Messages

241

The Green Room / Re: ARTICLE: Bad career adivce "Doing What We Love"

« on: Jun 11, 2011, 08:03 pm »

And, equally, even if you left stage management tomorrow (literally just tore up your contract and walked out), this doesn't mean abandoning theatre as an art form. In all likelihood, you'd still attend theatre, still take an interest in media coverage of theatre, and might donate to, volunteer at or even sit on the board of a theatre company. (In fact, considering that virtually anyone would earn more money in a "real job" than they do as a theatre professional, you'd probably be better-positioned to do all of these things as an "outsider" than you presently are.)

See also: buying an ebook reader doesn't mean you have to burn all your paper books, buying a car doesn't mean you have to give up walking, etc. etc. etc.

242

The Green Room / Re: ARTICLE: Bad career adivce "Doing What We Love"

« on: Jun 11, 2011, 06:07 pm »

A similar idea people get into their heads is that they'll only ever be working on "important" and/or "fun" theatre. They'll have artistic integrity! They'll say "no"! They'll turn down contracts which demean or insult their artistic sensibilities! Their life will be a never-ending cycle of big-name musicals on Broadway and/or pieces of True Artistic Merit which are performed in theatres which only seat 4 people, but which nevertheless pay 20% above a living wage.

Hope you don't mind licking envelopes for sustenance.

243

The Green Room / Re: Future

« on: Jun 09, 2011, 06:43 am »

So I decided to compromise, while getting my basics I will get a degree in theatre then I will go on to law school.

While this will prepare you to become an entertainment lawyer, take a job with Equity, or work in a producer's office, I'm not sure that a law degree would be especially useful or practical for someone hoping to go into the more hands-on side of theatre.

It is generally true that your BA doesn't matter terribly much (there are SMs who have undergrad and even master's degrees in everything from botany to sign language), it must be understood that undergraduate and graduate (especially terminal) degrees are different kettles of fish. Undergrad degrees tend to emphasize soft skills (effective communication, co-operation with others, basic research, time management, etc.), usually include significant general education and breadth components (much to the chagrin of undergrads!), and (outside of laboratory science) rarely go into subjects at such depth that the skills you acquire aren't transferable to other fields. Grad degrees, on the other hand, (and law school is a grad degree) teach you tons and tons and tons about a very specific subject, and not much else. A MA in Philosophy will teach you tons and tons about specific philosophers and specific approaches to philosophy, but as the knowledge becomes more specific, it also becomes less transferable. (You can transfer basic research skills to almost any field. It's more difficult to transfer memorization of Aristotle, or a thorough understanding of Victorian empiricism, or a novel approach to existential metaphysics, or whatever else.)

That's not to say that grad degrees are useless or will never transfer to theatre. Some of them might be very handy: an education degree (especially if you're going into theatre for young people), a history degree, an MFA, and so on could be quite useful. Law is probably not in this category.

The thing with law school is that not only will it take you out of theatre for several years (there just aren't enough hours in the day, especially if you're going the whole hog and intend to sit the bar exam and become a lawyer rather than simply take your degree and run), law school is a high-level vocational program--and a very expensive and demanding program at that. There isn't much transference of skill between theatrical and legal work (outside of those niches of entertainment law and production office and union work), and considering how difficult and demanding law programs are, there's almost certainly a better use for your time and money.

If your heart isn't utterly set on becoming a lawyer, things become more workable. There are jobs which require (or strongly emphasize possession of) a law degree but which don't expect you to have sat the bar exam and are essentially 9-5 gigs (law librarian, for example), and these jobs are no less compatible with theatre than any other 9-5 job--but even then, we're talking about amdram or lower-level professional theatre.

One other thought: the world is full of people who thought they were supposed to be something, but who turned into something completely different. Becoming a lawyer because you've always felt that you "should" be one is a poor reason. That's not to say that you personally would be a bad lawyer, but consider that the legal job market is looking worse and worse, it is increasingly the case that even criminal lawyers never see the inside of courtrooms, over 50% of law school grads have at least six figures worth of debt (and these are the people who go on to become lawyers, as opposed to theatre artists who typically earn much less), and so on.

Do some research and determine what you want to do, basically. Don't be guided by feelings and inklings and birthrights. Look into what you want to be doing, what you're prepared to sacrifice and give up to get there, and be realistic about your own abilities and expectations. (Consider that nobody ever intends to graduate at the bottom of their class, or drop out of school because their debt load climbs too high, or get an F in a key course, or whatever else. Bad things happen to good people, and if you're already stretching yourself to your very limits just to keep up with a life plan [especially a life plan you've undertaken for whimsical rather than practical reasons], you're leaving yourself very little wiggle-room if that plan should fall through.)

244

The Green Room / Re: Who are we, anyway...?

« on: May 27, 2011, 02:28 am »

I disagree as well - especially the more one offs and events you do.  When the star starts singing a new song list mid set, what are you going to do?

I was trying to direct my comments specifically to the idea that stage managers are "creative" or "artists" in the same manner and to the same degree as those who we might call "core" theatre artists. (actors, directors, playwrights, designers, etc.)

If by "creativity" we mean imagination and flexibility and innovation informed by experience and knowledge, then, yes: creativity is a good thing--but I'd argue that this is not creativity or artistry of the type we're discussing when we talk about "theatre artists", and that this skillset is neither unique to stage management nor at all foreign to the administrator/"glorified secretary" labels that SMs seem to bristle at.

But if by "creativity" we mean spontaneity and unpredictability and random ideas and off-the-wall, ostentatious, what-on-earth-does-she-think-she's-doing approaches to problems (which is what I would associate with "creative" directors/actors/playwrights/etc.), then I'm quite happy to label myself an utterly uncreative and humourless administrator. (This is where incompetence comes into it, too: if the star suddenly changes her set list and things go unpredictable, the worst possible thing for a stage manager to do is to become unpredictable and random and off-the-wall himself. If "creativity" implies using your imagination to devise solutions informed by your experience and knowledge, then by all means be creative; if "creativity" implies wacky schemes and jumping the rails and throwing caution to the wind, then you're probably going to make a bad situation worse.)

245

The Green Room / Re: Who are we, anyway...?

« on: May 25, 2011, 02:38 pm »

I think you are confusing creativity with simply reacting. To me, creativity always comes from knowledge and experience, just as the freedom to create brilliance often comes from having boundaries. SMs are successful in solving crises because we have proactively trained ourselves for any eventuality, whether it's a blown fuse or the sound system crashing or covering an actor's track due to sudden illness / injury, but in a real life situation, it takes inventiveness. We have to be able to roll with whatever happens and make it work. When my sound system went down during a show, I talked my crew through finding things to stand in for the life and death sounds, relaying info to the cast, relaying solutions to the board op and the TD, letting folks know which cues were or were not going to happen - that is creativity. It came from my experience and training which generated a creative solution. Similarly, my knowledge- and experience-based creativity in nontechnical skills has convinced actors to go on stage with people they hate or in situations that terrified them needlessly (like being in front of an audience), solved costume or set shift issues, trained understudies or gave notes to performers whose acting language didn't match the directors, etc etc etc. Our job requires both halves of the brain, both sides of the table, both creative and technical.

I think SMs are the most creative people on the planet. We know how to make things work on a dime, we see 100 uses for an object that no one else has considered, we stay calm in crisis and, like MacGyver, defuse the bomb with a paper clip. Just as the definition of luck is preparation meeting opportunity, creativity is knowledge and experience meeting challenges. And, if we are doing out jobs well, like Fred Astaire it looks easy, as if we aren't doing anything. So yes, I think we use our creativity all the time.

What you describe here sounds an awful lot like the skillset we'd expect a component secretary to possess (right down to "it only looks easy from the outside"), yet everyone seems to bristle and howl at the comparison. In the context of this discussion, I'm also not at all convinced that this type of creativity makes us "artists" on nearly the same level or to nearly the extent that directors, playwrights, actors, dancers, designers and the other core theatre artists are entitled to that label.

I also think you're making a mistake when you afford this creativity some special attachment to stage management. A designer who is unable to figure out how to find interesting and innovative uses for an object or work within a budget is, for most purposes, just plain incompetent, and never mind the fact that this sort of just-make-it-work skillset would be useful if not essential to any number of non-theatre professions. (The aforementioned secretaries, but also janitors, actuaries, tax accountants, bus drivers, garbage collectors, morticians, pathologists, dogcatchers, police officers... notice how none of these jobs are normally considered creative or artistic?)

246

The Green Room / Re: Who are we, anyway...?

« on: May 25, 2011, 05:51 am »

I know it doesn't look like we are on the creative side most of the time, because proactive preparation and asking the right qqs allows us to solve many problems before they happen and there are those who don't understand how creative that actually is. But wow, when it comes to problem solving - especially while the show is running - there is no one more creative!

I put it to you that any time a stage manager invokes sheer creativity to solve mid-show problems, they're covering up for incompetence.

Problem-solving informed by knowledge and experience and best practices and expectations of how things will turn out and knowledge of your own limitations and all the rest of that brainy stuff is productive and helpful and an essential talent for stage managers to have. There's surprisingly little true creativity involved in this sort of problem-solving, though: some imagination, certainly, but that's the extent of it. You aren't plucking ideas out of thin air, you're running the numbers and remembering articles you've read and thinking back to other situations where you've had similar issues and invoking all kinds of information in order to construct a logical, well-informed and well-grounded solution.

Problem-solving informed by sheer creativity--"It's so crazy, it might just work!"--has a nasty tendency to make bad situations worse.

Phrased differently, when a director makes bold, creative, spur-of-the-moment choices, the result is usually challenging and bold and, while not necessarily successful, at the very least memorable.

When a stage manager makes bold, creative, spur-of-the-moment choices, far too often the result involves ambulances and insurance claims.

247

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: Spray Paint on Stage

« on: May 11, 2011, 06:23 am »

It's possible to get odorless spraypaint (or, rather, what is marketed as odorless spraypaint), but even then I wouldn't be comfortable using it in an enclosed, poorly-ventilated space.

I especially wouldn't want to be one of the actors huffing that paint at every single performance in said enclosed, poorly-ventilated space.

I can think of some alternatives, but they tend to fall into two categories:

Tech-Heavy and/or Esoteric
- Instead of spraypaint, give them cans of spray mist. As they begin misting (pretending to spraypaint), jam a fogger to full-blast and let it run until the whole stage is covered. As the stage is covered, slip on-stage and somehow modify the set piece (flip it over, spin it around, affix a new front, whatever), then clear the stage before the fog clears. Augment with rockstar lights and headbang as required.
- Get some thermochromic paint and cans of aerosol water. Paint the surface, doctor the aerosol water so the cans look like spraypaint, and get off to the races. The sprayed water should produce a sufficient temperature differential to get the thermochromic reaction going. It'll only last for a few seconds (we're talking 30-60 absolute, if-you're-very-very-lucky most), and the water will react very differently to spraypaint, but it will still basically look like your actors are spray painting, even though they aren't. (This effect would be significantly more pronounced if you can talk your director into letting you use a roller or a brush, in that you can use substances other than water (which will behave more like paint--although you'll still want water-soluble stuff for easy cleanup) and you can better control the temperature of the substance, which will produce a more visible (and longer-lived) thermochromic reaction. A roller thoroughly doused in ice water applied to a thermochromic surface which has spent the last hour grilling under stage lights would give you a very pronounced effect. A quick spray of aerosol water which is essentially at ordinary room temperature, not so much.

Cheap and Cornball
- Invisible UV paint. Pre-paint the surface with the UV paint, give your actors cans of something inoffensive (hairspray?), then flick on a blacklight as they start painting and the graffiti magically appears. Pray nobody in the audience is reminded of county-fair haunted houses and/or early 1990s Batman movies.
- Gobo. When they start painting, turn it on. Then redo all of your blocking so that nobody ever crosses the beam, lest the graffiti migrate to their face.
- Utterly cheat it: have the wall visibly flip, or have the actors affix something to the wall, or do whatever else as they paint it.

I'm mostly being silly. What I will say, though: if you can't find some way of doing this without spraypaint, I would strongly encourage you to take this up with your director as a potential safety issue. Wafting odors into your audience is a bad idea, but making your actors essentially huff paint every performance is an even worse one.

248

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: Edible dessert

« on: May 07, 2011, 07:26 pm »

You could also try making custard, which would be era-appropriate, easy to prepare (and keeps well in the fridge), fairly cheap, pleasant to eat, and would hold up well under lights--but audiences won't necessarily recognize it as a dessert, especially in North America.

249

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: House is Open or Closed?

« on: May 07, 2011, 07:24 pm »

Not sure if this is the proper place, but I have a general question for everyone: When the audience is entering the house do you call "house is open" ( as in open to the audience) or "house is closed" ( as in house is closed to the actors)?
I usually call house open when we open the doors and let the audience in to let the actors know that there is audience in the house and they should not be onstage. But a friend of mine, who I was doing run-crew for, says the opposite and it created some confusion because half of us understood and the other half was lost.
So what do you say? What's the standard?

If you want to be absolutely certain to avoid confusion, you could borrow from the really old-school house managers and blow a really loud whistle on stage right before the doors open. So long as everyone knows what the whistle means, you're golden.

250

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: SOUND: Working with a sound op.

« on: Apr 20, 2011, 08:20 pm »

The important thing to bear in mind is that it has to be someone's responsibility. It's probably more convenient to hand it off to the board operator, but if they can't keep up, or they benefit from having warnings, or they're still comparatively inexperienced and require hand-holding, etc., there's nothing wrong about having cues for it.

Just make sure that someone's taking care of it.

251

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: SAFETY: Food allergies in rehearsal

« on: Apr 20, 2011, 06:15 pm »

if it's on the audition forms, what happens to those forms after casting? Are they shredded?

I may be an outlier here, but... yes?

I was always taught that anything with anyone's personal information on it should be kept secure until it is no longer needed, at which point it should be either archived or destroyed. A phone number or address would definitely be "personal information" IMO, medical information doubly so. (And this should be redoubled if the audition form also includes any notes from the director, even if they're complimentary and discreet.) My usual practice (once we're through with casting) is to transcribe any "interesting" audition sheets into an encrypted Access database, and then destroy the originals.

I definitely agree with you about waiting until after casting before collecting this information, though.

252

The Green Room / Re: audience callbacks- the ones you want, the ones you don't

« on: Apr 18, 2011, 04:51 am »

I was recently in the audience at a performance of Oleanna. (This post will be full of spoilers for an otherwise-excellent play, JSYK.)

We got right to the very end. The actress gave her final line beautifully:

"Don’t call your wife baby. You heard what I said."

And there was this wonderful pregnant pause, full of tension and rage and all the emotional buildup of the play to that moment. It was perfect.

Until the man in the back row shouted "JUST HIT HER IN THE FACE WITH THE [redacted] PHONE ALREADY, GAWD!"

253

Stage Management: Other / Re: I have an ASM... now what?

« on: Apr 17, 2011, 11:39 pm »

If appropriate (she's ASMing to learn the trade or gain experience, for example), I would be tempted to focus on training and mentoring her, even if this means that certain non-critical tasks take a little longer or aren't done as well as they might be if I were doing them myself.

254

Tools of the Trade / Re: Drinkable Prop That Looks Like Oil?

« on: Apr 14, 2011, 04:22 am »

How can I make a thick, gooey brown substance that I can drink by the mouthful.

There are some questions one simply should not ask the internet. 

More seriously, two questions:
1) What kind of oil are we talking? Thick and gooey is fine and well, but are you after that golden, translucent, brand-new-bottle texture, or something darker and gloppier?
2) How close is your audience? Does the effect need to be bang-on accurate, or can you fudge it a bit?

One option worth considering is getting some water of the appropriate colour (Black food colouring is available, but can be rough to find. Google can help you make it yourself, if necessary.) and adding a few drops of a thickening agent like pectin, xanthan gum or agar, although you'll need to do some experimentation in order to get the ratio right. The major benefit of going this route is that the product should be both shelf-stable and fairly flavourless. (I imagine it'd be unpleasant to pour down your throat, but it shouldn't taste like anything other than the water which went into it.) Do bear in mind, though, that these thickening agents are usually used to prepare jellies and jams, so you should only be using a teeny tiny bit if you want the liquid to remain a liquid. You want to get rid of some of the viscosity, not eliminate it altogether.

If flavourlessness is a problem, you could toss in a few drops of essence of peppermint or cinnamon or whatever else to make it a little more appetizing without having to go the sweet route. (And that's culinary essence-of-peppermint/cinnamon/etc., not the stuff you'd buy for aromatherapy.)

255

The Green Room / Re: How to recover from mistakes

« on: Apr 12, 2011, 03:00 am »

I tend to chalk the occasionally-violent reactions up to the fact that actors are under much, much more stress than production people generally are.

If I screw up, odds are good that nobody outside the company will ever attribute it to me, and--barring a truly epic error--even those within the company will forget it within a few days. Barring a significant disaster (we're talking loss of life), it won't affect my career substantially. Even if it does leave a dent, I can (comparatively) easily just slip downmarket a little, or move to another location, or to another type of theatre, and escape it. I happen to live in a union city to boot, so anyone on the tech side of the big leagues really has to screw the pooch before they stop getting called.

Actors, by comparison, have to wear all of their errors. Their castmates will remember, and--if they're unkind--will remind them. The audience will know. In fact, if a technician makes an error, the audience will probably subconsciously blame the actors. When the play's just plain bad, the public almost invariably "blames" the actors, who will have to wear the play around their necks for the rest of their careers. Directors, playwrights, designers, and--yes--technicians and stage managers get off scot free by comparison. Considering that the actors are also the only members of that group who are completely dependent upon subjective decisionmaking and perception in order to get continuing work, this must be a major concern for them.

We might also consider what's going through an actor's mind during a run.
- What's the next line?
- What's the blocking?
- What's the inflection and accent?
- What's the body language?
- What's everybody else's blocking and body language?
- Did he just skip a whole paragraph? Jeez, where are we?!
- Is that my mother-in-law?
- Is that the guy from the Tribune?
- Okay, what's the next line?
- Diction! Diction!
- Just imagine them all naked. See? All naked.
- Christ, this audience isn't laughing nearly enough.
- Oh god, that is my mother-in-law!
- And now she's naked! Ew ew ew!

By comparison, as Mr. Shiner teased out, the booth allows us to be fairly mechanical: a good SM will always be thinking ahead and anticipating, but the basic process boils down to "read line, say cue; read line, say cue". (The technicians have it even easier: "hear cue, push button; hear cue, push button".)

And if and when unexpected things happen?
1) We're rarely in any immediate danger. If the set collapses, or a fly line goes out of control, or the effects go all wonky, or whatever else, we're safely ensconced in a tiny room in a completely different part of the theatre.
2) We usually don't have to wear it. (See above.) We should still learn from it and seek to improve, but it's probably not going to be a stain on our careers.
3) We have protocols and training and practice and rehearsals for exactly these situations. If we're any good at what we do, we're never actually ad-libbing: we've worked through countless scenarios, we know exactly what we should do (guided by industrial best standards, thorough documentation, personal experience, discussion with colleagues, etc.), and we know exactly what everybody else should do. Actors, by comparison, are essentially thrown to the lions when things go pear-shaped.