Two years ago I started doing a crash course for freshmen, about 25% design/production folks and 75% performance folks. I take two hours to cover what I think they need to know going into their first college production. Some have never heard the term stage manager before, some have heard it used for a number of different roles. Because knowing your audience is everything, my talks focus on two things - the things a design/production person who is going to be a production assistant on a show needs to know, and the things that the performers need to know, for the next three semesters they will be working as crew so they will be working closely with SMs during tech and performances.
Stage directions, safety, dress codes, spiking things, comm etiquette, line notes, break times, communication basics, organizational chart overview, are all included but far more important than all of that detail work is the why of stage management - why do we create paperwork for run crew? why do we ask them to do things a specific way? why do we show up first and leave last? why do we send reports and give notes? I've found that sticks much more than vocabulary and is far more useful because it covers a greater variety of situations, as well as opening up the possibility of connecting to other things they have more experiance in.
