A Brief History of Stage Management
In the history of theater, stage management is a relatively new concept. 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. However, stage management as we know it in the modern age seems to have descended from the Victorians, who finally realized, after nearly two millennia of theatrical suffering, that letting the actors and directors manage themselves was not really a good idea.
Since then, the role of stage manager has become one of the most important yet least talked about positions in all of theater. No surprise, really. The stage managers are gods in the theater space, and like any deities they receive no credit for the things that go well, only blame for what goes wrong. But that's the price of being a god, and you learn to live with it.
A Brief History of This Blog
This blog is the product of the second show I ever officially stage managed. I had been SM for a small show at my JC, and it went pretty well, so when I got to Uni, I figured "Why not?" I jumped straight in and quickly found myself in over my head. Don't worry, it all came off just fine; I had a fabulous production manager who held my hand (and then left with all the electricians for the second weekend of performances, but that's a whole post itself) and I had a couple of great books to guide me through all the steps (again, another post). However, I still found myself through much of the process lamenting the fact that I didn't really have the kind of personal insights, examples, and holy-crap-don't-do-this moments that I really would have liked. I'm a troubleshooter - I like to have a plan for everything that could go wrong long before it does.
So, the tl;dr of this whole thing really is: I wished I could have gone to a blog to read about other people's experience stage managing, but since I never really found one, I decided to write it myself. Despite the stress, I sense I'll be doing this a lot more in the future…please, please learn from my mistakes.
2012 EDIT:
I'm still gonna write a lot about Stage Management. Because that's mostly what I do. But I'm gonna write about a lot of other things too, as I've decided that I want the option. Y'know, with the end of the world coming and all.
