Messages

1

The Green Room / Re: The Stage Manager's Nightmare

« on: Aug 10, 2015, 10:56 am »

The most vivid dream I had was that our building had burned to the ground (either right before or during tech) and the producer and I were standing amidst the rubble trying to figure out how to do a show.  This was coincidentally how the entire process felt.

The weirdest on that I had was when I was in college.  Another show that was teching was having all sorts of problems - they lost one of their leads, multiple cast/crew had deaths in their families, there was food poisoning, etc.  I wasn't involved in the show at all.  I had an nightmare during THEIR tech though - that I hadn't realized the whole time that I was supposed to be SMing, and opening night someone broke the news to me. 

2

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Script or Running paperwork?

« on: Aug 10, 2015, 10:43 am »

I will always have my script handy backstage regardless of what I am using to run the show.  As well as I may know the show, if an actor goes off his lines or anything disrupts the flow, it helps to have a script to be able to quickly catch up to where we are.

That being said, I usually run off a run sheet if I am backstage.  I feel better without having my nose in a book, and it's usually easier to post a run sheet for quick references while doing QC, scene changes, etc.  I can also format a run sheet however is most helpful - for example, I did a show with a huge amount of props to set/change throughout the show, so my run sheet was formatted in a way that made it easy for me to remember which props I was taking on and offstage at any given time.

The only time I have truly run a show off a script was when I was doing a one-man show.  It was challenging to follow where we were based solely on what was happening onstage, since the whole thing was the actor talking.  I had to follow the script closely in order to know where we were.