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Messages - amagelssen

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Something I did with my last devised show was record blocking and scene notes in the same document. Since we had a "scenario" ( a summary of scenes), but no script, I took notes on how we improvised scenes and what movement was used in them. It was a comedia del arte piece and so fairly physical. We did not get a script until two days before tech which made traditional blocking notation impossible.


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I use seconds. I've been asked more than once by sound designers for the length of transitions between scenes and it's just easier for me if I record everything in seconds. I was also the kid in high school physics class who would record answers to the seventh decimal place before my teacher took me aside and tried to explain that it was okay to only go to the third decimal.

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The Green Room / Re: Ten Reasons to Date a Stage Manager
« on: Jun 14, 2012, 05:12 pm »
I love #1. Though I don't think I would take kindly to a paramour using my glow tape to make themselves a tron costume as in reason #8.

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Keep the tone of a formal business letter no matter how small the theater company. It's much more difficult to offend someone by too formal a letter while it's very easy to offend someone with a too informal letter.  I hire stage managers for a small storefront theater where the stage manager is frequently the one who sets standards of professionalism and having an informal cover letter makes me question whether you would be able to set a professional tone in rehearsal and communications to production team members. If you want to sell yourself as a professional, competent stage manager the first place you do that is in your cover letter. Cover letters that are too cutesy tend to make me think you might possibly be nuts.

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The Green Room / Re: Production Haikus
« on: May 04, 2012, 01:43 pm »
For the producers and director who texted me at 7 am every morning this week:

Rehearsals run late
Am not a morning person
Wait til after nine

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The Green Room / Re: SM: WORST THINGS
« on: Apr 22, 2012, 05:24 pm »
@ Loebmtc: I discussed this with the director afterwards and he said it was within  his rights during previews, made rude comments to me and insisted he'd been respecting actors' time throughout this rehearsal process.  I don't particularly agree with him on that last one.  It's things like this which are slowly but surely making me come to the conclusion that as much as I love the work done in non-equity scrappy storefronts, for my own sanity I might need to go equity if only so there are consequences set up for this kind of thing.

But to return the discussion to worst things ever:

-- I'm working on a show where the band is exposed to the audience. The bassist replaced his clip light with one that did not have the right kind of gel. As a result, a bright light was shining at his crotch for most of one of our performances in a show where most of the stage lighting is fairly dim creating both spill light and again, essentially a spot light at his crotch.

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The Green Room / Re: SM: WORST THINGS
« on: Apr 22, 2012, 03:09 am »
How about when the director is late when he insisted on calling everyone an hour early at five hours' notice?

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I was having a really rough night for our second to last preview. Major things were changed with our sound design so our sound check took much longer than it should have and the cast was just not moving into gear when getting ready despite getting calls and we opened house close to three minutes to Go time. I was on the edge of tears and when my friend the house manager asked if there was anything she could do,  I said "Ice cream. Ice cream always helps" as a joke. Then ten minutes later, after house had finally opened, the other house manager appeared and gave me a pint of Ben and Jerry's and a spoon. It was the best thing ever.

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The Green Room / Re: SM: WORST THINGS
« on: Apr 18, 2012, 12:20 pm »
Yeah, that's why printers/photocopiers that can punch holes  for you are one of the best things ever. One of the worst things ever is the $10 hole puncher I have in my kit that eventually stopped punching the 3rd hole fully and hurt my wrist to use.

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Don't like last night's notes?
You weren't there to talk about them
Don't miss rehearsal

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Yes, the days are long
But this is not your first show
That's why it's called tech.

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The Green Room / Re: What's next?
« on: Mar 21, 2012, 05:29 pm »
I think I would either want to transition into production management or arts administration. Of course, I could always just find a job doing data entry and decide my nights would be devoted to writing instead of running rehearsals.

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I'm working on a show that will be in an intimate setting with promenade style staging. At the end of the show a character will be killed and our director wants it to be dramatic, loud and bloody. We are currently debating the use of a blank gun.

The director who is also the artistic director wants a blank gun and views it as an infringement of his vision not using one. He's using the "we have to do risky theater or why bother" argument. He's nixed the idea of a sound effect instead of a prop gun when I brought it up in a production meeting and again when the production manager brought it up in an e-mail discussing gun policy. He doesn't think it will be dramatic enough and that the show will really suffer for it since it's the climax of the show. We're talking about having a blank gun fired backstage away from audience members, cast and crew.

I'm really concerned about having a prop blank gun fired in a show where there is not assigned seating and we might have an audience member mistakenly wander into an area that they shouldn't. Has anyone else dealt with stage firearms in a small setting where audience movement will be unpredictable? For that matter, has anyone else dealt with a safety concern being ignored by the director and artistic director? How did you deal with that?

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Employment / Networking in new city
« on: Feb 25, 2012, 12:25 am »
Hi,

So I'm thinking of relocating to a new city for personal reasons and would basically be rebuilding my theater network from scratch. I'm wondering if anyone else has ever moved to a new city with few theater contacts and how they managed to network their way to gigs? I went to college in my current city (Chicago) and did internships and finding SM work here has been fairly easy but I've never had to build from scratch the way I would in a new city.

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