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436

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Ideas for creative student essays (Mods - do not archive)

« on: Apr 14, 2013, 06:16 pm »

So we've spent lots of time discussing how the typical student essays topics are way overdone. After 13 years of SMNetwork we're tired of seeing the same questions over and over again. Students, I know that it's all new for you, but for those of us who use the site regularly and have made careers of stage management, we get nothing back anymore from answering beginner level questions. (Besides, we've covered most of that ground before. Heavily.)

I can't be the only one who wishes that there was some more advanced research going on to further the industry as a whole.

In the interest of helping students to choose projects that are not only academically successful but also useful to the community, I thought it might be good to have a collection of topics that the pros would like to see answered. Maybe we could even turn some of those topics into discussion threads. It might help students to get an idea of the type of questions we do like to see around here.

Here are a few to get us started:

• What types of extra training do professionals find necessary, and how often do they use that training on the job? (Think: First aid, CPR, Fire Guard certs, CDL license, etc.)
• From a statistical standpoint, which of the unions offers the best protection for stage managers?
• What are the cultural and political environments that lead to the development of a strong non-union or union community in a city?
• How do stage managers market themselves? Are there specific networking styles or activities that are more successful than others?
• Is there a common Myers-Briggs or Jungian personality type that makes for a better stage manager?
• What are the primary factors that lead stage managers to burn out or leave the industry?
• Is focusing on commercial entertainment really "selling out"? In other words, is there a major difference in income and quality of life between someone who chooses to do pop art vs high art?
• Why are there so few female stage managers working at the uppermost levels of commercial theatre?
• What are the long-term psychological effects that could occur from decades of sustained altruism and long hours in darkened rooms? What sort of preventive measures should a stage manager take to remain healthy despite the demands of the job?
• Obtain a copy of the 1st edition (1974) and the most recent edition of Stern's "Stage Management." Compare the two editions and talk with stage managers who have been at it for several decades to form a clear picture of how the industry has changed over the past 40 years.
• How often do stage managers really have to deal with major backstage emergencies? How often do we really have to stop the show or use our many, many backup plans?

Feel free to leave your own ideas here.

437

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Helping with SM Homework

« on: Apr 14, 2013, 05:39 pm »

I'm wondering if we're blaming the wrong people here. Students only know what they're taught, and they will do as instructed. The kids who are pestering us and taking advantage of us do not have good study skills, but that is not entirely their fault either. Yes, there are a handful of self-starting type As out there, and those are the types who should really be stage managers, but even those kids can hide under a cover of slacking if they aren't properly taught how to do research.

Teachers don't assign specific questions. Many do this in the hopes that their students will learn project design and critical thinking over the course of the project, but I think in this day and age that this may be too optimistic.  Meanwhile, most students in stage management classes have never stage managed outside of a classroom setting. They won't know how to formulate those questions. They have no context. They have no training. I don't know a lot of colleges that offer mandatory "how to research" distribution credits, and heaven knows it isn't being taught in the high schools these days.

The professors - especially for the community and state colleges - are not stage managers by trade. They are set designers, TDs or scene shop foremen who have been pressed into service to teach SM. These schools are not going to shell out to hire someone specifically trained in stage management. A professor with specific experience and connections in stage management is not going to need to send their students here, or if they do it will be as a backup resource. They will have the necessary connections and skill to connect their students with first hand sources through other means.

The answers that you guys have already provided are extremely valuable. I don't mean to belittle them at all. I also don't blame those of you who have had enough. The buck doesn't have to stop here. There comes a point when charity becomes enabling.

Membership and participation in this community is always voluntary. There are no obligations. You don't need to feel guilty for penalizing poor scholarship. But maybe we'd be better serving these kids with a course in proper first-hand research, with examples.

438

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Re: Helping with SM Homework

« on: Apr 13, 2013, 09:34 pm »

A huge portion of our membership consists of students and the teachers who refer those students to SMNetwork. Between them, the link from wikipedia's entry on Rehearsal Reports, and our mentions in stage management textbooks like Stern and Kelly, the word on the street is that we accept students. Pair that with the closed nature of both the SMA forums and Control Booth, we must acknowledge that we are one of the few online venues where young SM's have even a shot at finding guidance. I was just barely past the intern phase of my SM career myself when I started this site. It has always had a large educational portion. We cannot ignore our student members.

Now, this doesn't mean that we should mollycoddle them either. In an ideal world, students would plan ahead for their projects, visit us early in the semester, read the rules and spend several months establishing their "street cred" in our little community before they ask for help. I do not doubt that we have several members who have done exactly that, and have obtained their answers slowly over the course of regular conversation through the year without us even detecting that they were using us for school help. I'm also sure (based on the site stats) that many students find the answers they need without needing to register or comment.

These types of issues tend to crop up towards the end of each semester when last minute folk hit the boards looking to have us save the day. We have tried through our student policies to make it difficult for these unprepared folk to have an easy ride - the barriers for entry are high and our moderators are trained to go to every possible length to prevent hit and run posts. After all, students who wait to the last minute are not going to make good stage managers. Even so, we must realize that for every successful stage manager there will be many, many bad ones out there who don't read the rules, cannot follow directions, do not plan ahead, and generally do not know how to behave in a professional forum. We don't want to let these bad apples spoil it for the good guys with potential.

My personal view is that we should first try to a) rehabilitate them through strict enforcement of the existing rules and b) ignore them if they don't come up to the high road with us. That being said, this is your community - I just run the servers.

There is something to be said for forcing stage management students to communicate with us on our terms. Their success will depend heavily on their ability to reach out in person, rather than hiding behind mass emails and digital methods of communication, especially when they get to dealing with fussy designers and actors who are not always the most tech savvy.

From a technical perspective, the quick fix is to disable replies for Homework Help. Students with at least 5 public posts would still be able to add their projects, but follow up would have to occur in private. However, this would prevent written contributions that do emerge from these projects from being used by future readers who find the answers via search. Some good content has come out of Homework Help discussions and I do worry that taking them private will harm the community warehousing of our collective knowledge. It may also result in a lot of redundancy.

The other route we could take would be to switch to a more formal mentorship program. This is just an off the cuff rough, but in theory:

• SMs can opt in to be mentors. This would require that they provide us with contact info (phone and email), experience level, and sign in at least once every 60 days.
• Twice a year (September and January), if we have unpaired mentors, we can open the field for 3 month long pairings.
• Students would be paired at random with a mentor at a higher career level in the same country. No further screening would occur.
• If we have no mentors, no pairings will be allowed for that term.
• Students must be willing to commit to the full 3 month mentorship agreement.
• These would be volunteer pairings. No guarantee will be made that the pairing would be good or beneficial to either party. No restrictions would be made on how the mentorship would proceed, although certainly regular conversation would be a plus. 
• Posts on the current Homework Help board would be distributed to their pertinent boards, and the board would be deleted.
• All requests for homework help outside of mentorships would be banned. Open calls for mentorship pairings would become the only opportunity for students to get some form of "Homework Help." If they miss the open call or no open call occurs due to lack of mentor interest, too bad.

This would encourage the good, well-prepared stage managers while blocking the slackers completely. However, I would need someone to run the thing, because I'm certainly way too busy to handle something like this. I could theoretically hash out the code for tracking if mentors have logged in recently, but I've been working 12-14 hour days since January with only 2 days off, and no sign of a break until October. Also, this still does nothing to help build our knowledge base here on the site, which must be my first concern.

Further thoughts and refinement are appreciated, but let's not point fingers at any particular members. There's currently no crying in stage management, but I don't want this thread to alter that for any of our members, young or old.

439

Employment / Re: Do circuses have Stage Managers?

« on: Apr 02, 2013, 09:21 pm »

FYI, there was a discussion here about Cirque and AEA that got split over to The Hardline.

440

The Hardline / Re: Unions and Circus/Cirque

« on: Apr 02, 2013, 09:21 pm »

Splitting this and sending to the Hardline since it's taken a very union-focused turn.

441

The Green Room / Re: SMNetwork fundraising drive 2013

« on: Apr 01, 2013, 05:44 pm »

The fundraising drive for 2013-14 has now come to a close. We raised a total of $900! Combine that with my own donation and we're set through spring of 2016. Yes, 3 years! Yay!

Thank you to our 32 member donors and to the one set of member parents who contributed to the cause!

I will be sending individual thank yous via PM to coordinate your donor gifts shortly. I'm still in the process of pairing real names with account names - should be done by the end of today. (The flu knocked me for a loop last week so I'm a little behind.) For the sake of everyone's privacy I will not name all of the donors here - some have identified themselves above but others wish to remain private.

Woohoo!!!!

EDIT: Matched up all but one donor. All donors except that one should have gotten PMs. The one I couldn't match got an email. Thanks, everybody!
EDIT to the EDIT: The last donor account has been found!

442

Students and Novice Stage Managers / Student Stage Manager Challenge #18: Rated R for Adult Content

« on: Mar 31, 2013, 08:47 pm »

Student SM Challenges are for our younger members. Pros, please give the students a chance to comment before jumping in.

Here's the latest:

Your very prim and proper high school has selected "Grease" as their spring musical, but they're doing the school edition. The one with all references to sex, drugs, pregnancy and swearing removed. Auditions go great, but the grumbling starts when the kids get hold of the script and realize how much has been cut compared to the movie version. The kids complain about censorship and grumble through the whole rehearsal process.

For the final performance, they reveal to you that they've got a surprise and they want your cooperation. They've been rehearsing the "real" adult version of the show on the side, and want to do it on stage, just like the movie. This is their last chance to pull it off, but they'd need to rearrange the order of some scenes to cram back in the songs that were cut from the version that you have the rights to perform.

What do you do?

443

Job Postings / LA County (California) open internships

« on: Mar 29, 2013, 06:29 pm »

A friend of mine just posted this meta-list of 2013 Los Angeles county arts internships to Facebook. Figured someone might find something of interest here.

444

Stage Management: Plays & Musicals / Re: PROP FOOD: Ketchup that isn't ketchup

« on: Mar 24, 2013, 08:46 pm »

How about red bean paste? You can get it at Asian grocers. It's sweet and pretty much the right consistency.

445

The Hardline / Re: IATSE

« on: Mar 21, 2013, 05:00 pm »

This is rather like asking for the employee handbook for working in a shopping mall. There may be a few general rules, but the more pertinent information is in the handbooks of the individual shops.

446

College and Graduate Studies / Re: Stage Management Colleges

« on: Mar 21, 2013, 12:04 am »

Wow, you actually ARE a poster boy for something. That's so cool!

447

Employment / Dear Abby: How do I arrange my resume after joining AEA?

« on: Mar 19, 2013, 04:02 pm »

Periodically the staff will post questions on behalf of members who wish to remain anonymous. We call these "Dear Abby" posts.

I just received my Equity card and I am trying to figure out how to reorganize my resume.  Currently I have it arranged with sections for Broadway (two non-Equity PA credits), Off-Broadway (ASM and PA credits), and Other Theatre (PSM and ASM credits).  I feel like I should have my curent job featured somehow, and due to the jobs that I am applying for, I should have my PSM and ASM credits featured as well, but I don't want my biggest credits to be lost in the shuffle either.  I looked at the resume browser, but none of the resumes that I saw seem to have the same dilemma that I do.  Can you suggest some ways to restructure my resume?

448

Employment / Re: Resumes - one page and beyond

« on: Mar 19, 2013, 12:21 am »

By the time you get back from China your stage manager power level may be over 9000! ^_^

449

Employment / Re: Resumes - one page and beyond

« on: Mar 18, 2013, 11:12 pm »

If I encounter a level 500 character in an RPG I'm going to expect that they've got several screens worth of loot drops on their profile. A noob would have trouble filling a single screen. The two players aren't going to be taking on the same raids or confronting the same bosses.

I think the whole "one page resume" thing is mostly for entry-level and low-level positions. I used to work for an executive-level headhunter and we'd regularly do up 6+ page resumes and lengthy narrative histories for the candidates we were promoting.

If someone's hiring at a very high level they will have few candidates and will have time to read through longer resumes. They will also expect to see more experience. However, if someone's hiring for an internship position they are going to be swamped with applicants, scan them in to a keyword-seeking computer program, and chuck the heavy ones as overqualified.

Matthew, you've leveled up and have the XP/HP to look at employment opportunities that are waaay out of range for a noob.

450

College and Graduate Studies / Re: Millikin?

« on: Mar 18, 2013, 01:57 pm »

Let's stay focused on the questions at hand. If the OP wants to think about grad schools while still in high school one cannot fault hir for lack of prior planning. If anyone know about Iowa's grad program do help us out here. We can revisit in 4 years when the info is actually pertinent for the OP.

We have discussed the necessity/waste of masters degrees quite a bit in other threads, and can continue discussing over there if need be.