Messages

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: HOUSE MANAGEMENT: Do you spill the beans about your famous audience members?

« on: Aug 24, 2010, 02:56 am »

I make it a case-by-case decision.

In a smaller company, I usually know everyone's preferences and comply accordingly. For a larger company (usually musicals) I keep it to myself as word travels quickly and inevitably someone who doesn't want to know will overhear. Either way, I never make a point of announcing if someone is in the house, I wait for someone to directly ask me or bring it up.

Interestingly enough, I find straight-play actors almost never want to know, and musical theatre actors usually want to know. Both however, always ask about house size.

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Brand new and seeking help!

« on: Jun 29, 2007, 10:01 am »

HAHA, my story is kinda similar to yours. In my younger years, I was always acting on stage, then when I got to High School, I started to realize that I couldn't act. I still wanted to do something for the school show so I did stage crew for the last 2 years. Now, I've ASM'd for 2 shows outside school and I'm beginning to wonder if I could possibly make a career out of it since it's what I love to do. 

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Show suggestions (for HS)

« on: Jun 29, 2007, 09:50 am »

Joseph might be a good show for you guys. It has plenty of male parts, which can also be played by female. It a nice show for high schools because it can be done really well on a low budget as well as a big budget. There are 2 or 3 leads, the narrator can be split into two for high schools, and the parts are somewhat challenging. Also, it's a hard show for a director to screw up.

Whoops, I just realized you guys want a play, sorry lol.

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SMNetwork Archives / Re: Happy Stage Management Memories?

« on: Jun 14, 2007, 10:33 pm »

Most of my good show memories are complete blurs as they mostly occur late at night when eere all loopy on 4 hours of paint fumes.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Hydraulic Scenery accident, London "Lord of the Rings"

« on: Jun 06, 2007, 07:08 pm »

The last show I did, a large, heavy pay-phone on a pole fell tipped on top of an actors foot. He seriously bruised a few muscles in his foot and just barely avoided permanent damage.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: set changes

« on: Jun 06, 2007, 07:02 pm »

Well, you're set changes really have to be relative to the size of your crew, the sized of the set, whats going on in the show at the time.

That being said, 30 seconds is a bit much, even for community theatre. A great way to practice and perfect your set changes is practicing them with your full crew during blackout, keep doing it with a stopwatch and you'll cut a big chunk of your time.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Headset Etiquette

« on: Jun 04, 2007, 10:29 pm »

I haven't done a whole lot of shows with headsets (I haven't done a lot of shows in general), but from my experience, it usually comes down to a few factors:

1) How well the crew meshes with each other and how much room for joking around there is within the relationships.

2) What is going on in the show at the time of the conversation, for example, the last show I did, midway through the run, we all knew when the technically hectic points of the show occurred and fit our headset courtesy and joking according to that.

3) Exactly what's being said, I mean, it's cool to make fun of actors when they slip and fall or screw-up a major line, but downright insulting is just kinda going too far.