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Stage Management: Other / New to Opera questions
« on: Feb 29, 2008, 11:57 am »
So I got tossed into ASMing an opera at the school I'm working at, and I seriously wanted to kill myself. My background before I came here was all musical theatre, with a few straight plays here and there, and then all drama since September. My first day on the show was the first day of tech, and I was completely lost. I had heard horror stories from some of the other interns who had done the operas here, who would cue entrances and get the deer in headlights look from the chorus after which the director would yell and blame the ASM... I was NOT excited. Luckily for my show most had already learned their entrances, since I didn't get there until tech, I just had to coordinate a bunch of incredibly awkward shift changes.
My next assignment is on the bigger opera in the building, which apprarently is going to be so large-scale that there is a PSM and four SM/ASMs, and I'm a little nervous. I really feel like there is a huge disparity in the way opera singers and regular actors, musical theatre or drama, are trained. I don't know if its just this vocal arts department, but both myself and the SM have been treated very disrespectfully, and are mostly ignored when we ask them to do very average things like sign-in on time and not talk backstage. One of the chorus members even told me a different name when I asked him what his name was. Then I looked like an idiot when my SM asked who I had gotten to do a shift change, and I told her, and she told me there was no one by that name in the cast. Of course, I had already typed up the shift changes and the fake name was on there, making me look like even more of an idiot. In our drama division, there are serious consequences for tardiness and behavior, but absolutely none in vocal arts.
I'm just wondering if this kind of behavior and lenience toward opera singers is the norm or if I just got lucky. It kind of makes me not want to work in opera, which sucks because I do have a very musical background, and its nice to put it to good use.
My next assignment is on the bigger opera in the building, which apprarently is going to be so large-scale that there is a PSM and four SM/ASMs, and I'm a little nervous. I really feel like there is a huge disparity in the way opera singers and regular actors, musical theatre or drama, are trained. I don't know if its just this vocal arts department, but both myself and the SM have been treated very disrespectfully, and are mostly ignored when we ask them to do very average things like sign-in on time and not talk backstage. One of the chorus members even told me a different name when I asked him what his name was. Then I looked like an idiot when my SM asked who I had gotten to do a shift change, and I told her, and she told me there was no one by that name in the cast. Of course, I had already typed up the shift changes and the fake name was on there, making me look like even more of an idiot. In our drama division, there are serious consequences for tardiness and behavior, but absolutely none in vocal arts.
I'm just wondering if this kind of behavior and lenience toward opera singers is the norm or if I just got lucky. It kind of makes me not want to work in opera, which sucks because I do have a very musical background, and its nice to put it to good use.