kiwitechgirl:
Since tess is asking... Your job sounds super hectic, is there time for family or anything? I feel like the Theatre engulfs my life during shows and I don't talk to anyone but the cast for days!
but kiwitechgirl:
wow, that's a huge job. how are the productions divided amongst the stage managers? and the space for rehearsals and everything?
It has hectic and not-so-hectic times! Essentially we almost always have one mainbill show in performance and one in rehearsal at any given time, although there are exceptions when we do a run which is longer than four weeks (like over the summer when we have a 12-week run of a musical), so effectively we can alternate stage managers - at the moment I'm about to go into rehearsal while one of the others is on show call. The second space has bigger gaps between shows, plus also it has an operator/stage manager once the show is up and running, so the stage manager does rehearsals and production week then hands it off to the operator, meaning there's time to prepare for the next rehearsal period.
Kids' shows, which happen during the day in school holidays, are usually dealt with by a casual stage manager, except for the summer one because there's not a lot else going on for the SMs who are not on the musical! They play on the mainbill stage, usually with some small easily-moved set pieces to make the mainbill set fit their show!
The late night improv doesn't actually require us to do anything except start the show when the house is in and be there in case of emergency, then fill in the show report at the end of the gig, so it's not particularly hard work. Usually it's whoever is on the mainbill show at the time (the improv plays on whatever set happens to be in the theatre) that stage manages it.
We have two rehearsal spaces, but one is unusable during kids' shows because it is directly above the theatre and so footsteps and noise are very audible. Because the second theatre isn't constantly in rehearsal, though, we can usually make it work; occasionally we have to go offsite but there is a school down the road that is more than happy to make their hall (which is big enough to get a full mark-out on the floor) available to us during school holidays (which of course is the only time we need it) at the cost of fifty tickets to the show - works for us!
I do manage to find time for family etc; we always have Sundays off, plus once the show is up and running I have my days free and so you can fit stuff in. I particularly love it over the summer (I almost always do the musicals, because I'm the only one of the three of us who reads music) when I can go to the beach during the day and then go to work! Production weeks tend to be pretty ridiculous, because we only have a week's turnaround between mainbill shows, but you just learn to cope with it.