Dracula, Dead and Loving It
where Renfield nicks his finger.

So, I thought now would be an ideal time to start my post series on what you should have in your box as a stage manager. (Sorry, kids, this is not the kinky kind of SM kit...well, I guess it could be, but that's a different blog.)

The Setup: Basically, every stage manager I know has their own version of the SM Kit, which is essentially their personal Mary Poppins bag out of which they will produce every/any thing that might possibly be asked for in the course of a show. Obviously the contents will vary from show to show and venue to venue, but there are a lot of basics that pretty much all SMs will have.

First Aid

When I was first building my kit, I just went to the store and bought this 140-piece sucker you see on the left here. (Confession: I just had to process stage vs house directions to remember if this photo was on the right or the left.) Anyway, something like this makes a great starter, because it comes with most of the basics. However, it also comes with a bunch of stuff you will hardly ever use, like a glowstick (not kidding), and stuff that you will need to use allthe time but should replace, like those flimsy plastic tweezers (more on those later).

But, as many years and several boo-boo prone actors have taught me, there are certain items that you will need all the darn time and should stock in bulk. Here's a few of the items that I've found are indispensable parts of my kit.

Band-Aids

We're starting here because of my blood-gushing hands. I am of the opinion that everyone should have Band-Aids on their person all the time, but especially if you are in charge of a room full of actors. Actors are a unique species of human, as they are so dedicated to whatever they're pretending to do that they will frequently forget about the real-world consequences of that action. (Strangely, this is also a common problem among internet trolls. Huh.) There is one gal I've worked with several times who is notorious for this: she will crawl on the floor, jump onto furniture, do pretty-much anything the director asks her to do, and then when I call break she'll come over to me and say "Umm...by the way I'm bleeding." Every single show we've worked on. Even the one where Iwas the sound crew, not the SM. So needless to say, I keep a lot of Band-Aids on hand. here are a few of my favorites:

Clear Water-Block Band-Aids:

There are a gift from heaven. They're completely clear except for the little gauze patch, which is approximately the right flesh-tone of a Cullen vampire, but that's easy to cover. No, the great thing about these is that once you adhere the thin water-block membrane to skin, it will stay on forever if you want it to, which is great when you need to get through a performance. The only down side is that if there is a gap anywhere they will start to peel off, so they're not so great for bendy places like fingers. But that's okay, because we also have...

Flexible Fabric Knuckle & Fingertip Band-Aids:

Those silly butterfly fingertip ones will be the most-used bandages in your box. Not only do they help with "I-stabbed-myself-on-a-wood-staple" ouchies, but they also solve the "I-have-a-hangnail" problem BEFORE blood is shed and, in larger venues, are a great solution to "I-need-neutral-nails-in-scene-one-but-they-have-to-be-painted-in-scene-two." (Or in my case, I was a dude most of Act One and then had one scene to become a chick right before intermission.) Another great problem solver comes in the form of...

Extra-Large Tough Strips:

No one actually uses these to staunch bleeding. If you're bleeding enough to need one of these, you're probably already onto the next item in this list. No, these are used for covering up tattoos under clothing that is light-colored or sheer enough for your ill-advised Tri-Force symbol to show through. Obviously if the tattoo is somewhere not covered by clothes, you'll need concealer (or to stop auditioning for period pieces). But if it's under clothing, the Band-Aid is a nice solution to not wearing a bunch of makeup under your clothes and incurring the costumer's wrath. However, if you are bleeding enough that you need something large...

Gaffer's Tape.

Look, if you're bleeding enough to need a larger Band-Aid than the first one on this list, you're probably going to to have to go to the hospital because there will be some OSHA/Equity/other policy that requires forms to be filled out and such. At that point, we're gonna put a clean dishrag or softgoods scrap over the wound, wrap gaff around it, and dump you in the back of somebody's car to go get stitches.

Drugs

This is not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

But I can sure make it seem like it is.

I keep all my entirely legal drugs in their original bubble-packs, or I repack them into dime-bags, which has made more than one actor comment ask what I actually do on my weekdays. I just find that Sammy the Sketch-Head who hangs out across the street from the theater has much more effective ways to consolidate pills into small, easy to transport containers, okay?

Anyway, my stash generally includes the following:

- Tylenol/ some acetaminophen-based painkiller

- Advil/some ibuprofin-based painkiller

I carry both kinds because I've had different actors who could only take one of the other. One of them couldn't take ibuprofin because of another medication they were on, another just reacted badly to acetaminophen. Also, I try to carry them in both regular and liquid-gel form, because I know many people who can't swallow large pills easily. (One gal resolved this by biting off the end of the gel-cap and swallowing the liquid. I cannot speak to the safety of that method, but that's what she did.) Children's chewables are also a great option, but make sure you know the difference in the doses.

Yes I'm sure they're children's pills, see the bright colors?
Just take them already so we can get back to blocking.

The rest of my pill selection is also pretty straightforward.

- Mucinex/generic equivalent

- DayQuill/generic eqivalent

- EmergenC/vitamin C tablets

- dark chocolate (the more women you have in your cast, the more of this you'll need)

Now, there's plenty more that I keep in my First Aid box (not to mention the rest of my SM Kit) but as this post has already gotten insanely longer than I originally intended, I'm going to end this post for now and save everything else for another time. For now, I'm gonna go slather my hands in lotion and watch a movie...maybe Lawrence of Arabia. Seems appropriate.