The Stage Manager's Nightmare

[Sarah]

My recurring nightmare is that "the show" is scheduled to start and the booth has been moved without my knowledge. I can never reach it no matter how many paths, stairs, elevators or ladders I take.

[missliz]

My recurring nightmare is that "the show" is scheduled to start and the booth has been moved without my knowledge. I can never reach it no matter how many paths, stairs, elevators or ladders I take.

Sounds like that scene in Spinal Tap. 

[Tempest]

I had my first Stage Manager nightmare of tech week, last night.  It was a doozy.
To start with, the set crew drank all the beer I brought them to have when they were done for the night, before they finished, leading to drunken carpentry, AND the fact that someone drank the botle of cider I had brought for myself, and no one could understand why I was cranky.
Then, a friend who had come to help out had a sudden, completely unexpected mental and emotional breakdown.  So, instead of working and/or getting rest, I spent all night trying to convince one of the strongest, most capable men I know that
a) he is not broken and useless and dangerous to those he loves
b) his friends do love him and want him around, and
c) getting drunk (on what, all the beer was gone!) and throwing himself off the roof was a very bad iea.

Apparently, while I was outside dealing with emotional issues, political issues had taken over the theatre.  When I went back inside there were a lot more people than there were supposed to be...because the freakin' FBI was convinced there was a terrorist hiding in the theatre.  And decided they needed to be onstage, during performance, to find him.
Which led to a completely farcical section of FBI agents and army personell being onstage, in bad costumes, trying to "fit in" while looking for a terrorist.  I considered having the flymen drop a piece of scenery on their heads, but decided against it, when I figured out they'd just think I was the terrorist.
I was lamenting the ugly dress I had to wear to run the show (for some reason, I'm always costumed in my SM nightmares) when I woke up.

[BayAreaSM]

It seems as though I've had several of these dreams listed already, but my worst one is this:

I don't know the show, I can't find my headset, and I need to get to the booth - which is almost an impossible path that involves walking through the house, then onstage, then onto a catwalk and back to the back of the house and through a window. I would get to the booth, there wouldn't be a headset, so I had to retrace my path to get backstage to get a headset, then get back to the booth, all the while, the show is already running.

I seem to have several versions of that one...though I tend to have those during my summer layoffs. Guess I have something to look forward to in June!

[SMLois]

My personal favourite was for a production I was doing with a cast of 24 university students, but a professional director, design team, and myself.  The night before it was to begin, I dreamt that for some reason the first reading had been moved to an attic on the 5th floor of the old church we often rehearse in.  Then, just as we all climbed the ladder into the attic, I dreamt the ladder melted away, abandoning us up there, just in time for an earthquake. 


It's enough to make me want to do earthquake drills.

[SM_Maddie]

For me, my nightmares are always about being late. Punctuality is a big thing for me, and I just feel nervous and anxious if I feel that I'm going to be late for even a minor rehearsal. Because it's when you think you're not going to be needed that suddenly something goes wrong and you need to be there, you know?

In my dream I'm always 10 minutes late to opening night of a show that I've been working on, but it's in a theater that I don't recognize. So I can't find the door to backstage, or the door to anything for that matter. But I can hear the sounds of the show coming from inside.

It gets me every time.

[BARussell]

I don't have nightmares but I find that when things are a little more hairy than usual at rehearsals I will dream about the problem scene in the show over and over like an endless loop. I wake up so very tired and feel like I have worked all night long instead of sleeping. It doesn't scare me or make me any more stressed but it definitely keeps me from being well rested just when I need it most!

Yeah I  never have stage management or theatre "nightmares", my only theatre dreams are about seeing shows. But during tech weeks, I sleep so poorly because my mind just rolls over and over thinking about things, that when I wake up make no sense, but I am always semi-conscious and just trying to solve weird problems or answer questions or go over the same bit of blocking or lines over and over, I feel exhausted but mostly dumb in the morning for stressing in my sleep when I'm not even that stressed when awake.

[dallas10086]

Had a dream last night that I was exactly 34 minutes late to the first rehearsal of a Shakespeare play. Funny thing is, it doesn't start until July. Oh, and I was late because I was driving the Autobahn with my mother saying how irrationally reckless I was being. It's a little early for these kinds of nightmares.

[Craig SM]

My nightmare, i was sleeping i had slept in and it was absolutely pooring down i was running to the theatre and i dropped my production book which had my calling script in it and it ripped out my folder and got ripped it was drenched and i just dropped to the ground like what am i going to do i'm a mess no laptop to back up or nothing!

at that point i woke up looked at the time fell back to sleep lol

[amandaackovitz]

I have a recurring nightmare about a "Techie Musical" (this started happening back in high school). The techs were the cast, and the regular cast was the tech crew. Scary.

[BLee]

I had a SM nightmare a couple nights ago...

I am sitting in a very exposed booth on opening night of the big musical (Spelling Bee I think...). I sit down and call house to half, then call house out. I look down and realize that I never got a cue sheet and have no cues anywhere in my book...and for some reason I feel like I've only heard the music once (which is true in my case since I've only seen that show once).

The nightmare proceeded for a bit more with me randomly calling "go" at moments when I think a lighting effect might take place and then calling "go" "go" "go" until a look that lights the correct part of stage appears. The performers were primarily in the dark and it was awful.

[dallas10086]

Ugh, I guess it's just that time of year.

Had a nightmare that I was in the house during tech and I called for a star drop to be flown out. It gets halfway there and I hear sounds of struggle from the rail and suddenly it flies out in record speed, I hear a crash and the line drops to the stage. Then one by one ALL the lines start crashing to the ground and the arbor system actually pulls away from the wall and falls over. Once the dust settles the entire arbor system is in a heap onstage. I'm standing there with my mouth open in shock. I look over at my PM and say we have to cancel the show. She says we still have to open in four days and that I need to make it happen.

[missliz]

Same! In my dream, I woke up and discovered I had fallen asleep in the booth, and an actress had climbed up to tell me that I needed to call a blackout to end the scene. I sat up, panicked, and discovered I had no headset and no way to call the cues. My board ops were FAAAAAAAAAR away and also asleep, so my frantic signaling did nothing. I woke up in real life, still never having called the cues.

[bex]

I had one a few weeks ago, about a show that I just closed. It had a spectacularly difficult intermission shift, where I and my 2 crewmembers were assisted by the actors, who had to change out of their costumes (white tuxes) in order to help move furniture and scenic pieces. In real life, they were all ready to go by the end of the final scene of the act. In my dream, however, I made it down from the booth in record time, but it took 8  minutes for the actors to get changed. I had no crew, and someone kept opening the grand drape, so my frantic struggling to move these furniture pieces was exposed to the audience. Everytime I walked back out onstage, the drape was open again. And to top it all off, random strangers kept appearing backstage saying "Oh no, it's fine, I'm a friend of so-and-so's" and just hanging out in the wings, refusing to leave.

[Tempest]

I had a new one, last night!

I work a lot of rental shows where the performer(s) show up with their sound on an iPod. Usually it's just one continuous playlist, so I plug it into the board, check levels, make sure it's in Airplane Mode, and make sure it's not on shuffle. Usually it's a "spare" iPod, so it stays in the booth for the length of their run.

Last show I did ran off the performers personal iPhone, however (also, no dialogue, just continuous soundtrack!). She took it back between performances and home every night.

I guess this made me more anxious than I realized, because last night I dreamed that she forgot it, one day. She came in and said, "No problem, I'll just improvise some other show to what's on your iPod!" With a full house and the owner of the company in the audience. What a disaster!