Top Nine Things You Need to Understand or Have Done to Become a Professional Stage Manager:

9. Have swept a stage, focused a light, mended a costume

8. Know basic first aid

7. Understand that the ACTOR is the one putting her/himself in front of the audience and how vulnerable that makes them

6. Facilitate communication among creative people (and their egos)

5. Ability to put your ego in your back pocket

4. Love the ART of theatre, but be challenged by the work even when it isn’t art

3. Understand that knowledge is NOT power

2. Have a sense of humor

And the number one thing you need to understand or have done to become a Professional Stage Manager…………………………………………………

Know when your headset mic is on!!

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Top Six Things to Help Keep Your Stage Manager (and ultimately you) Happy:

6. Be on time. On time means ready to rehearse

5. Clean up your own trash at the end of the day

4. If you have a “challenge” with a costume, prop or set piece, ask nicely for help

3. Do not give notes to other actors. EVER.

2. Do not whine

And the number one thing to help keep your stage manager – and ultimately you – Happy:

…………………………………………..Bring her chocolate.

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1. It ain’t as bad as you think! It will look better in the morning.
2. Get mad in private then get over it.
3. Avoid having an ego.
4. It can be done. The question is, how much time and resources will it take and is it that valuable to the production?
5. Be careful what you choose: you may get it.
6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7. You can’t make someone else’s choices.
8. Check the small things.
9. Share Credit.
10. Remain calm and be kind always.
11. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

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I was passing off a show during the tech process in which the incoming SM was working on establishing relationships with the 3 person cast. Halfway through the first day of tech, the lead actor approached me with a flushed face, chills, shakes, and a high fever. We sent him home and canceled the rest of the day after assessing that his temperature wasn’t high to be a danger and he refused to go get himself checked out – which would have been at the ER as it was in the evening. Next day, it was clear he wasn’t well still and he didn’t refuse the idea of seeing a doctor who determined that it was a stomach virus. Bed rest was ordered for 2 days which meant cancelling the first preview. This actor woke up the next day insistent that he was well enough to proceed forward and finish teching along with doing the first preview. After a couple hours of rehearsal, the incoming SM saw how unwell he still was even though he insisted he was fine. She sat him down and said “I need to trust that I can safely send you out on the stage without you falling over. Can you honestly tell me that you will make it?” The Actor took a moment, realized the seriousness of the situation and the care this new SM had for him and answered that he needed more rest. Preview was cancelled and after another day of rest, the Actor was well again to perform at the next scheduled preview.

Stage Managers have your back and want you to be safe and well!

When you are in the middle of an unplanned event, the stakes certainly can feel incredibly high. I am definitely glad we didn’t know that a Chicago Tribune reporter was in the house on the night that the lights went out on THE NIGHT ALIVE. The article is here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/chi-power-outage-steppenwolf-night-alive-20141106-story.html

Apparently, the city of Chicago had scheduled a black out on a performance night, however this was an unexpected surprise to us in the booth when the power went fully out mid-show – light system out, sound system out, all went completely dark with a 20’ drop into the pit downstage and actors onstage. Emergency lights popped on without much delay.

Throwing off the now useless headset, I ran to the open air sound cockpit and in the calmest voice possible (no god mic – no power) used my “tech voice” to announce technical difficulties and to have everyone stay seated while we investigated the situation. An amendment was made for anyone needing to use the restroom. “Please feel free to get up if you need to use the restroom – house management staff has flashlights if you need assistance.”

Basement office and dressing rooms were plunged into complete darkness while crew and SM staff circled up the cast. We had walkies to communicate with FOH that the SM team jumped on to figure out the next steps.

The rest is in the article, but with the audience demanding and cast game for it the crew and stage management grabbed torch flashlights and using them like improvised spots with cellphone flash lights to supplement were able to light the cast enough to continue the play. The play finished on the deck level to the side of the stage – an area without a 20 foot drop – with simulated staging like a semi-staged reading. Biggest applause of the run – audiences sure do love a “live theatre” event.

The next day’s article was a surprise to all. Really glad we didn’t know there was a reporter in the midst but a reminder that you never know who is out there!

I joined the stage management team for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in the fall of 1991. The show that year was the one they’d been doing for a number of years with no changes. The crew was the same, the sets and lights were the same; I was the newbie. I studied hard to learn to call the show (to this day, the most difficult show I’ve ever called). Finally, the day came to solo my first time. I was nervous but had the support of everyone I was working with. The first compliment came when I cued the snow for a scene and the fly floor dumped snow on my head as I was calling – they knew it would not rattle me and they were right. But the best compliment came at the end of the show when the show electrician, Marty Fuller, came back after and said: “You called a great show! You called all the cues just where we DO them!” I have carried that as a badge of honor ever since.

Usually when a backstage track has been established, you keep to it to be consistent. Every so often some arises where you must go off track. Then there are those rare moments when you go off track and you don’t know why until something does happen to explain it. For me, I was ASMing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and I was curious about a part of the show from a particular backstage perspective – the theatre this was in was shaped like a classic Greek theatre – stage thrusts out, downstage entrances are voms that go deep to the backstage area. The walls of these voms had wide ledges and our Oberon was staged to sit on one while Puck told him what he did to Titania which resulted in Oberon laughing so hard that he would fall off the ledge into the vom. Puck is worried but then Oberon would bound out to congratulate him. Early in the preview process, I had a bit of free time and rather than just passing by this vom to go directly to my next stopping point, I stood by to watch Oberon drop into it. He dropped only rather than bouncing back up, he began crawling towards me – realizing he must have landed wrong and broke something, I instantly radioed up to my SM to tell her the actor was injured and to stop the show which she did. We tended to the actor till the ambulance arrived and needless to say the performance did not continue that evening.