This is a very detailed scenario that would take huge amounts of paperwork and proposals. But here is where I would start...
SM Courses (required for major):
Stage Management I, Stage Management II, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Company Management, PSY: Personalities, Senior Production Seminar
PSY: Personalities is a class we offer here at my school that I feel would be extremely beneficial to SM students because they learn what the major personality types are and how each one is best communicated with. Senior Production Seminar is another class we offer to tech students where you learn how to find and get jobs, portfolios, mock interviews and the like.
SM Courses (recommended):
All design courses available, drafting, any psychology courses, speech, acting I, any art history (if there is an interest in designing especially)
Staff:
Naturally I would want experienced stage managers who are also skilled in other fields such as lighting and/or sound. Also an SM or other professional who has experience in company management. I would fill in any holes for design and hire a TD as well. Other traits I would look for is good communication and collaborative skills, excellent teaching skills that focus on hands-on experience, and positive personalities that can help encourage a new program to grow.
At first we would be pressed to fill a full season effectively with a huge number of SM students. I would look at how many actors we would have and try to use that to judge how many production we could handle. My goal would be to increase the number of sponsored production to four, and encourage off-the-wall productions that are student handled.
This would definitely be a self-starter program that will need to find good students who show initiative to start their own programs and production to learn what they need in addition to what the program itself can offer. My hope would be to mainly recruit SM students who are also interested in learning design, directing and possibly acting. This way each SM can hopefully SM once, ASM once, and work on two other design assignments (in addition to outside projects). In this case I would hope to recruit 4 SM for the first few years until the program grows.
If there are local theaters (community or professional) I would hope to build a relationship with them to possibly have our SMs do unpaid internships during their time (either summers or in between projects) so they can learn how to do crews and possibly shadow an SM (or even have the opportunity to SM in smaller theaters) in a professional atmosphere.
As for extra curricular I would require participation in some form for every sponsored production and encourage participation in all student off-the-walls by offering either credit or some incentive through the department. Every week would be a required production meeting (also potentially for credit) where all of our students come together to discuss what would help them, what they are experiencing and work out any issues and make sure we are all on the same page for the upcoming productions.
These are all mostly ideas from my own college as well as grad programs I have researched. Also some are new takes on old ideas. What do you think Kay, would this be a plausible start to a program?
