Messages

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: No Smoking in Denver

« on: Jul 09, 2008, 03:12 pm »

Ontario is going smoke free as well.  Sudbury, ON you have to be outside and a certain distance away from All doors to a building or you can be fined.  So smoking on stage is a definite No.  Toronto is worse about smoking on stage.  You can't even have a bare flame - so lighting a match or lighter to "pretend" to light a fake cigarette isn't allowed. I heard through my college special effects teacher there was a show that was either put on hold or cancelled because they tried to use a fake cigarette.  There's apparently a fairly decent fake cigarette out there... but it's hard to get a hold of.  My teacher apparently stocks up on it whenever he can, and freezes them.  I should contact him and figure out what kind it was.

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Tools of the Trade / Re: Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?

« on: Jul 09, 2008, 10:05 am »

Okay, I have sort of been against this thread a little from the beginning as I can smell a thread that has the potential to turn into a p!ss!ng contest from a mile away – and as such, I am going to suggest we slightly redirect this thread – so that it is a useful thread, instead of one of those threads with “Well we had a cable short on our coms and had to use tin cans connected to pieces of string to talk to each other” as every second thread.

So this is my “proposal” (and I use the term loosely) – from hence forth could the discussion be aimed further towards “What can we do to prevent 'show stopping' issues relating to the increasingly technical aspect of modern theatre?” - basically a “How to I plan for the worst, even though I hope for the best?” discussion. Draw from personal experience, sure, but try and stay away from “Lighting desk crashed, op got it up within three cues”.

Your proposal was what I was trying to get at... I guess I didn't word it the right way.  Thanks for clearing it up.  I'm always afraid of "what happens when this fails" and it always seems like I'm the only one that notices these potential fail points.  On top of that nobody has explained to me what should be done in these situations.  I was hoping to get some first person knowledge on how to plan for disasters before they happen so that if I happen to be in that situation, I'll have a bit of an idea as to how to deal with it.  Also I was thinking it would be a good source of help for anyone else if they came across a situation someone else had dealt with.

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Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: Taping the Prop Table

« on: Jul 07, 2008, 10:25 pm »

I've seen and done a variety of ways to mark a props table.  At my high school we used the butcher paper method and we used sharpies to draw the outline of the object so that anyone looking at the table could figure out right away what was missing (if anything).  In college it depended on the show since some were more prop heavy then others.  For the light ones we surrounded a couple of items with a box of masking tape and wrote what belonged in that square.  Our last show was extremely heavy with props ('night mother) I became very strict with the props since we had only one chance to get all the props right... Other then the daughter walking into the bedroom for 2 min at a time, neither actress exited the stage until the lights went down at the end. We had tables, shelves and since our room was small we even had the walls labelled with every single prop.

Personally I Love a well organized prop table/room.  I love being able to walk into the room and know exactly what has to go out and where or who it goes to.  I also love doing the last check of the room to make sure nothing was missed and be able to tell at a glance we did or not.  The last thing I love about it is it makes the prop clean up every night SOO much easier.  Everything has a spot to go, and me and my ASM's can tell at a glance if we somehow forgot an item on the stage or if an actor forgot to put an item back.

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: How to deal with problem Actor's/Audience members

« on: Jul 03, 2008, 11:55 am »

I'm glad he apologized about what he had done.  It is very hard for everyone else if it's the same line over and over that is wrong.  We had another actor when I was ASM that did something similar to one line... Everyone was on book including him... except for that one line.  The Stage manager corrected him Every time, whenever I was in charge of lines I corrected him every time... Even the Director talked to him... I think he only got the line right Once in the two weeks of production.  It got to the point the other actors knew what the line was supposed to be themselves.  Unfortunately it was the cue line for the next actor... The one time he got it right it threw the other actor off for a couple of seconds.  One thing me and all SM I've worked with have always insisted on, even for the play that we had problems with being on book, was cue lines... All actors had to get those lines right and they knew it.  I think they sometimes focus more on their cue lines instead of trying to memorize the Entire line.

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Tools of the Trade / Things that went wrong with your technical equipment?

« on: Jul 03, 2008, 11:05 am »

Anyone had to use two sets of headsets to run a show? Or had to use cell phones? What about the computer in charge of the motion lights deciding to crash and having to restart? Or the sound system decides to have a coffee break just as you call standby?

I've dealt with all of these... Luckily for the sound system it was operational by the cue.  Unluckily we momentarily forgot that when the computer comes on the motion lights get reset, they tend to do this whole move-on-their-own thing.  Cell phones we've used as back up for head sets with attitudes(set to vibrate of course).  And after one show where we had to change the battery of one of our new wireless headsets more then once, we opted to run the old reliable comset to my ASM so that we had a reliable source of communication.

Any stories of equipment going wrong during the show? What did you do to fix it/prevent it in the future?  Based on your experiences what is the one thing you insist on having?  I'll now be ensuring I have everyone's cell phone number and that they have it on vibrate Just in case, especially if there's only one headset system in the house.  My communication is Way too precious to loose contact with anyone.

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: How to deal with problem Actor's/Audience members

« on: Jul 03, 2008, 09:27 am »

Actually this was college theatre.  The director was the director of the program.  The show we did with the adlibbing was originally an Italian Comedie Del'Arte play which means it was originally "written" as All ad libbing.  And the actors weren't so much adlibbing as they couldn't remember their lines word for word so they'd change the occasional word to something that meant the same.  By the time we came offbook about a month before production half the cast didn't know their lines.  I tried to get them on book as much as possible, but it gets to a point of having them say their lines to the best of their ability (as memorized as possible and where what they say is roughly what the line says) and them relying on me to say their lines for them.  It's very hard when I correct the actor at every line he/she says and eventually when it's their turn to say a line they don't even try and just look at me and say "Line". (Litterally... 4 or 5 rehearsals of this!!)  The director wasn't happy with the actors, but supported what I was doing  with getting them as on book as possible.  I still corrected when they got the line wrong, but 2 weeks before production I started to relax my insistance that they said the lines word for word: It wasn't going to happen.  BUT!!! For ONE show out of our two week production EVERYONE was on book word for word!!! I was SOO proud of them all!

Our House Manager had little idea as to what he was supposed to do, so whenever anything happened everyone looked at me as SM (and supposidly the most knowledgeable person there) to find out what to do.  The problem audience members at the time was one of our first years from the course and was almost one of my ASM's before the director removed them from the positiong(they switched programs after the first semester)/ and the significant other of one of My classmates.... Both of which should have known how to act in a theatre setting.

I was just wondering in a more professional setting, when is the appropriate time to have an audience member removed?  Does it depend on how and when they disrupt? Obviously have them removed if they did it during the actual play... but if it's still when the audience is coming in, would you let it go the first time?

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / How to deal with problem Actor's/Audience members

« on: Jul 02, 2008, 12:33 pm »

How do you deal with Problem actors or audience members?

My first show I SM'd I ended up with both.  The show was "Servant of Two Masters" and the director was allowing a fair bit of improv to happen within the show.  Mostly the improv was being done by the main character Truffaldino, but occasionally when actors forgot their lines they'd do a bit of improv to get back on cue.
>On a sidenote on SMing... we were hitting a Massive time crunch til opening night, and I had to make the decision that I couldn't get the show completly on book.  I opted instead to make sure that they were as on book as possible, that the lines were said, and I only corrected if they went completely off book or if what they had said didn't get the idea of the line across.<
One of the actors had been fighting to make his character funny, and unfortunatly that's not what his character is, nor does he as an actor have the timing of a comedian.  Opening night he asked if it would be ok if he added a line when he first came onstage.  The director had him doing something similar anyway that wasn't part of the script, so I allowed it on the condition that if it didnt work within the context of the play he wouldn't do it again.  It of course didn't work, I told him it didn't, and he continued to try to do it every night until suppisdly another actor said something to him that threw him off and made him stick on book for the rest of the show.  I had talked to him a couple of times about not doing this added bit, but he never seemed to listen... How do you deal with problem actors that don't listen to Stage Management?

Also Audience members that disrupt the play or other audience members... What do you do with them? I've had audience members familiar with the crew and have yelled at us either about something that wasn't right with how the stage was set up or that they didn't like the song being played as preshow and to change it.  In every case it's been as the audience is coming in and I've yet to see or hear them do the acts themselves, but I informed all my crew that if the person did it again to let me know and I'd remove them from the audience.  Do you think this is appropriate? or Should it be you do it once and you're out? 

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Rules on Cans

« on: Jul 02, 2008, 12:17 pm »

I've only SM'd two shows, I've ASM'd for two, and been part of many others.  I've noticed that depending on the booth set up will influence talking on the headsets.  Plus it depends on the SM as to how strict they are with responses, quiet etc.  Where I SM'd/ASM'd for the 4 shows, 3 of them were in a studio theatre where the booth isn't fully enclosed, so anything we said could potentially be heard by the audience just below us (we were about 3m above audience heads) The other show we had a fully enclosed booth.  When I was ASM we were in the studio theatre, and talk was much looser.  Sadly this meant that if anything funny was said, or there was a freakout due to something going wrong, they could be heard by both the audience and the actors.  When I was SM and we were in the fully enclosed booth, I let talk go... I just made sure my ASM's backstage maintained relative quiet so that their voices didn't travel out to the stage.  We definitally had a lot of fun for that show. 
When I was SM for the show in the studio theatre I was able to maintain relative radio silence for the entire show.  We did "'night Mother" with two actresses and after the enter the stage, they don't really leave for an extended period of time.  This meant my ASM backstage had litterally nothing to do during the actual show except stay onbook in case they needed prompting. (which they didn't use).  My light op and sound op were sitting on either side of me, and since there were few cues I was able to signal them with my hands instead of verbally.  It made it a bit more boring for us, and with long spans of no cues my light op fell asleep a couple of times.  But I think it made a better show for the audience.

Make sure you talk to your crew and make sure everyone is on the same page on how the show is called and what is and isn't appropriate.  I also like to maintain the headsets for crew only, and have cast send their questions through the ASM's to me.  Only rarely do I allow an actor on the headset and it usually is regarding a special question that goes quicker one on one.

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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Bad ASM's

« on: Jul 02, 2008, 10:38 am »

I had a hard time with ASM's during my first job as a SM for my college program. We had changed our venue from our usual location to a bigger auditoriam at the director's decision.  The set ended up being a fully functional two story set, and our first years that were in charge of building it had little to no experience with woodworking tools.  There were problems all around basically.  I ended up going through 4 ASM's during the rehearsals of that show.  It didn't help my personal moral as I was for the most part learning what had to be done as well.
My first ASM approached the director asking if she could be an ASM and claimed she had experience with the job.  I agreed that she could, thinking she'd probably know more then I did, and end up giving me a run for my money.  I'm not exactly sure what theatre she's been associated with, but if she's been an ASM/SM for them as she claims I feel Very sorry for them. She disrupted rehearsals and never had her script open for when the director would randomly ask for which page we were on or even to just follow the show.  Needless to say the Director himself removed her from the position.
My second ASM actually ended up sticking with us til the end.  Though there were times I would have liked to replace her. She didn't disrupt the actors too much, but she had problems with attendance as she was usually sick.  If I could I probably would have replaced her, but eventually it got to the point of I needed someone that the actors were semi familiar with, and it would be unfair to them if I brought someone in that had no working knowledge of the play backstage.
My third ASM was my attempt at getting a second ASM: someone I could rely on more... She accepted the position from the Director, but 24hrs later when I called her to inform her of when I needed her, she replied she couldn't do it anymore.  I wasn't the happiest of campers.
My 4th ASM would have worked... except after being given the scheduale of rehearsals, and insisting that he could be there... he showed up for the first one, and then never again. I had reached the end of my patience with it so I let him go.  The Actors didn't notice too much.
I ended up using the Assistant Costume Mistress as my 2nd ASM... she wasn't too familiar with the show as costume's didn't appear til the last couple of weeks of rehearsal, but since she was backstage doing nothing anyway unless a repair had to be made, I was able to use her for a few duties backstage.