Has anyone else ever noticed....

[Maribeth]

....that when other stage managers come to see your show, that's the night that something will go wrong?

[PSMAK]

It's a test. Something has to keep us on our toes!

[dallas10086]

Or when anyone high-up on the ladder comes! My dimmer rack had a seizure the night my dimmer rack crashed, but at least she got to see just what we were paid to do!

[Michelle R. Wood]

I tend to think we're mostly just more aware of problems; unless it's something blatantly obvious, most average audience members aren't aware anything's happened. On the other hand, we're also the ones who most appreciate when a hard set of cues goes off right.

[BenTheStageMan]

In a nice example of this principal, I shadowed Maribeth on Sunday and lo and behold, the cue light control box died at the end of Intermission!
As the shadow, it was cool to see someone else dealing with a technical problem, which she did very well!  After just a few moments of troubleshooting, once it was clear that hitting the box (the sound engineer's solution) wasn't going to fix it, she came up with a plan to have the ASMs cue actors on at the top of the act, and off we went.  As each sequence that involved cue lights approached, she talked through the cues with the ASMs and then called them over the headsets.  It went very smoothly--I know this is usually the fallback plan if the cue lights fail, but it was nice to see it put into practice.

Although I imagine if I hadn't been there this wouldn't have happened, right?  The curse of the shadow