I just had my year-in-review meeting and something interesting came up, so I thought I'd present the topic to the group:
We were talking about ASM/PAs and their responsibilities and such, and I made a comment that it is obviously much easier to work with an assistant who a) is interested in being a stage manager and b) has some sort of basic knowledge of the job. (My ASM for the last 6 months has actually been the artistic apprentice, and while she is a dear friend, she is an actor with no formal SM training at all.)
We talked about the amount of time I have had to spend teaching basic rehearsal duties and how to physically run a show in addition to my duties and how at first I really felt that it compromised my ability to do my job, etc., etc. Then my artistic director said something that I found interesting: that in the past, the stage manager has always created all of the paperwork needed to run the show. This included any paperwork for props, scene shifts, costume changes, etc.
Now, all of this information in included in my book, as a part of my blocking notes, but as a stage manager I have never been expected to do that paperwork. Rather, I should correct myself and say that as an ASM those materials were always my sole responsibility to create, and almost always done without consulting my SM at every step of the way. We clearly communicated about what had to be done, but I created the run sheets and ran the shift rehearsals during tech and so on.
I realise that every theatre and every SM works differently, but that has been the way of things for me since I started out, so I'm curious to know how everyone here does things.
Heather and Erin, you two especially...