Author Topic: RUNNING: No stage manager?  (Read 9885 times)

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planetmike

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RUNNING: No stage manager?
« on: Apr 06, 2011, 11:51 pm »
I have been asked to be the assistant technical director for a large community theatre musical this summer. We're having our first pre-production meeting tomorrow so everyone involved can meet, and basic questions can be answered. The cast will be made up of about 75 people, kids through adults (auditions in May). On the initial crew list that was sent out this evening, they did not list a stage manager at all. I've asked the Tech Director about that, but no response yet.

One of the things they have already asked me to do is call the show from the booth. Otherwise I'm not real sure what my other duties will be in this production. Assuming they have no stage manager, just a backstage person herding the cast, would I in fact be like a stage manager? Have you ever worked a show where there was no stage manager during the rehearsal process? I'm mystified how this could work.

cprted

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #1 on: Apr 07, 2011, 12:16 am »
I did a contract last year as an SM coming in for tech week.  Sound of Music, 50 kids, two casts, it was a disaster.  Reasonably well paid, but a disaster none the less.  Oh the stories I have ...

Thespi620

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #2 on: Apr 07, 2011, 08:40 am »
I've done it. My community theater growing up didn't have a designated SM during the rehearsal process--and even during the run of the show, the people they called SMs were really just crew chiefs on either side of stage.

During rehearsals, the director already had blocking all planned out and would write it all down in her own book, as would the AD. Often, there were rehearsals for more than one scene/sequence/song going on at once, so each member of the creative team kept his or her own notes about what was supposed to happen when. They all planned things out together beforehand, so there were never really many conflicts (as far as I recall; they were also really good at keeping staff disagreements to themselves in front of us).  The Director and AD sat in the booth during the show, the AD called the show, and our myriad of volunteers backstage made sure everyone got on stage.

I know it's not always the case with community theater, but occasionally things that seem odd, like not having an SM in rehearsals, are simply the product of a program with very few resources becoming an established tradition and then not wanting to reinvent the wheel. Hopefully, you've stumbled on one of those! :D
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Joshua S.

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #3 on: Apr 07, 2011, 09:46 am »
Before I entered college, I never knew what an SM actually did.  In high school we had a stage manager who did nothing but pulled the curtain.  In the community theatre I worked with, we didn't have stage managers, but the responsibilities would be delegated out to other people.  The production manager took care of things like contact lists. If there were an AD, they would take some of the responsibility of helping keep rehearsals organized and running smoothly.  The director usually kept track of their own blocking.  The lighting and sound board operators (usually 1 person) had a book and took their own cues.  There was never really anyone keeping things running backstage...  everyone just managed to be where they needed to be and do what they needed to do (granted, this was a small space and set changes were pretty limited).  It is certainly possibly to do a show without a stage manager, but it's a heck of a lot easier to have one.

dallas10086

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #4 on: Apr 07, 2011, 03:27 pm »
It isn't just community theatres - a friend of mine who is often the LD for an opera company often complains of a lack of stage management. Apparently to cut corners they don't hire ANY stage management, for rehearsals or performances. I'm not sure how they get around the union issue - if there is one - but it frustrates him that he can't go to one person for information...often times he has to go through two or three people to get a question answered.

Like they said, you can get along without one, but it makes life SO much easier with one!

On_Headset

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #5 on: Apr 08, 2011, 03:01 am »
It's not telling you anything I'm sure you haven't already figured out, but I suppose you'll just have to play it by ear.

It seems extremely unlikely that a community theatre group of a size and level of competence necessary to tackle a large-scale musical would genuinely attempt to do so without any stage management support whatsoever. Some possible explanations...

Good reasons:
- They're a thoroughly collaborative company. (The creatives make collective decisions, the right hand always knows what the left hand is doing, etc.)
- The director doesn't like using stage managers, and prefers to work within her own head. She'll be taking her own notes, tracking her own blocking, etc.
- The company is super-organized and has a structure such that many of the normal SM administrative duties will be handled by back-office staff, volunteers, or company members, with the the expectation that the non-administrative stuff will be picked up by the production departments and technical director.
- Everything is real simple and loosey-goosey, more akin to a village pantomime than a serious take on a musical. (A SM presence might still be desirable--but it might also not be, insofar as you might want the chaos at the backend to filter through to some extent, if that's the aesthetic you're going for.)
- There was so much interest in the SM job that the company wound up splitting it into smaller chunks in order to appease the volunteers.
- Another job (likely Producer,  Production Manager, Technical Director, Assistant Director, Company Manager, or something else in that line) has historically done what we would otherwise expect a stage manager to do.

Bad reasons:
- The former stage manager (who had the gig for 40 years running and practically came with the building) has departed and something (collision of egos, lack of interest, lack of qualified people, lack of attention paid to this person's absence, etc.) has prevented a new one from being found in time.
- The director is unqualified: he has never worked a show on this scale, is more used to teeny-tiny shows with teeny-tiny casts, and when asked "do we need to find you a stage manager?", he figured he could just squeak by because he'd always done so previously...
- The company is over-ambitious and is either too small to attract enough qualified production-end people, or not competent enough to realize that they're going to run into a problem without a stage manager or SM-analogue.

BARussell

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #6 on: Apr 11, 2011, 04:09 pm »
One of my favorite experiences in community theatre was being in the ensemble of a musical and having the director backstage on headset for each performance calling the cues, but I had similar experiences in high school were all the stage manager did was yell at people and sometimes call cues and pull the curtain, people just kind of figured out what needed to happen to make the show work, that's how I got into SMing by pulling all the weight and SM would do during performances I started to appreciate the backstage work more, the I realized it was a real job.
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abenava47

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #7 on: Apr 11, 2011, 05:45 pm »
No. It Will Never Work., one must have a stage manager.

Rebbe

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #8 on: Apr 11, 2011, 08:46 pm »
No. It Will Never Work., one must have a stage manager.

Never is a big word.  We have a couple examples above of how to make it work.  With enough people scurrying around, picking up different parts of the typical SM duties, anything is possible.  I guess it's more a matter of how well it will work.  I tend to think it will work less than very well...
"...allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster."  (Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare In Love)

MatthewShiner

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #9 on: Apr 11, 2011, 09:21 pm »
Dear god, how did theatre happen before stage managers came into existence . . . pretty sure the Greeks did have stage managers . . . and yet some how the gods descended . . . and the plots resolved.  Part of being a stage manager is dealing with the thankless nature of the job, and, because of that, we often, perhaps, over inflate our importance . . . at the end of the day, my job can can be parsed out and done by a variety of people.

Now, I can do it pretty well . . . and probably better then if it was parsed out . . . and that is what makes me an important part of a team - important but NOT NECESSARY.
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KMC

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #10 on: Apr 12, 2011, 09:00 am »
...at the end of the day, my job can can be parsed out and done by a variety of people.

Bingo - the potential pitfalls of running without an SM could likely largely be avoided (especially in a community theater setting) provided all of the SM's responsibilities are tasked to others.  And that's not to trivialize community theater in any way, just tends to be smaller in scale.

The reality of it is no one person is bigger than any production.  Aside from the person signing your paycheck, nearly everyone else is replaceable or expendable.  This is true in all lines of work.

Now, all that being said, the responsibilities that do fall under the SM are likely going to be performed much better, more efficiently, etc... by someone with the skillset of an SM, which is why SMs are hired in the first place.  Will the machine of a production be more well oiled and more efficient with an SM?  Absolutely.  Is it 100% necessary for the curtain to rise opening night?  Probably not in most productions. 
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planetmike

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #11 on: Apr 12, 2011, 02:05 pm »
Thanks everyone for your responses. After meeting most of the crew/designers/management, this group appears to work with the stage manager actually serving as the deck stage manager; the producer serving as the contact point for messages that need to be distributed; the director and assistant director I assume will be maintaining their own blocking notes; the technical director coordinating all design aspects with the artistic director and director. Historically, they've never had anyone calling the show's cues, each operator took their own. I think this will be an interesting show to work, I'm sure I'll learn a lot. :)

SMJkoo

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #12 on: Apr 17, 2011, 11:49 am »
I'm the resident SM and TD of a small equity theater in northern NJ, and for some shows, we rarely have SM's. The director has the blocking written down, gives to and meets with the LD, and the SM is mainly there - if ever - as a police officer. Then, when we get into tech week, the director calls the show - or sometimes not even - and the SM sits backstage dealing with curtains, props and sc. changes. It is a very unusual and unorthodox way of doing things, but some places do it.
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Samazon

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Re: RUNNING: No stage manager?
« Reply #13 on: May 10, 2011, 10:37 pm »
The community theatre here does it all the time. While there is an actual stage manager, they are not always there during rehearsals but the run the show during tech as far as making sure everything backstage happens.  Generally the runs are so short that the board operators or designers will run the shows and the directors give notes because they are there every night.

Curiously, my mom recently got into producing at the community theatre level and has taken on a few of the responsibilities that typically go to stage managers (she is at rehearsal every night and helps out the director with communication), in addition to handling money.  For it, she has been commended and requested as a model producer. The system has worked for the past few shows.
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