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Students and Novice Stage Managers / Help! SMing peers
« on: Apr 20, 2008, 08:59 am »
Hi everyone!
I'm currently studying theatre as a subject in (the equivalent of) high school. For our exams, we have to put up a group presentation, and for my group, I've kind of imformally taken up the SM role. The problem I have is that I'm not very sure how to handle my peers sometimes, especially regarding issues such as commitment, punctuality and staying focused during rehearsals... What started out really fun has turned into a chore.
I've worked professionally as an ASM before and on other school productions as an SM and I don't think my expectations are unreasonable... I've never had this problem before...
What I've tried to do is:
1) Remind everyone about meetings and rehearsals almost obsessively. I've been trying to communicate a lot more, becuase I know it's my weakness...
2) Keep records of all rehearsals, including the times that they were scheduled for and the actual time they started.
3) There was also a period when I decided (quite silly of me!), to slack off and let them decide what they wanted to do, because I was afraid that I was being too much of a control freak; rehearsals ended up going nowhere even deep into our "tech week". Rehearsal actually managed to start about 5 hours late, once.
4) My teacher (also my director) has also given everyone a talk about punctuality and things, but they continue to force me to cancel rehearsals a few hours prior...
What else I'm thinking about doing:
1) Do a "sports-team" pep-talk (Holding this off because I'm a little afraid of how "artspeople" will take it).
2) Start meetings on time no matter what (though this would result in me talking to myself sometimes).
3) Be more authoritarian and firm about commitment; force people to reschedule other commitments for rehearsals.
4) Get my teacher to step in and regulate more firmly (last resort).
Any suggestions about how to go about this? Is my action plan viable?
(Heh this has turned into a semi-rant.
Apologies...)
-Silei.
I'm currently studying theatre as a subject in (the equivalent of) high school. For our exams, we have to put up a group presentation, and for my group, I've kind of imformally taken up the SM role. The problem I have is that I'm not very sure how to handle my peers sometimes, especially regarding issues such as commitment, punctuality and staying focused during rehearsals... What started out really fun has turned into a chore.
I've worked professionally as an ASM before and on other school productions as an SM and I don't think my expectations are unreasonable... I've never had this problem before...
What I've tried to do is:
1) Remind everyone about meetings and rehearsals almost obsessively. I've been trying to communicate a lot more, becuase I know it's my weakness...
2) Keep records of all rehearsals, including the times that they were scheduled for and the actual time they started.
3) There was also a period when I decided (quite silly of me!), to slack off and let them decide what they wanted to do, because I was afraid that I was being too much of a control freak; rehearsals ended up going nowhere even deep into our "tech week". Rehearsal actually managed to start about 5 hours late, once.
4) My teacher (also my director) has also given everyone a talk about punctuality and things, but they continue to force me to cancel rehearsals a few hours prior...
What else I'm thinking about doing:
1) Do a "sports-team" pep-talk (Holding this off because I'm a little afraid of how "artspeople" will take it).
2) Start meetings on time no matter what (though this would result in me talking to myself sometimes).
3) Be more authoritarian and firm about commitment; force people to reschedule other commitments for rehearsals.
4) Get my teacher to step in and regulate more firmly (last resort).
Any suggestions about how to go about this? Is my action plan viable?
(Heh this has turned into a semi-rant.
Apologies...)-Silei.