Messages

316

The Green Room / Re: Best one-liner from a performance report

« on: Oct 19, 2010, 06:59 am »

"Makeup artist has been informed that painting a white woman's face black then applying thick red lipstick right before she sings 'Sweet Chariot' is a doubleplus ungood idea, and may result in Jesse Jackson."

Student theatre: the character's face was gradually streaked with black makeup to illustrate her fall from grace and descent into madness, but they overdid it--a lot--and we had walkouts over it. :-/

317

The Green Room / Re: Favorite brown bag lunch?

« on: Oct 19, 2010, 06:53 am »

Avocado, turkey and bacon. Mmmmmmmmm.

318

The Green Room / Re: Convolution Creep

« on: Oct 19, 2010, 06:52 am »

I had the good fortune to do my BFA in a brand-new arts building. (They were still installing tiles in September.) This meant we had keycard locks on every single door, which is fantastic: anyone can be given access to just the right doors, keys can be cancelled remotely, nobody needs to be issued a master key unless absolutely necessary, etc.

Many of these doors locked themselves "permanently" at certain times of the day, requiring a special key to open them again. Classrooms locked themselves after their last scheduled class, access to offices closes when the office does, etc. Some bright spark decided to do the same thing backstage, though, and had them on hourly timers (The door would lock itself at 6, then again at 7, then again at 8...), so we had to station an ASM back there with a key just to keep the dressing rooms and stage doors open, or else everything went to hell. It took 6 months for them to get all of the doors sorted out. There wasn't even a clear pattern: this door locks at 6, this one at 6:30, this one at 6:25, and these ones sometime between 6:40 and 6:50 depending on how they're feeling that day...

This same building was wired so that it was impossible to isolate use of the PA system. Ringing the chimes in the lobby meant ringing the chimes in the hallways downstairs, the offices upstairs, the men's toilets on the third floor, the art gallery... The gimmick was that this would allow fine art to seep out of the theatres and concert halls and into the full forum of the university (or something along those lines), in practice it just meant we had grumpy professors showing up in the lobby to yell at us for disturbing their classes. (And rightly so, but yeccccch.)

319

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: SHOWS: How to deal with walkouts

« on: Oct 19, 2010, 06:30 am »

Perhaps you could find a community member with expertise in this area (dramaturg, drama critic, professor of English or theatre, etc.) willing to do a brief spoken introduction for the Sunday matinee performances? A talkback's no good for potential walkouts, but an introduction--"here is the significance of nudity in this play, here is what it hopes to explore through erotic content, blah blah blah"--might help take the edge off, put things in their proper context (it's not just aimless shock-value nudity: we do have a point to make), or at least warn people beforehand.

320

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROFESSIONALISM: What to do when you're sick?

« on: Oct 19, 2010, 06:22 am »

So, for community theater (everyone is a volunteer), a short run of shows (three weekends, 8 performances total), what should the stage manager do in the event the SM is too sick to be at the show? What else besides the standard "make sure the prompt book is in good shape?" Thanks for any thoughts about this.

Find a friend and have them call the show on the SM's behalf. If the SM has done their due diligence and prepared an adequate bus book (as in "if-I-get-hit-by-a"), most community theatre productions are comparatively simple, and the audience can be quite forgiving if cues aren't quite on the mark. The friend doesn't even need to have a background in SM work or theatre ("All you have to do is call the cues, here's how to do it. The ASM will take care of the show report, and the sound technician will keep track of timing tonight."), they just need to be a responsible, levelheaded person who can be trusted not to overdo it. (We want this person to call the show precisely as directed in the book, and that's it. No "improvements".)

This may make it sound like the SM can be replaced by a layperson once the run starts, and that's not the case. The SM or someone with similar expertise should still be in the booth as much as possible. However, in the specific case of a small-scale community theatre production (particularly one where nobody's getting paid for the exercise), given the choice between pulling the ASM off a well-worked deck track which is essential to the show and throwing them in the booth, or handing the book to a responsible layperson, I'd take the layperson and leave the ASM to do what they know best.

321

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Student show: Student director wants financial contribution.

« on: Oct 08, 2010, 02:04 pm »

Do you have access to any sort of faculty advisor or departmental production management staff? If so, go and speak to them: 40 is a LOT for a student production, especially in an institutional setting where, presumably, you're getting access to the department's collection of costumes and properties.

It's unlikely that your advisor or production manager will outright say "stop charging so much money", but they might rather be able to talk him down from his grander designs, and they're in a better position than you are to do so.

322

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Taking notes

« on: Oct 07, 2010, 03:05 pm »

I would suggest working from diagrams rather than from line-by-line notes, at least while in this phase of rehearsal. You can then refine these diagrams, convert them to line-by-line notes, or do whatever else as the choreography becomes more precise and permanent.

It might also be helpful if you do some triage. As a stage manager, you have several priorities, and they run something like this:
1) Make sure nobody dies.
2) Make sure nobody is injured.
3) Make sure nobody is nearly killed or injured.
4) Make sure no property or equipment is damaged or destroyed.
5) Make sure the show keeps moving in an orderly fashion.
6) Make sure the show is artistically interesting and correct.

Essentially, safety and efficiency always trump art.

If the director is giving you dozens of notes and you can't keep up, focus on the Really Really Important Stuff and--at least for the time being--ignore the lesser information. (For example, you mentioned that your show has set pieces moving across the stage and through the wings. As a stage manager, you should be much more concerned with ensuring that these set pieces clear the stage without colliding with any cast members or other pieces of the set than you should be with the artistic content of the show, so focus on getting good information about these set pieces rather than on choreographic details: you will need to know about these set pieces, while you do not necessarily need to know that the third line goes kick-kick-smile-kick rather than kick-smile-kick-smile in the 27th bar of the 4th number.)

323

The Green Room / Re: Thread to vent about / Actors behaving badly / As haiku only

« on: Oct 03, 2010, 02:34 am »

Attention Ushers:
Please keep children off my set!
(Except actors, natch.)

324

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROPS: The hardest thing you've had to do in the dark.

« on: Oct 01, 2010, 08:40 pm »

What are some of the most difficult things that had to be accomplished quickly in the dark during a show you worked?

Moving a piano. The director wanted a large, functioning grand piano, so we borrowed one of the orchestral concert pianos from the Department of Music, and they explicitly forbade us from taping or marking any part of it in any way. Moving it in the dark was a matter of walking into its general vicinity, reaching into the air, and praying you hit a part of it which you could push without it snapping off.

325

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: CALLING: Light Board restart WWYD?

« on: Sep 28, 2010, 06:22 pm »

It depends on the nature of the show and the nature of the problem. If it were a freak occurrence, then the SM might not know how long it takes to reset the breaker (or even if it were possible to do so: maybe the only person with a key to the breaker room is off this weekend, or maybe the breakers are ancient equipment which only the house electrician should be trusted to mess around with...), in which case there's a definite risk in attempting to fix it insofar as you might not be able to, it might take half an hour or longer, and in both cases you're just pissing off the audience. Of course, you might cancel the performance only for it to jump to life just as soon as you open the doors, and, likewise, you might go to worklights and followspot and run anyway, and after the show discover that, actually, it wasn't the breaker at all: someone just got clumsy and kicked the power plug out of the socket...

326

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / SCENERY: Video

« on: Sep 22, 2010, 04:10 pm »

I've been involved with 4 shows which used video projection of some type, and, to be perfectly frank, none of them did a good job with it. In some cases it was such a minor part of the production that nobody paid much attention to it, undermining its purpose, while in the fourth case it was SO front-and-centre that we might as well have just shown a movie and sent the actors home. I've also rarely seen it used to particularly good effect as an audience member--in fact, the only times I've seen video used well are when it is explicitly used as a device within the show (to cover costume changes, to introduce settings, etc.) or when video is projected directly onto performers, which sometimes happens in dance pieces.

Video is an emergent technology within theatre, particularly in community and educational theatre, and part of the problem might also be down to budgets. (If your budget for video is "find royalty-free stuff and plug it into Windows Movie Maker", then, yes, the end-product will probably not be terribly exciting.) So I'm curious: have you ever been involved in a production, or seen a show, which did video really really well? How was it used, and how did its use differ from weaker applications you've seen?

327

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Portfolio?

« on: Sep 10, 2010, 11:41 pm »

Yep. I would encourage you to slide a few pretty pictures into your portfolio. "Hard" content should make up the bulk of the document (paperwork, paperwork, scripts, paperwork...), but an occasional photograph or sketch to illustrate a point or a project will help make the reading go a bit easier and will help you catch an eye or two, and that counts for something when the reader has 200 portfolios to go through.

328

Employment / Re: Resumes and Cover Letters......The Nitty Gritty Part of Stage Managing

« on: Sep 07, 2010, 11:31 pm »

I still remember taking a "career management in the arts" course in college, and the professor exasperatedly told us "Do you have any idea how few people just follow directions? They don't ask for much: write a cover letter, make it make sense, and don't call the director 'dude'. I know directors who practically burst into tears when they get a coherent letter. And it's not that hard!"

It can be very tempting to write a gimmicky or "fun" cover letter, but a buddy of mine who became an English teacher has an excellent little spiel about that: "It's true that the best writing defies conventions, but there's a difference between defying conventions and merely being ignorant of them." If you're still setting out, go for conservative: people will take you more seriously, you'll be treated as more of a grown-up, and people will have higher expectations of you if you're actually hired. (Which is almost always a good thing.)

329

The Green Room / Re: BEST ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE

« on: Sep 07, 2010, 05:58 pm »

It's only a show.

Everything in theatre ultimately feeds into a given performance of a given show. If one of those shows is imperfect, oh well: it's not the end of the world. If one of those shows is cancelled, oh well: it's one of thousands, there will be other opportunities. No matter how stressful it becomes, it's still only a show, and the planet will continue revolving even if it doesn't go perfectly according to plan.

And, of course, if things become dangerous, remember: it's only a show. No performance is worth breaking your neck, or huffing asbestos, or burning the building down.

330

Employment / Re: Resumes and Cover Letters......The Nitty Gritty Part of Stage Managing

« on: Sep 07, 2010, 05:51 pm »

Your cover letter should be tailored to the type of job you're applying for. Avoid sending a single cover letter (or a slightly-modified cover letter) to every potential employer: rewrite it, rethink it and redo it for every application.

Some rules of thumb for all cases:
1) Shorter is better. Under no circumstances should an entry-level cover letter exceed a single page, and in most cases it should not exceed three paragraphs.
2) Be plain in format. Use plain fonts (Time New Roman, Georgia, etc.), all materials (other than portfolio stuff) should be black ink on white paper, and do not use clipart of any kind on your resume or cover letter. You want to be remembered as "The Guy Who Wrote The Really Really Good Cover Letter", not as "The Guy Who Put Screen Beans--Seriously, Screen Beans, Can You Even Imagine?--In His Resume".
3) Submit your package in a plain envelope or (if you're sending a lot of documents or portfolio materials) an accordion file. No staples, no report covers, no document covers, none of that: just a plain envelope. Binder clips and paperclips are acceptable if you want to keep materials together or in a sequence.
4) Avoid using "Dear Sir/Madam" or "To Whom It May Concern". If you don't know who will be reading your letter, call and ask. If multiple people will be reading your letter, then either address it to the most senior person, or to "Dear Committee".
5) Use a tone appropriate for the letter's recipient, but err on the side of being overly-formal. (You're much more likely to offend a formal employer with a casual letter than you are to offend a casual employer with a formal letter.)
6) Have someone else read over your letter, ideally someone who works or has previously worked for the person or company you're applying for. The internet can be a useful resource for readers, but the closer the reader is to your job, the more likely their feedback will be useful.
7) If you are applying by e-mail, make sure and send your files in the specified formats. If no formats are specified, assume that .PDF and .DOC files will be accepted. (And when sending .DOC files, you might want to save them as XP/Office 2000 files rather than as Vista/Windows 7 files, just to be sure they can be opened on the other end.)
8) If you are not applying by e-mail, and you can do so, deliver your package in person. It lets them see your face, it sends a message about your enthusiasm and interest, and you can be absolutely sure that your package makes it onto the right person's desk, while more paperwork is lost in the mail or garbled on the internet than you'd care to know about.

Oh, and one other thing: save your cover letters and resumes. They take up almost no space on your hard drive, and if you've already put some thought into your resume and cover letter for each job, they're going to be an incredible help if you land an interview, since you already know what they're looking for and how your skills and experience align with it. One of the best ways to spend that 5-10 minutes sitting while waiting to be interviewed is to review the cover letter and resume you submitted for the job so you know how much they know about you, what you haven't yet mentioned, and so on.