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Introductions / Stage Manager as a second act
« on: Aug 26, 2024, 01:42 am »
Greetings to all of you here. I ran across this forum almost by accident while researching resources to aid me with tutoring a shiny new SM novice. This community is a delightful find.
As the subject implies, I am a stage manager/stagecraft technician as a second life act. I retired in 2019 from a 38 year career as a computer and network systems administrator with a focus on information security. Some people are supposedly left brained and some are supposedly right brained, but I've always felt that I am "both brained" and have engaged both my creative and my analytical brain parts together most of the time. I spent my first two years of college training as a professional musician (trombone mostly) at a small private university in St. Paul, Minnesota, and played semi-professionally part-time for several years in a large swing band. I became disillusioned with my potential career path as well as being unable to afford further time at the private school, and I switched to attending the University of Minnesota and majored in Geology and Computer Science. I was fortunate in my IT career to be able to work in many interesting companies and industries, but when my two children were in middle school I realized that I was craving an outlet for myself as a Creative and I found it in theater (and later in choral and a cappella singing, but that's another story).
I was the SM for my first show Rabbit Hole in 2009 and as of summer 2024 I can now count 15 shows as SM and two shows as ASM. I've been SM for small shows and one-acts all the way up to large-scale musicals such as Oliver! (after which I told the Executive Artistic director that I was NEVER going to work with small children EVER again). In the early stages being an SM was a largely unpaid side gig and a significant time investment for me while working in IT full time, and I was drawn to it quite simply because I love being part of making theater happen. Prior to starting my path as an SM I was a founding board member of a children's theater nonprofit (theater performed by children, not theater performed for children). During my five years as a board member there I acted as the volunteer Technical Director as well as co-producing several of the larger children's theater shows such as Les Misérables and The Pirates of Penzance. After that I acted in community theater productions a number of times, but felt more of a draw toward the offstage skills such as stage management, set construction, lighting, and sound. In additional to my work at my local theater, I recently finished up eight years on the board of a summer Shakespeare festival company and served as the Board President for the last three years during the Covidian Era. I earned a lot more gray hairs trying to keep a small theater group alive during Covid quarantine and the subsequent cultural fallout, but that's also many more other stories for another day. All of the volunteer time as theater tech and stage manager as well as the board work that I have done comes from a deep personal place of loving the power of theater as an art form and believing that theater is important in our culture, and that it doesn't happen unless people show up to make it happen. I may be slightly masochistic because I just keep showing up, but nonetheless here I am.
I have had some mentoring in the fifteen years that I've been doing SM work at my local 240-seat community theater, but primarily my skills have developed through self-study of some of the traditional textbooks/industry guides as well as doing a lot of on-the-job training with technical directors and other local stage managers. I treat the work and continued self improvement of my SM skills very seriously, and now have a skill set that has been appraised as being professional level by some noteworthy visiting directors and professional actors whom I have had the good fortune to meet as our theater strives to move into recognized regional theater territory. I hope that I can both learn things from and contribute to this community.
I feel like now it's my turn to start seriously mentoring some of the next generation of stage managers as I have been mentored. In part, doing so is a bit selfish because most of the cadre of local stage managers that rotated through my theater are aging out and there needs to be fresh faces rotating in and being competent. I'm still working at my local community theater as it moves up in the world and am receiving a small stipend now for my work, I'm still learning with every show that that I work on, but I am in a place where I don't want to work every show because I'm also trying to be just a little bit retired after becoming very tired and earning most of my gray hair during the latter years of my IT career. I will be volunteering this school year to do some basic theatercraft training for students at a local high school with a very meager theater program, and I'm starting to develop a formal "How to" manual and training curriculum to train up additional stage managers at my local theater. I still also volunteer my time and technical skills to the local Shakespeare Festival but now all of the board work is Someone Else's Problem™ and I just get to do the fun things that I like to do to put the shows on.
As the subject implies, I am a stage manager/stagecraft technician as a second life act. I retired in 2019 from a 38 year career as a computer and network systems administrator with a focus on information security. Some people are supposedly left brained and some are supposedly right brained, but I've always felt that I am "both brained" and have engaged both my creative and my analytical brain parts together most of the time. I spent my first two years of college training as a professional musician (trombone mostly) at a small private university in St. Paul, Minnesota, and played semi-professionally part-time for several years in a large swing band. I became disillusioned with my potential career path as well as being unable to afford further time at the private school, and I switched to attending the University of Minnesota and majored in Geology and Computer Science. I was fortunate in my IT career to be able to work in many interesting companies and industries, but when my two children were in middle school I realized that I was craving an outlet for myself as a Creative and I found it in theater (and later in choral and a cappella singing, but that's another story).
I was the SM for my first show Rabbit Hole in 2009 and as of summer 2024 I can now count 15 shows as SM and two shows as ASM. I've been SM for small shows and one-acts all the way up to large-scale musicals such as Oliver! (after which I told the Executive Artistic director that I was NEVER going to work with small children EVER again). In the early stages being an SM was a largely unpaid side gig and a significant time investment for me while working in IT full time, and I was drawn to it quite simply because I love being part of making theater happen. Prior to starting my path as an SM I was a founding board member of a children's theater nonprofit (theater performed by children, not theater performed for children). During my five years as a board member there I acted as the volunteer Technical Director as well as co-producing several of the larger children's theater shows such as Les Misérables and The Pirates of Penzance. After that I acted in community theater productions a number of times, but felt more of a draw toward the offstage skills such as stage management, set construction, lighting, and sound. In additional to my work at my local theater, I recently finished up eight years on the board of a summer Shakespeare festival company and served as the Board President for the last three years during the Covidian Era. I earned a lot more gray hairs trying to keep a small theater group alive during Covid quarantine and the subsequent cultural fallout, but that's also many more other stories for another day. All of the volunteer time as theater tech and stage manager as well as the board work that I have done comes from a deep personal place of loving the power of theater as an art form and believing that theater is important in our culture, and that it doesn't happen unless people show up to make it happen. I may be slightly masochistic because I just keep showing up, but nonetheless here I am.
I have had some mentoring in the fifteen years that I've been doing SM work at my local 240-seat community theater, but primarily my skills have developed through self-study of some of the traditional textbooks/industry guides as well as doing a lot of on-the-job training with technical directors and other local stage managers. I treat the work and continued self improvement of my SM skills very seriously, and now have a skill set that has been appraised as being professional level by some noteworthy visiting directors and professional actors whom I have had the good fortune to meet as our theater strives to move into recognized regional theater territory. I hope that I can both learn things from and contribute to this community.
I feel like now it's my turn to start seriously mentoring some of the next generation of stage managers as I have been mentored. In part, doing so is a bit selfish because most of the cadre of local stage managers that rotated through my theater are aging out and there needs to be fresh faces rotating in and being competent. I'm still working at my local community theater as it moves up in the world and am receiving a small stipend now for my work, I'm still learning with every show that that I work on, but I am in a place where I don't want to work every show because I'm also trying to be just a little bit retired after becoming very tired and earning most of my gray hair during the latter years of my IT career. I will be volunteering this school year to do some basic theatercraft training for students at a local high school with a very meager theater program, and I'm starting to develop a formal "How to" manual and training curriculum to train up additional stage managers at my local theater. I still also volunteer my time and technical skills to the local Shakespeare Festival but now all of the board work is Someone Else's Problem™ and I just get to do the fun things that I like to do to put the shows on.